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IIt’s no secret that North Dakota’s oil industry is booming. Advancements in hydraulic fracturing have helped Western North Dakota experience month after month of record-setting oil production, making for one of the fastest-growing economic expansions the U.S. has ever seen. With the region having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and generating over 75,000 new jobs in the past few years, thousands of workers have showed up searching for high-paying jobs. Oil field workers in the state saw an average annual wage of $112,462 in 2012. Competition has intensified since the boom started around 2007, but entry...

Marathon Oil aims to keep driving down drilling and completion times in the U.S. plays like the Eagle Ford next year as it squeezes more money out of its assets, the company’s chief executive said in a conference call Tuesday. “We’re making sure we generate the best economics,” in the shale plays and other onshore drilling regions, said Lee Tillman, president and CEO of Marathon Oil, during a call with investors and analysts. “As we look forward to 2014 and begin to look at frac crudes, we still see room there to drive that commercial element down a bit lower...

When we think fracking, we look at places like Texas or North Dakota, and now even California as it gets going. But there are whispers coming out of Illinois that have us wondering. Yes. Illinois. For a couple years now we’ve been hearing the rumors; Illinois farmers have been leasing their land to drillers who have gone unidentified. We know it’s in southern Illinois, and we know that land is getting snatched up, but by whom and where they plan to drill – it’s been hush-hush. If we don’t keep our ear to the ground, we could miss something big....

EIA's new Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) takes a fresh look at oil and natural gas production, starting with an assessment of how and where drilling for hydrocarbons is taking place (see map). The first edition of the DPR was released today. As mentioned in yesterday's Today in Energy story, new technologies for drilling and producing natural gas and oil have made traditional measures of productivity, such as a simple count of active rotary drilling rigs, obsolete. With more than half of newly-drilled wells now producing both oil and natural gas, it is also no longer sufficient to categorize rigs as...

LISBON - Some local and state officials updated residents on where the shale fracking natural gas industry currently stands in Columbiana County during an informational meeting held at the Crestview Performing Arts Center this past week. "We're just really getting started with this in Columbiana County," said County Commissioner Timothy Weigle, when asked. "We've talked to our friends in Carroll County (which has more than 10 times the number of wells producing gas as there are here). They are a couple million ahead in tax revenue." Here, commissioners are only seeing a slight tax increase at this point, but it...

The benefits of hydraulic fracturing in terms of job creation and meeting energy demands have been drastically exaggerated, while the consequences of the controversial practice could prove cataclysmic, geopolitical commentator Ian Crane told RT. RT: You used to work in the oil industry yourself: what is it that makes fracking worse than the other extraction techniques of oil and gas? Ian Crane: What we’re talking about primarily here is the extraction of shale gas from unconventional geology. This is a very different technology, a very different technique from the usual process of extracting from conventional reservoirs. The gas has to...

North Dakota's rapidly rising oil output continues to defy the sceptics, who have predicted that production would stop growing as declining output from existing wells offsets extra production from new drilling. Oil production soared to 911,000 barrels per day in August, up more than 200,000 bpd compared with the same month last year, the state's Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) said this week. Production is on course to hit 1 million bpd by the end of the year or early 2014, according to the DMR. By the end of August, 9,452 wells were in production. But another 450 had been...

MIDLAND, Texas -— In a faded West Texas town dotted with vacant buildings and potholed streets is a sparkling storefront window and a curious display: rows of diamond-studded Rolex watches, awaiting buyers whose pockets are packed with oil money. The surge in oil drilling has drawn money and men like a magnet to run-down communities that haven't seen a boom since the 1980s. But leaders and residents here are increasingly mindful that the runaway riches tapped by hydraulic fracturing will eventually run out. And they are determined to live by a fondly remembered bumper sticker from the last bust: Please,...

OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia is preparing to be among the first countries outside North America to use shale gas for power generation and thereby save more of its crude oil for lucrative exports. Inspired by a shale gas boom in the United States, which has transformed the country from the world's largest gas importer to a budding exporter, Riyadh plans to take its first steps to commercialise its own large unconventional deposits. "We are ready to start producing our own shale gas and unconventional resources in various types in the next few years and deliver them to consumers," Saudi Aramco...

Almost lost in all the news about the federal government “shutdown” (which has somehow left 83% of the government funded and functioning) over the last week are several new reports regarding the ongoing massive oil and natural gas Shale Revolution in the United States, First is a new projection from the US Energy Information Agency showing that the United States will likely become the world’s largest producer of petroleum products and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2013. Next is this report about the Eagle Ford shale, detailing that this play a) could become the largest onshore oil reserve ever discovered in...

Ashtabula is about to benefit from the Utica shale boom, as a Texas energy company and a technology firm from Columbus plan to build a gas-to-liquids processing plant in the city. Houston-based Pinto Energy said it will spend about $300 million to build the plant, which is expected to be completed and online in early 2016. The plant would take processed natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale plays and convert it into diesel fuel, high-end lubricants and industrial waxes used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other products. Once finished, the plant will employ about 30 people, but Pinto said...

Energy Revolution: America's natural gas boom threatens Russia's economic strategy, an expert says, leaving it with few alternatives to rescue its economy while threatening to shatter its energy stranglehold on Europe. Russia's abundance of energy resources has long allowed it to use energy both as a foreign policy weapon and as the bedrock of the Russian economy. Whenever energy prices rose, Russia benefited and its neighbors often felt the restraining leash of dependence on Russian energy, particularly natural gas. Government-controlled energy giant Gazprom was in such a strong position it could demand decade-long contracts and link the price of gas...

Shale Show 2013 will take place Tuesday-Wednesday, Oct. 1-2 at the Nolan County Coliseum in Sweetwater’s Newman Park. Shale Show is an energy technology showcase, business networking, and information sharing event that will be held in every odd-numbered year in Sweetwater, in the heart of the Cline Shale and America's Energy Solutions Region. Shale Show is open free to the oil and gas industry, regional leaders and businesses, and to the general public. A very limited number of indoor and outdoor display spaces are still available for a fee. Shale Show is a nationwide event. With more than 150 exhibitors...

A decision this week by Shell to shutter its oil shale operation in Colorado to pursue other ventures in Jordan and Canada highlights the difficulties faced by developers in the state as they wrestle with uncertain rules under the Obama administration. Royal Dutch Shell was one of the most successful companies in the state in its efforts to develop a cost-efficient technique to extract oil from shale rock. But the final act of Ken Salazar as Interior secretary earlier this year to rewrite industry rules left companies in limbo with undeterminable royalty rates, and blocked them from obtaining leases for...

The Eagle Ford Shale is more than just the Eagle Ford. Operators in South Texas are drilling into other rock formations, taking horizontal turns — and in some cases getting big results. While the Eagle Ford appears to be the mother lode — the largest and most prolific South Texas formation — several other rock layers sitting above or below it also are producing oil or gas. Jeff Seiler, managing director of the banking firm Scotia Waterous, has tracked Texas drilling permits and found hundreds of cases of companies targeting other South Texas formations, especially the Olmos Sandstone, Austin Chalk,...

One of the central tenets of anti-shale gas activists—claims that carbon pollution from methane leaked during the hydraulic fracturing extraction process makes natural gas more polluting than coal—took another, likely fatal, hit this week. A University of Texas-Austin study released Monday found that methane emissions from new wells being prepared for production, a process known as completion, captured 99% of the escaping methane—on average 97% lower than estimates released in 2011 by the Environmental Protection Agency. It is the most comprehensive shale gas emissions study ever undertaken on methane leakage, covering 190 well pads around the United States. Methane is...

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing. So it must be OK to frack now. In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades. Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value...

Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that has created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market, it seems, does it better than the EPA. Environmentalists find themselves between shale rock and a hard place after a little noticed technical report documented how the natural gas boom caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has actually helped the environment in a major way while also creating jobs and economic growth. In the report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said...

With war fears still dominating the headlines in the Middle East and the US Federal Reserve slow to end easing, now would seem like a good time to own an oil field coming on line. Global oil prices remain over $100 a barrel with plenty of geopolitical risk around to keep them there at least for now. But as companies continue to crack the puzzle for producing increasing amounts of tight oil from source rock, first here in the United States and Canada and then down the road, in any number of places such as Argentina, Russia, China, and Mexico,...

Energy: After more than five years of a fracking moratorium, a leading energy company walks away from its leases, leaving New York, its natural gas riches — and the jobs and wealth they could generate — unrealized. In 2000, people from Chesapeake Energy began arriving in Broome County, New York, a few miles north of the Pennsylvania border. Broome had seen better economic days but was lucky to be sitting right atop the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, which stretches through much of the Northeast. Over the next few years, Chesapeake was able to snap up drilling rights to some...