Free Republic

Shale, the Last Oil and Gas Train: Interview With Arthur Berman By Oilprice.com | More Articles | Save For Later March 6, 2014 | How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There's another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of...

Why natural gas rigs continue to drop to the lowest 2014 levels By Ingrid Pan, CFA 7 hours ago   Why oil rig counts keep climbing while natural gas rigs drop (Part 3 of 3)(Continued from Part 2)Natural gas rigs continued to drop last week, down 9% since the beginning of 2014Baker Hughes, an oilfield services company, reported that rigs targeting natural gas dropped last week, from 351 to 337 for the week ended February 14, 2014. Natural gas rigs are down by 35 since the beginning of the year, a decrease of ~9%. Note that Baker Hughes anticipates that...

In Europe, where fracking is heavily regulated or prohibited altogether, consumers pay more than twice for natural gas than what they do in America (currently $11.59 per mBtu vs $4.78). As consumers, businesses, and electric utilities pay more, the result is a stalled economy and lower standard of living. Thanks in part to its large investment in solar energy, Spain's per capita GDP in current U.S. dollars has dropped from $31,679 in 2010 to $28,624 in 2012. Based on his recent words and actions, Obama wants the same for the U.S. Over half the homes in America heat with natural...

The European Commission has backed away from tabling new laws to regulate shale gas extraction, choosing to leave national governments in charge on the controversial practice. Instead, the EU executive proposed a set of recommendations for governments to maintain environmental standards. These include rules on minimum distances between fracking sites and residential and water-protection areas. The EU executive also wants governments to make sure that fracking companies put in place water-management plans, capture and use gases such as methane that are also extracted, and minimize gas flaring. The list of recommendations, which are not legally binding, marks the completion of...

Shocking Prediction: The 'Second Phase' Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First By Jody Chudley December 31, 2013 Shocking Prediction: The 'Second Phase' Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First Five years ago the idea of an oil boom happening in the North America was not much more than a dream. Today, the U.S. is on pace to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer by the end of the decade. It isn't as though the oil industry didn't always know that formations such as the Bakken in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Texas contained...

Shale gas to the rescue? By Robert Skidelsky LONDON ― The developed world is slowly emerging from the Great Recession, but a question lingers: How fast and how far will the recovery go? One big source of pessimism has been the idea that we are running out of investment opportunities ― and have been since before the 2008 crash. But is that true? The last big surge of innovation was the Internet revolution, whose products came on stream in the 1990s. Following the dot-com collapse of the early 2000s, speculation in real estate and financial assets ― enabled by cheap...

Israel's New Conflict: Battle Over Sustained Energy Policy By David Kashi on October 22 2013 10:32 AM The Levant Basin has an untapped natural gas reserve of 122 trillion cubic feet. The U.S. Energy Information Agency With new discoveries of natural gas off Israel's shores, the Middle Eastern country that had always been an energy importer now faces major policy decisions for safeguarding and capitalizing on its new resource. Thanks to Houston-based Noble Energy Inc.'s (NYSE:NBL) major deep-water discovery, the country is now able to tap into huge natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, called the Levant...

News from globeandmail.com U.S. energy boom firing on all cylinders for 2014 Tuesday, December 24, 2013 DAVID BERMAN dberman@globeandmail.comDavid Berman writes for Inside the Market (tgam.ca/inside-the-market), which offers up-to-the-minute analysis of stock trends and market-moving news throughout the trading day.It is amazing how fast U.S. energy production has gained traction in our imaginations. One minute, the country is talking up a need to move toward energy independence; the next, it is on the verge of becoming the world's largest oil producer, according to the International Energy Agency.James Hamilton at Econbrowser highlights the transition this way: Just eight months ago, the...

The US Energy Boom: More than Just an Oil Story December 23, 2013 by Frank Holmes Leave a Comment As we come to the end of 2013, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the biggest resources stories of the year. One that immediately comes to mind is the U.S. energy resurgence and its tremendous effect on oil and gas.Only a few years ago, we were contemplating the supply constraints facing the petroleum industry, as many major oil fields around the world were declining in production. Now, with the disruptive technology in shale oil and gas, we may...

Written by Tom Vulcan  |December 27, 2013 Innovation Behind Drilling Efficiency & Well Productivity Fueling America’s Energy Boom Fewer rigs but more wells per rig proving powerful combination, among other new tricks of the trade. In the world of fracking, the last few months have been significant on a number of counts. Two, in particular, were indicative of just how important fracking really has become in the U.S.First, at the end of October, the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration commenced publication of its new “Drilling Productivity Report” (DPR). Initially covering six production basins (which, in 2011-2012, accounted for nearly all...

Continental basks in shale glory The company leads production of the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana The US shale revolution is “the best thing going on in the world since the computer chip”, says Harold Hamm, chairman and chief executive of Continental Resources. “Look at what’s going on today, how the world’s changing. It’s the best thing for America, in my opinion, in 40 years. It’s completely transformative.” No one embodies that transformation better than Hamm. Continental, which has its origins in a company he founded back in 1967, is now the leading producer in the Bakken shale...

The last big surge of innovation was the Internet revolution, whose products came onstream in the 1990’s. Following the dot-com collapse of the early 2000’s, speculation in real estate and financial assets – enabled by cheap money – kept Western economies going. The post-2008 slump merely exposed the unsoundness of the preceding boom; the mediocrity of the recovery reflects the mediocrity of previous prospects, coolly considered. The risk now is that a debt-fueled asset spike merely perpetuates the boom-bust cycle. The economist Larry Summers has reintroduced the term “secular stagnation” to describe what awaits us. By the mid-2000’s, Summers argued...

Drilling efficiency gushing in Marcellus Shale By Andrew Maykuth (The Philadelphia Inquirer) Published: December 20, 2013    TROUT RUN - When David Dewberry landed in Pennsylvania in 2010, the veteran of the migratory worldwide oil-and-gas workforce said he required more than a month to drill a typical Marcellus Shale natural gas well.On Dec. 4, a crew under Mr. Dewberry's direction dug into the mountaintop of a state forest near here with a diamond-studded drill bit. Mr. Dewberry reckons it will require only 16 days to finish drilling the well's full length, more than 2 miles."Since I came up here...

That cheap gas is also saving Americans money on their energy bills. But how much? Ask the experts, and you get a fairly wide range of answers.

What is the U.S. going to do with natural gas? Whether we intentionally frack for it or it comes as a byproduct of fracking for oil, what do we do? We have a 50% reduction in rig count over the last two years and yet a steadily increasing supply of natural gas...

| MORRISTOWN - Deep within Belmont County lurks a "monster" that is producing as much as 28.5 million cubic feet of Utica Shale natural gas per day. As Gulfport Energy begins selling methane, propane, butane, pentane and oil from the Shugert 1 well here, the driller's partner, MarkWest Energy, is now processing Gulfport gas from the first phase of its processing complex near Cadiz. "Gulfport's success in the Utica Shale and the commencement of operations at our Cadiz Complex are significant accomplishments in the ongoing Utica Shale development in Eastern Ohio," said Frank Semple, chairman, president and chief executive officer...

Production of natural gas in the Marcellus region, located in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is expected to exceed 13 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) this month, based on estimates in the U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest Drilling Productivity Report (DPR), which will be released later today. The Marcellus region, which produced less than 2 Bcf/d as recently as 2010, is expected to provide 18% of total U.S. natural gas production this month. The total natural gas production estimate is marketed production, while the DPR estimates gross withdrawals, so coming up with a precise percentage is difficult. The rise of...

County governments are considering leasing public land or mineral rights for shale gas drilling to raise money. Beaver County commissioners have begun marketing county land, including 1,400 acres in its biggest park, for drilling as it struggles with its finances. Allegheny County last month received a proposal from Range Resources and Huntley and Huntley to drill underneath Deer Lakes Park. Officials in Washington and Butler counties are looking, too. “There's an opportunity for money, but on the other hand, we're stewards of this land,” said Doug Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. “I wouldn't say there's...

Our economy is straining at the bit to grow out of the Great Recession. You wouldn’t know that from the dreary news on both the jobs and GDP growth front. The good news is found in the incredible potential for high-paying jobs, growth and wealth creation bubbling up in America’s manufacturing sector. Manufacturing is hot, even though we’re supposed to be in a post-industrial economy. The transformation in American manufacturing today is redolent of a century ago when innovation and growth in the industrial landscape was blossoming in both big companies and start-ups. On today’s start-up front we have emerging...

Thus far, the shale revolution has almost exclusively been confined to the U.S. But that will soon likely change. A study conducted by energy consultants Wood MacKenzie concludes that a record 400 shale wells may be drilled outside the U.S. next year, most of them in Russia and China. hile this is only a small percentage of the thousands of shale wells drilled in the U.S., the number of rigs used onshore in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe has grown 10% over the past year, Baker Hughes data show. And most of these rigs are purposed for shale exploration. In...