Posted on 08/29/2014 8:02:29 PM PDT by Lorianne
In a clearing in a cornfield in the Eagle Ford region of south Texas, the rig drilling the Sisti A3 well for ConocoPhillips looks very similar to the ones that have been working in the state’s shale reserves for more than a decade. But a mile or two below the surface, the way the wells operate has changed radically. Since 2012, Conoco has doubled the volume of ceramic proppant – a sand-like material – it uses for hydraulic fracturing. Mixed with water and pumped into wells at high pressure, the proppant forces open the cracks in the rocks where oil and gas is trapped. Using more proppant has increased the output of each well by 30% – giving a healthy boost to Conoco’s bottom line. Now its engineers are examining ways to double the amount of proppant again. This kind of experimentation has made Eagle Ford and other shale formations, including Bakken in North Dakota and Permian Basin in west Texas, the oil industry’s equivalents of Silicon Valley.
Yet prices have fallen, with internationally traded Brent crude dropping from about $108 per barrel at the start of the year to about $102 today. In large part, that has been a result of booming US production. Between 2011 and 2013, the US raised its output by 2.2m b/d, more than the entire increase in global demand. While the immediate outlook for global oil supplies is benign, longer-term prospects are more troubling. If emerging economies – above all China – continue to grow, their demand for oil will rise as well. A few countries, including Canada, Brazil and Mexico, have realistic prospects of increasing their production to meet that demand. But there is still a great burden of expectation riding on the US.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Resources do not belong to “the people”. That is a Communist idea. Second, why is it nobody thinks there is a big conspiracy when prices drop? If oil companies had that much control over the price of gas, it would only go up.
If you want to see the culprit behind every screwed up part of our economy, look to government. 40% of the price of a gallon of gas at the pumpconsists of taxes (fed and state). Then there is the refinery issue, the enviro-nuts insisting on different blends at different times of the years, the high taxes that energy companies pay directly that increase costs, etc.
Finally, look at the price of gas in gold compared to the price in dollars. The value of the dollar is being destroyed, so the price of everything is increasing.
As I said, at the root of every major economic problem, you will find government.
I get “Sign up for quick access to 8 articles per month, including: US shale: What lies beneath” pop up, but no article.
Without the $.50+ in fuel taxes, it would be under $3/gal! Here in PA fuel taxes went up by $.10/gallon at the beginning of the year. Our republican governor, republican house and republican senate though, assure us that they eliminated gas taxes for consumers... They think we're too stupid to know that WE are the ones that pay the tax even when it is all imposed at the wholesale level. Just trying every day to hide the truth from the voters about how much they tax&spend.
I'd also remind you that oil is a global commodity and the price is determined by the global supply and demand. As this article points out, global demand is growing just as fast as the supply provided by these new wells.
They do?
What happened to those people who purchased the land and/or mineral rights?
IIRC I've asked you this same question on similar threads before. And, IIRC, you didn't answer then either. Perhaps you are hiding a secret political viewpoint?
IIRC Heartland has posted the same misinformation before, i.e. “the oil reserves belong to the American people”
She has been corrected before.
She never responds.
She continues to post the nonsense.
I think she has a secret political leaning which includes the belief that there is no such thing as private property.
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