Posted on 12/23/2011 10:01:43 AM PST by nwrep
For the first time since 1949, the United States is poised to become a net exporter of petroleum, according to the Petroleum Supply Monthly report for November, put out by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Jeremy Friesen, a commodity strategist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News that part of the reason for the shift is that America's consumption of oil has remained stagnant compared to the rest of the world. "The U.S. has been flat or down for overall oil consumption versus the world, which continues to rise mainly due to emerging markets," he said. "Latin American fuel demand continues to be pretty good."
While most experts are citing decreased domestic consumption as the driving force behind the reversal of the 62-year-old trend, increased domestic production is also playing a role. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, domestic crude oil production has gone up over the past two years in part because of work in the Gulf of Mexico and the increased development of shale gas reserves.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
In reality, the US still imports about 2/3 of its crude oil, so that is not drastically different than it has been for decades, although the situation has improved recently with the recent local oil sources being exploited.
The author conflates the increase in US natural gas production with oil. Needless to say, natural gas is not oil by anybody's definition, except for apparently the author's of this piece.
What the US exports more of than it imports is merely certain refined oil products.
“”Instead of that product backing up and depressing prices, it’s being sent to other countries, Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, told the Chronicle.”
Now this annoys me.
I still remember “Gas Wars” and gas at about .35ç a gallon.
Despite the new shale gas finds natural gas prices are still double what they were a very few years ago.
Our economic recovery depends on bringing our energy cost down.
We cannot recover on reduced labor cost alone, not if we want to get people employed again.
Oil or gas does not matter, both are too expensive for both industry and the private consumer.
Post Toasties already hit the nail on the head. The author is dead wrong on this.
Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, announced on November 25, 2011 that America’s energy problems are over thanks to the shale gas revolution. He delivered the good news in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “How American Can Escape the Energy Trap”.
The article’s subtitle is:
“Soaring natural gas production has already cut the share of oil consumption met by imports to 47% last year from 60% in 2005.”
Unfortunately, this is not really true.
Here is a refutation of Zuckerman’s Op-Ed, which works just as well to refute the original article in this thread:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8677
A Reality Check on U.S. Oil Imports and the Shale Revolution for Mortimer Zuckerman
Posted by aeberman on December 5, 2011 - 11:02am
Ping.
This article is completely misleading.
It simply means we have a surplus of refined products.
Current energy demand in the USA requires about 19 million barrels a day.
We produce about 10 million barrels a day.
Natural gas production has almost no impact oil imports.
In the USA natural gas is just a more expensive substitute for coal.
Natural gas does emit less CO2 than coal, and that is the only reason we are using more of it.
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