Posted on 01/18/2013 4:28:46 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
U.S. oil production grew more in 2012 than in any year in the history of the domestic industry, which began in 1859, and is set to surge even more in 2013.
Daily crude output averaged 6.4 million barrels a day last year, up a record 779,000 barrels a day from 2011 and hitting a 15-year high, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group.
It is the biggest annual jump in production since Edwin Drake drilled the first commercial oil well in Titusville, Pa., two years before the Civil War began.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts 2013 will be an even bigger year, with average daily production expected to jump by 900,000 barrels a day.
The surge comes thanks to a relatively recent combination of technologies—horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressures to break apart underground rock formations.
Together, they have unlocked deposits of oil and gas trapped in formations previously thought to be unreachable.
That has meant a resurgence of activity in well-established oil regions, such as West Texas's Permian basin, as well as huge expansions in areas that had been lightly tapped in the past, such as North Dakota's Bakken shale region.
The Bakken has gone from producing just 125,000 barrels of oil a day five years ago to nearly 750,000 barrels a day today.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Not that the Obamatrons haven’t tried to stop it.
I can only imagine how much American energy would be produced if the current regime weren't blocking it at every turn! We'd be independent of the middle eastern goons if a pro-energy, pro-business administration were in power. Instead, Obama fights the oil producers with absurd regulations and confiscatory taxes to keep his muzzie kinfolk enriched. And, We the People, suffer pain at the pump year after year with the pretender and his gang in charge.
When prices go up, so does supply. When oil producers begin to rely on a $100/bbl price that has remained that way for two years straight now, they begin to make the investments that result in more production.
/johnny
Eggsackly.
I just came from the BP Whiting, Indiana refinery modernization project. They are building a refinery inside the existing refinery just to handle Canadian Tar Sands.
It is a massive and very impressive project.
Just goes to show, when private industry does something , you get a cost effective modern profitable project. When 0bama and the progressives try to produce energy you get Solyndra and windmills.
This is true.
There is nothing new about fracking. It’s been around 30 years. But it wasn’t economical to do it until oil prices exploded as they have from sub $20 a decade or so ago to about $100 now (that’s WTI’s price, not the real price of oil, which is Brent at $112).
With price rise, more oil flowed because the frantic, desperate drilling necessary to overcome the steep decline rates in horizontal wells could be paid for. On a joules in vs joules out basis, the ratio is horrible, but the money (which is defined by man, not nature) generates the flow — and it would even if the joules ratio were negative.
The bad news is this works in reverse, too. If you dare let price fall, fracking becomes uneconomic and capitalism works again and the flow stops. Bakken output in November (the latest month for which we have data) was down as WTI dropped under $90.
With WTI up from $82 about 2 months ago to today’s $96 and Brent nudging along at the same rate, we can expect about 1.5% GDP drag. Lots of drags on GDP upcoming this year.
The Cline Shale formation in the Permian basin of west texas will probably get press in the next year or two as being in the same league as Baaken and eagle ford.
As much as I hate these high gas prices, I'll pay 'em as long as it means AMERICANS are working, and driving AMERICAN ingenuity.
And you know zero deplores every barrel of it.
California has long been an oil-producing state, but it’s getting renewed attention because of the Monterey Shale, the country’s largest shale oil resource. It stretches under a large part of Central California. In places like Southern Monterey County, where new oil leases are being offered, the battle for fracking is heating up.
On December 12th, the federal Bureau of Land Management is opening 18,000 acres for oil leases in Monterey, Fresno and San Benito Counties.
The Monterey/Santos shale play in southern California was estimated to hold 15.42 billion barrels, or 64 percent of the total. By comparison, the Bakken Shale was projected to hold 3.59 billion barrels of shale oil resource and the Eagle Ford 3.35 billion.
So the Monterey could hold twice as much recoverable shale oil as the Bakken and Eagle Ford combined.
California has long been an oil-producing state, but it’s getting renewed attention because of the Monterey Shale, the country’s largest shale oil resource. It stretches under a large part of Central California. In places like Southern Monterey County, where new oil leases are being offered, the battle for fracking is heating up.
On December 12th, the federal Bureau of Land Management is opening 18,000 acres for oil leases in Monterey, Fresno and San Benito Counties.
The Monterey/Santos shale play in southern California was estimated to hold 15.42 billion barrels, or 64 percent of the total. By comparison, the Bakken Shale was projected to hold 3.59 billion barrels of shale oil resource and the Eagle Ford 3.35 billion.
So the Monterey could hold twice as much recoverable shale oil as the Bakken and Eagle Ford combined.
And the Green River Formation ...estimated at 3 TRILLION barrels of oil, with 1 Trillion barrels of oil recoverable with today’s technology ...(equal to the total known reserves of oil in the rest of the world)
I wish they’d stop saying hydraulic fracturing is new technology, we’ve been doing it for over 50 years and have been fracing for over 100 years. My grand fathers brother was killed outside of Hobbs New mexico back in the 20’s when the 40 quarts of nitro he was hauling to a well site for a frac job blew up. Lets just say they never found him.
We don’t talk about it much.
BP Whiting Refinery Modernization Project has over 15,000 contractors on-site.
The safety program is rigorous and they throw violators out left and right.
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.