Free Republic

Major improvements by natural gas exploration-and-production companies have allowed them to continue to drill profitably in a period of depressed prices, adding to the glut of gas and putting further pressure on prices, an E&P executive said Wednesday at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. "What's happening is that we continue to get better and get more production per rig," Kyle Mork, president of Energy Corporation of America, said in reference to the seeming paradox of growing US natural gas production despite a record low level of rigs. "We're the problem," he said. It is common knowledge in the industry...

Oil Price War May Benefit Both US Shale And Saudi Arabia

Has billionaire oil man Harold Hamm ever been tempted to take the U.S. shale revolution abroad and expand his oil empire from North Dakota to the rest of the world? “I have not,” Hamm told a gathering of energy executives Tuesday. The question had come from Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS. Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, one of the biggest oil producers in the Bakken Shale, was one of three oil-company chief executives speaking from the stage during a panel at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston. So why haven’t U.S. shale producers tried to tap...

Siluria Technologies’ new ethylene plant is a 4-story-tall maze of pipes and valves and pressure vessels. If it were a standalone plant it might be impressive. But this one is tucked in among dozens of giant petrochemical complexes along the Houston Ship Channel and situated within a larger polypropylene site operated by Brazilian chemicals giant Braskem So how does this facility stand out? Because it’s unique. All the rest of the world’s ethylene is made the old-fashioned way: by breaking apart larger hydrocarbons such as naphtha (sourced from crude oil) or ethane (found in natural gas). In contrast, Siluria’s technology...

EIA is currently in the process of updating maps of major tight oil and shale gas plays, including the Eagle Ford and Marcellus plays, which will help to better characterize the geology of key areas of production in the United States. EIA's most recent maps focus on shale and tight oil plays, and characterize plays based on geologic characteristics, including rock type and age. Understanding geologic history and processes helps exploration and production companies reduce the risk of drilling dry, nonproducing wells and better understand hydrocarbon resource potentials. Production of crude oil and natural gas occurs in two classes of...

ROSWELL – Gasoline prices in New Mexico could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon this year as the United States and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries engage in an outgoing crude oil price war, an expert told the New Mexico Landmen’s Association on March 27. Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said at the landmen’s association’s monthly meeting recently that crude oil storage in the United States is at a near maximum, meaning it will be some time before crude oil prices...

Energy: New federal regulations on fracking on public land ignore a study documenting that methane found in well water is unrelated to the location of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells. When the Obama administration recently released its new regulations on fracking — regulations that it said were needed to keep up with the advance and success of the decades-old technology to meet public safety needs — the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance immediately filed suit, saying that the new regs were based on "unsubstantiated concerns" that lacked any scientific basis. "Hydraulic fracturing has been conducted...

Shale debt, falling prices and slack demand has tight oil producers in trouble. And yet, there is still burgeoning production. Why? Well, we’ve seen this before. It’s the shale debt redux. Operators did it a few years ago in natural gas and prices have yet to recover. Unfortunately cheap money in the form of debt can mean poor investment choices for businesses and for investors. But it can also lead to an aberrant market because operators deep in debt won’t curtail production even though it is glutted. Debt coupons simply have to be met. The shale revolution has always been...

The boom in U.S. oil production over the past decade led thousands of workers to prairie cities from Texas to North Dakota. Now, Saudi Arabia hopes those workers—many of them casualties of the ongoing downturn in crude prices—will consider the deserts of the Middle East instead. Saudi Arabia has a long history of recruiting skilled workers from the West to develop its vast oil reserves. The country, however, also possesses shale oil deposits, and observers say the current oil market provides an opportunity for the Saudis to begin developing those resources. “With the layoffs, it’s a great time to do...

Shane Ferro February. 17, 2015Gary Shilling thinks the price of oil is going way lower. The economist and financial analyst wrote an op-ed for Bloomberg View discussing the various reasons why he thinks the price could get down to $10-20 per barrel. Basically, supply keeps increasing while demand is shrinking. Here's an excerpt that pretty clearly lays it out: U.S. crude oil production is forecast to rise by 300,000 barrels a day during the next year from 9.1 million now. Sure, the drilling rig count is falling, but it’s the inefficient rigs that are being idled, not the horizontal rigs...

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

Is solar the next shale?     Just as shale extraction reconfigured oil and gas, no other technology is closer to transforming power markets than distributed and utility scale solar.Since the late 2000s, a widespread collapse in the price of solar modules has altered the economics of solar energy, putting it in a strong position to compete with other forms of power in the United States.With module costs at historic lows, increased efficiency has become the next frontier. Consequently, while higher efficiency solar technology may command a greater module price, capacity gains per square meter can make them more economic...

Stimulus: Obama says jobs from the Keystone project aren't permanent and it's just one pipeline that will move foreign oil to foreign markets. But fixing the bridge he once used as a prop didn't create permanent jobs either. 'Let's set our sights above a single pipeline," the leader of the party of infrastructure told Congress in the State of the Union. But this Congress has 80 more Republicans than when he took office, and on Thursday the Senate rejected his admonition by a 62-36 vote. Eight Democrats crossed the aisle after a series of amendment votes, a process that had...

OPEC said Thursday in its monthly report that the fall in oil prices will potentially slow US shale production by the end of the year. However, the slowdown will not prevent a growing global surplus in 2015 and demand for OPEC's oil to fall to its lowest level in a decade. OPEC increased its 2015 estimate for US oil production in the report, saying annual growth will be slower than previously estimated as lower prices cause companies to reduce investment plans and therefore engage in less drilling. But analysts say that it is going to take months before US production...

Energy Policy: In spite of dramatically lower methane emissions from fracking, according to the EPA's own data, the agency wants to impose draconian regulations on the oil and gas industry similar to those on coal. The new rules that the White House announced on Wednesday aim to cut oil emissions of methane, a target of environmental groups, by 45% below 2012 levels, despite the fact that the emissions already show a sharp decline even as shale oil and gas production has skyrocketed. This war-on-shale action mirrors the administration's war on coal, with EPA rules impossible to meet economically and sometimes...

There’s been little heat so far in Kentucky over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique of drilling for oil and natural gas that has caused division elsewhere in the country, but now the controversy has gushed up here. The potential to develop a vast underground shale layer that curves from the northeastern part of the state through Central Kentucky has sparked increased interest among oil and gas companies within the last 18 months. Companies signed hundreds of additional oil and gas leases with landowners in 2014, according to local officials. Much of the interest has been in Lawrence, Johnson and...

"There are too many ugly balance sheets," warns one energy industry analyst, adding simply that "the group is not positioned for this downturn." While the mainstream media continues to chant the happy-clappy side of lower oil prices, spewing various 'statistics' about how the down-side of low oil prices is 'contained' and the huge colossal massive tax cut means 'everything is awesome' for America, the data - and now actions - do not bear this out.

Cheap oil could set off a wave of corporate fire sales over the next two years if oil prices remain low, investors and financial experts says, putting a patchwork of oil wells from Texas to North Dakota in the hands of bigger, richer players. A number of small independent oil firms may have to hand over the keys to oil-pumping assets or their entire companies if they can't pay back billions in risky debt that has fueled hydraulic fracturing and a big gain in U.S. tight-oil output over the past few years. Oil prices, experts say, would need to stabilize...

Alongside Apache and Shell Egypt, Cairo will pursue the country’s first shale extraction project, complete with $30 to $40 million in investments in hopes of reviving the country’s ailing oil and gas sector as domestic demand continues to grow.... The move comes as Egypt continues to seek out solutions to a challenging energy environment, including waning interest from foreign energy firms and declining production. According to press reports, Egyptian gas exports saw a 73.4 percent decline July of this year,...the decline also hit crude oil exports, reducing it to $350.7 million for the summer month from $398.8 million the year...

Recent declines in North Sea Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices – and the recent decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to maintain oil output – has caused speculation about whether the boom in U.S. shale exploration and production could continue. The U.S. shale revolution has created in a boom in U.S. oil production over the past five years, growing from 5.4 million barrels of oil per day (MMbopd) in 2009 to 8.6 MMbopd today. Shale gas production has also soared from 59.3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2009 to more than...