ARTICLE: Oil info
EIA Confirms Historic U.S. Oil Production Record
Forbes
Robert Rapier
Mar 12, 2024,01:18pm EDT
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/03/12/eia-confirms-historic-us-oil-production-record/?sh=191ab1864048
Oil has been redefined since about 2009.
There is a parameter that measures its nature, specific density. All oil is not created equal. It used to be that oil’s “quality” was defined by sulfur content because that determined ease of refining. This has changed somewhat.
The density is measured with the API number. This does not directly decide constituent parts of oil, but it’s suggestive before any formal assay.
Shale oil is called LTO — light tight oil. Tight because it is locked away unless you create artificial permeability in the rock (permeability is a measure of fracture total in the rock) so oil can flow through it. Because the fracturing is so low in shale large hydrocarbon molecules did not form in the total liquid over the millions of years.
So shale oil is light. It has gasoline. It has the lighter fractions. It has much less diesel or kerosene (jet fuel). And not much asphalt.
The point of all this is the API of the industry standard West Texas Intermediate has changed sharply since the early 2000s. Because Permian shale oil has flowed and changed the density of the overall label of WTI.
So US production is up because the definition of “oil” was loosened a bit. Not hugely, but a good % of what is now being called oil would have been called NGL (Natural Gas Liquids) or Condensate 20 years ago.
Russia and Saudi Arabia have not done this. They have not needed to. They have plenty of non shale oil. Russia will eventually get around to the Bazhenov shale, but there is no need for now.