Shale

Cutting Edge

The Death Of U.S. Shale Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

The current year marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. shale boom, a period in which fracking technology across such states as Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Wyoming helped establish the nation as a top oil and gas producer. Unfortunately, high costs of production compared with conventional drilling has led to the sector consistently printing red ink and resulted in considerable destruction of shareholder value. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent oil price crash has led to investors souring on the industry further, credit becoming harder to come by, and a cross-section of Wall Street calling the end to the sector.

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U.S. Shale Has A Glaring Problem

Oil prices are down a bit, but are still close to multi-year highs. That should leave the shale industry flush with cash. However, a long list of U.S. shale companies are still struggling to turn a profit. A new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the Sightline Institute detail the “alarming volumes of red ink” within the shale industry.

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Oil Shale in WY, UT & Colo.

Technological Solution to 100 Year Old Oil Problem

For as long as I can remember there has been big talk about the “Oil Shale” in places like Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. According to Wikipedia “The largest oil-shale resource in the world is contained in the Eocene Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in three basins: the Piceance Basin, Green River Basin, and Uinta Basin. The Green River oil shales have been the focus of most efforts of the past hundred years to establish an American oil shale industry.”  The first attempts to exploit the Green River Basin shale deposit was made by the “Oil Shale Mining Company” way back in 1916. But oil from oil shale is notoriously uneconomical and hard to extract. Generally, the shale is mined and then heated to at least 300 °C (570 °F) to extract the oil, but it works better at between 480 and 520 °C (900 and 970 °F)! The usual process involves massive amounts of super-heated steam (which requires lots of water). The key to economical shale oil is not locating the oil it is developing the right technology to make the process economical (and preferably environmentally friendly). In today’s article Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com looks at a new method of doing exactly that.

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Oil in USA

Clean Oil That Only Costs $20 per Barrel?

Oil production has risen by 5 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2010, an increase of nearly 100 percent. New technology, particularly techniques in shale oil drilling, has opened up vast new opportunities for oil and gas companies.

The proof is in the numbers. In 2017, the United States averaged 9.3 million bpd. This year, the EIA predicts that U.S. oil and gas production will reach record levels, averaging 10.3 million barrels bpd to surpass the record reached in 1970 (9.6 million bpd).

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Oil Train Tanker

Could the Next Oil Price Spike Cripple The Industry?

In the following article Andreas de Vries and Dr. Salman Ghouri of Oilprice.com discuss the possibility of oil price spikes crippling the oil industry. At first blush that seems highly unlikely.  After all the oil industry is critical to powering the world and although there have been bumps along the road over the last 100 years the oil industry has always weathered the storm. But let’s look at what they have to say.

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Has Permian Shale Productivity Peaked Already?

The Permian Basin is the largest petroleum-producing basin in the United States and has produced a cumulative 28.9 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cu ft. of gas. Currently, nearly 2 million barrels of oil per day are being pumped from the basin advances in hydrocarbon recovery such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have expanded production into unconventional, tight oil shales which up until fairly recently were unrecoverable. Prior to these advances, all the talk was about “Peak Oil” and that we would run out of recoverable oil. And then along came horizontal drilling and fracking and we are suddenly awash in oil and natural gas. But is it all about to come to a screeching halt as Permian oil production peaks? In the following article about Permian Basin Productivity Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com looks at where Permian productivity is headed now.

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Where Will Oil Prices Be in 2020?

The oil industry is notoriously cyclical. Perhaps because it takes so long to bring new supply on-line. As prices rise and the industry blossoms the oil machinery kicks into gear. Independants locate the oil and the fields get bought up by majors who bring it into production, this boosts supply. And then when the supply hits the market, prices go down, small over-leveraged players get squeezed and then go bankrupt, and exploration dries up. Eventually, this causes supply to slacken and prices begin rising again. And the cycle continues. In today’s article we’ll look at where oil prices could be 3 years on as increased demand meets Saudi production cuts and shale-oil production increases.

Where Will Oil Prices Be in 2020? Read More »

Oil Tanker

Is a Second OPEC Cut In The Cards?

In November 2016 with great fanfare OPEC announced a cut in production in an effort to drive up prices in light of the massive global supply glut partially the result of U.S. shale oil flooding the market. This supply glut had put every Oil producing country in fiscal straits (since most of the governments derive a substantial portion of their revenues from oil). It also squeezed the private U.S. shale oil producers who had racked up significant debt prior to the oil price crash. In the months since we have published several articles pertaining to the price of oil. Initially OPEC’s production cut drove up oil prices but in Oil Prices High Enough to Spark Shale Rebound we showed that Shale production was capping the oil price gains.

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The Oil War Just Getting Started

Let the battle begin. OPEC is trying to cut production and drive prices up while U.S. Shale Oil producers are seeing the increase in oil prices as an opportunity to get back in the game. More oil rigs are coming on line in the U.S. accompanied by increased drilling activity. BP’s 2017 Energy outlook is saying there is plenty of oil until at least 2050 but this includes an estimate that oil demand will slow in the coming years.

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