Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on October 30, 2013
Fracking Won’t Make The US A Net Oil Exporter
A group including a consultant, a sustainability advocate and an environmental scientist argued today at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver that while the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for “tight oil” is an important contributor to U.S. energy supply, it is not going to result in long-term sustainable production or allow the U.S. to become a net oil exporter.
Not many argue that the US should be exporting oil, though many argue that we should not import it.
Charles A.S. Hall, professor emeritus at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at State University of New York, Syracuse, says that global patterns of fossil-fuel production in the past decade and oil production patterns from the Bakken Field (the giant expanse of oil-bearing shale rock underneath North Dakota and Montana that is being produced using hydraulic fracturing) lead them to conclude that despite a tripling of prices and of expenditures for oil exploration and development, the production of nearly all countries has been stagnant at best and more commonly is declining — and that prices do not allow for any growth in most economies.
“The many trends of declining EROIs suggest that depletion and increased exploitation rates are trumping new technological developments,” Hall said.
J. David Hughes, president of the Canadian firm Global Sustainability Research Inc., echoes Hall with an analysis of the Bakken Field and the Eagle Ford Field of Texas, which together comprise more than half of U.S. tight oil production. It shows that drilling must continue at high levels, to overcome field decline rates of 40 percent per year.
Drilling rates of more than 3,000 wells annually in the Eagle Ford, and more than 1,800 wells annually in the Bakken, are sufficient to offset field decline and grow production — for now. If drilling at these high rates is maintained, production will continue to grow in both fields for a few more years until field decline balances new production. At that point drilling rates will have to increase as “sweet spots” (relatively small high-productivity portions of the total play area) are exhausted and drilling moves into lower-productivity regions, in order to further grow or even maintain production.
The onset of production decline will likely begin before the end of the decade, Hughes said. “These sweet spots yield the high early production observed in these plays, but the steep decline rates inevitably take their toll. Tight oil is an important contributor to the U.S. energy supply, but its long-term sustainability is questionable. It should be not be viewed as a panacea for business as usual in future U.S. energy security planning.”
8 Comments on "Fracking Won’t Make The US A Net Oil Exporter"
rockman on Wed, 30th Oct 2013 12:06 pm
“it is not going to result in long-term sustainable production…” Dang…what a brave position to take. You gotta give them credit for having the balls to declare the obvious: there has never been a play anywhere on the planet that created “long-term sustainable production” since the beginning of the petroleum age. The vast majority of trends typically peak reserves were discovered within 10 years or so. Their only bailout is that they don’t define “long-term”…5 yeaes?.. 15 years? …25 years?.
There’s really no need to invent straw man positions to knock the unconventional plays…they’ll take care of that themselves.
westexas on Wed, 30th Oct 2013 2:18 pm
Rock,
You have to understand the “New physics.”
The key to sustainable long term production is boosting recovery factors to more than 100% of original oil in place. I expect that either the Fox News Channel or CNBC* will be announcing such a breakthrough any day now.
*A CNBC talking head decreed that the US is a already a net crude oil exporter
John_A on Wed, 30th Oct 2013 4:08 pm
Hall should stop reminding people that he once predicted that EROEI would stop drilling in the USA, want to bet he didn’t mention than to the crowd before proclaiming his most recent pontification on the topic?
Arthur on Wed, 30th Oct 2013 4:42 pm
westexas, you mean this recent patent:
http://tinyurl.com/pmnlrdy
We can expect to see new technologies coming online that will enable extraction of a lot of additional oil from ‘depleted’ wells.
Arthur on Wed, 30th Oct 2013 4:56 pm
Here is yet another method:
http://tinyurl.com/nj3y28c
“Nanoparticles helping to recover more oil
When petroleum companies abandon an oil well, more than half the reservoir’s oil is usually left behind as too difficult to recover. Now, however, much of the residual oil can be recovered with the help of nanoparticles and a simple law of physics.”
If these technologies would actually work, then Michael Klare would be right with his prediction of a “Third Carbon Age”. I am afraid he could be right.
The current big picture is: 2T(rillion) barrel total reserves, 1T consumed to date. With new extraction technologies total recoverable reserves would be 4T – 1T = 3T.
The paradox is: the more you study oil reserves, the more uncertain the picture becomes.
Roman on Thu, 31st Oct 2013 12:35 am
http://tinyurl.com/pmnlrdy
Pumping air and burning oil to get it out of the ground isn’t patentable. Air and oil belong to whomever owns the field. Are they also going to patent wiping ass? Now this prick is going to get a ton of money for his 5th grader idea. Only stupid oil company would pay him anything. Just say they came up with it.
rockman on Thu, 31st Oct 2013 11:43 am
Roman – And if it were patentable it would have been done before this guy was born. The process is called ISC, in situ combustion, or more commonly known as “fire flood”. And it was being successfully applied, exactly how he describes it, over 50 years ago. Texaco was one of the primary developers at the time. There is an ISC research lab at Texas A&M named after that Texaco geologist. And despite some folks thinking that all the thermal recovery EOR methods were just utilized in CA, S. Texas and N. La. had some of the more commercial ISC projects.
I won’t go into the details but searching ISC on the net and you’ll find hundreds of reports some dating back a half century. The majority of fields with residual oil remaining are not applicable for ISC regardless of the price of oil. But that won’t stop the MSM from potentially latching on to his pitch and start selling it as a cure for our energy problems.
Roman on Fri, 1st Nov 2013 12:22 am
Thanks for clearing that up Rockman. I tough peak oil is postponed another 30 years. I was kinda disappointed, but happy that it would be postponed because I’m not going to be prepared for it any time soon.