Posted on 04/01/2014 5:08:21 AM PDT by thackney
With all the technicalitys aside, if it lowers our trade imbalance and national debt then I am all for it.
Soooo,....EXPORT!!!!
I wholeheartedly agree, but we’ll still need more exploration and drilling.
True but once they dial in the Permian Basin some really awesome things happen. Why? Because the size of the addressable oil there byo current tech is second only to that that of the world’s largest oil field — Saudi Arabia’s gandhar oil field.
The permian basin is currently producing over 1 million barrels@ day. But permian production increases have been very gradual —unlike the baaken and eagle ford whose production increases have been almost parabolic.
the reason for the permian basin’s slow rise is that roughly half the wells there are still vertical wells and the drillers haven’t yet dialed into the sweet spots where a single pad can drill 30 wells at different depths and directions and find all the oil available for a quarter mile in every direction.
When they did this in the baaken and eagle ford —production went straight up.
That’s what will happen in the permian basin in about 2 years. When that does — the permian basin will single handedly produce 1 million barrel@ year production increases for a couple years. That basin will top out at somewhere plus or minus 5 million barrel’s a day.
What’s more the Permian basin could keep up those production rates for 3-4 decades. But I think somewhere between 2020 and 2030 —oil prices will crash and burn down to $60@barrel range or less. (Why $60? Here’s my wag. You have to figure that in terms of btu—that is apples to apples — natural gas and coal are sitting currently at the equivalent of about $40@barrel. The more oil the USA pumps the higher the dollar is going to go. That is the next big secular move for the dollar is up.)
But why would oil go down. Supply is falling most oil fields around the world while demand just keeps going up with risiing world wide prosperity. So US oil production increases will only just keep up with rising demand and falling supply. Why would oil go down?
I think that Tesla, electric cars and natural gas will cut the demand for oil. But it won’t even make a blip in demand until after 2020 and won’t start to have any meaning until later in the 2020’s.
By 2030 the oil demand will be capped.
A parallel development sometime in the 2020’s with electric cars will be some kind of 4th generation nuclear plant which will deliver electricity for 1/4-1/10th current prices.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.