BP: Shale gas, tight oil to reshape global markets by 2030

The North American shale gas and tight oil revolution will reshape global markets, changing economic expectations and rebalancing trade flows, BP PLC said in its BP Energy Outlook 2030. “As the US becomes 99% self-sufficient by 2030, oil imports’ share of its trade and services deficit will approach zero,” said Mark Finley, general manager for […]

Can Leak Detection End the Pipeline Impasse?

Pipelines used to be things that were just built without blinking. It is said that there are enough pipelines now in the US to encircle the Earth 25 times with enough left over to also tie a bow around it. Today, getting a pipeline built is not so easy – there are too many environmental […]

Tech Talk – Future Bakken production and hydrofracking

Before there were refrigerators folks kept drinks cool by putting them into clay jars that had been soaked in water. The evaporation of the water from the clay cooled the container and its contents, which today includes wine bottles. On the other hand, for many years artisans have taken clay in a slightly different form, […]

Yemen’s main oil pipeline attacked, pumping halted

Attackers blew up Yemen’s main oil export pipeline on Friday, halting the flow of crude, an official working for the state-run Safer oil company said, the latest in a series of attacks. Yemen’s oil and gas pipelines have been repeatedly sabotaged by insurgents and tribesmen, especially since anti-government protests created a power vacuum in 2011, […]

Saudi Arabia Stabilizes Oil Output as OPEC Maintain Cap

Saudi Arabia kept production near 9 million barrels for a second month, according to a Gulf official with knowledge of the country’s oil policy, helping to maintain OPEC output at close to the group’s official ceiling. The world’s largest crude exporter produced 9.05 million barrels a day in January, little changed from last month when […]

E.R.O.E.I.

NASA, NYSE, IRS, WYSIWYG. Just a few of the acronyms we’ve come to know and love, or hate. Perhaps not actual acronyms in all cases. For NASA we say “na-sa” which is a true acronym. The IRS is “eye are ess” and not “erz” or something. Whether or not they are true acronyms is unimportant. […]

Brazilian Production Hits 2M Barrels Per Day

Brazilian state-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, said late Monday that domestic oil output rose for a third consecutive month in December, though it still fell short of its production target for last year. Petrobras said that domestic crude oil output rose 3.2% to 2.03 million barrels per day from 1.97 million barrels a […]

Iraq’s flood of ‘cheap oil’ could rock world markets

The U.S. is not the only nation experiencing a renaissance in oil production. Sidelined for two decades by war, sanctions and political instability, Iraq passed a critical milestone last year by producing 3 million barrels a day of crude oil for the first time since 1990, before the Persian Gulf War, reaching 3.4 million barrels […]

Halon gas eyed as possible cause in Pemex blast

The probe into a blast that tore the face off a building at Petroleos Mexicanos’s Mexico City headquarters and killed at least 33 people continued, with authorities saying they still don’t know what happened. Forensic, chemical and explosive experts were sifting through clues and haven’t identified the cause of the disaster at the state-owned oil […]

Alaska January Crude Output Down 7.9 Percent From Year Earlier

Oil production from Alaska’s North Slope dropped 7.9 percent in January from a year earlier as output from wells declined and new ones weren’t added. Production averaged 576,959 barrels a day last month, down from 626,155 in January 2012, the state tax division said on its website. December output was 582,150 barrels a day. Alaska’s […]

UK Oil Output Fell by Record 28% in September-November

The extent of the oil-production outage that contributed to tipping the U.K. economy into a fourth-quarter contraction was laid bare Thursday, as official statistics showed production of crude fell nearly 30% in the three months to November. Production of petroleum fell a record 27.9% compared with the same period the previous year, according to energy […]

Iran crude oil exports rise to highest since EU sanctions

Iran’s crude oil exports in December leapt to their highest level since European Union sanctions took effect last July, analysts and shipping sources said, as strong Chinese demand and tanker fleet expansion helped the OPEC member dodge sanctions. Exports rose to around 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in December, according to two industry sources […]

2012 Liquid Fuel Supply

We now have December data for global liquid fuel production, which allows us to see the whole year. What has been striking about 2012 is that oil production has been remarkably flat, with no significant rise across the year (there was a small 0.25mbd/yr trend overall, but that was not statistically significant). This is in […]

Oil Watch: Drill Baby Drill

Executive summary In January 1995 there was a total of 1738 oil and gas rigs drilling globally (excluding the former Soviet Union (FSU)). By February 2012 that number had more than doubled to 3850. Global C+C+NGL production grew from 68 to 84 million bpd (24%) over the same period. Global drilling for oil and gas […]

Why EROEI Means Mining in Space will Never Work

The prospect of exploration in space for minerals has been the substance of science fiction, but in the face of a rapid depletion of non-renewable resources, and a likely downturn in funding for space projects in general, in these times of austerity, “mining asteroids” has emerged as an apparently serious proposition. Two companies, “Planetary Resources” […]

Shale gas boom now visible from space

Oil companies at the heart of the US shale oil boom are burning off enough gas to power all the homes in Chicago and Washington combined in a practice causing growing concern about the waste of resources and damage to the environment. The volume of unwanted gas being flared off in North Dakota, the state […]

Oil supply grows, but so does price

It’s basic economics: An increase in the supply of a product coupled with a decrease in demand results in a drop in price. But that isn’t happening with oil. Since 2008, oil production in the United States has surged a stunning 28 percent as the controversial practice of fracking unlocks new supplies in North Dakota and Texas. […]

Russia’s Gazprom joins shale oil race

Gazprom Neft, oil arm of the energy giant Gazprom, is drilling for shale oil in Western Siberia. Realization of the shale oil project is believed to breathe new life into oil development as traditional deposits have been showing signs of dwindling. ­Gazprom Neft has started exploration of Bazhenov formation that potentially contains minimum 8-9 billion […]

Global demand offsetting surge in U.S. oil production

It’s basic economics: An increase in the supply of a product coupled with a decrease in demand results in a drop in price. But that isn’t happening with oil. Since 2008, oil production in the United States has surged a stunning 28 percent as the controversial practice of fracking unlocks new supplies in North Dakota […]

Where’s the Real Bottleneck for Natural Gas? Distribution.

As a scientist and an unabashed nerd, I love data. Particularly, I love it when ready access to data reveals things that are surprising in the face of conventional wisdom. An interesting case comes up with this year’s colder winter in New England. (Thankfully, I’m located in damp, icy East Tennessee, where even the threat […]

Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for U.S. Oil and Gas Discovery and Production

Oil production in the US peaked in 1970. The easy “sweeter” stuff has been extracted. What remains is deeper in the ground or farther off-shore, requires much more energy to extract, and is more toxic to produce. It takes energy to make energy. Energy Return on Investment (EROI) also known as ERoEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested), […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Looking at 2013

We are only a few weeks into the New Year and already the shape of the next 11 months is starting to form. To start, the U.S. Department of Energy sees two good years in front of us with increases in domestic tight oil production and falling demand in Europe offsetting what now looks like […]

“Peak Oil” Impacting Norwegian and Saudi 2013 Production?

While it is hard to ramp up much sympathy for petro-states, Norway and Saudi Arabia are both facing a murky 2013 as domestic production falls, pushing both nations towards some difficult (and expensive) choices. OPEC’s leading producer Saudi Arabia is facing the twin storms of declining oil production and the rise of global alternatives, threatening […]

Why Has Saudi Arabia Cut Its Oil Output?

The world’s most influential oil producer, Saudi Arabia, reduced its oil production towards the end of 2012, causing many to conclude the Kingdom sought to reinforce global oil prices, but the Internal Energy Agency has a different take. Saudi Arabia had been pumping oil at 30-year highs for most of 2012, but cut back supplies […]

The Amazing Reversal of the US Oil Industry

A few years ago, I made the observation that the best thing that could happen to mitigate against some of the potentially severe consequences of peak oil was for oil prices to rise, and remain high in the years before oil production peaked. That would have the effect of encouraging conservation, as people adapted to […]

Saudi Arabia, Iraq Cut Oil Exports in November

Saudi Arabia exported 1.7 percent less crude in November than in the previous month, while Iraq and five other OPEC producers also curbed shipments, according to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative. The kingdom, the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, shipped 7.15 million barrels a day in November as it reduced monthly […]

Lower output target for Iraq

In the World Energy Outlook 2012 report the IEA presents its view of future crude oil production (see the figure). With decreases of over 2 million barrels per day (Mb/d) by 2035 both Russia and China have passed Peak Oil. In other nations where crude oil production has previously reached Peak Oil, the decline in […]

Canada’s oil sands cannot stop Peak Oil

The term “Peak Oil” was used for the first time in January 2001. It was then that Colin Campbell wrote his first newsletter for ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. A month later the “Focus” (Brännpunkt) the Op-Ed column of Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden, published the first debate article on Peak […]

Details emerge of carnage at Algerian natural gas complex; at least one American dead

At least one American died and an unknown number of other foreigners remain unaccounted for Friday as details began to emerge of this week’s assault by Islamist militants on a natural gas production complex in eastern Algeria. The U.S. State Department, which had maintained a stony silence about what it had been told about the […]

Peak Oil: Problem? What Problem?

The ongoing saga of Royal Dutch Shell’s efforts to move the crippled drill rig Kulluk were summed up in a very nice piece written last week by Dan Joling at the Huffington Post. Explaining that the efforts are taking place during “the worst of the North Pacific’s fury” is probably all you need to know. […]

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