There's A Huge Bullish Story On Energy And The Economy And It's Sitting Right Below The Radar

businessinsider ^ | 1/9/2014 | Rob Wile

[ez]

It’s pretty funny. If you believe that Obama is trying to tank the US economy and cloward-piven us into socialism, God just threw a big monkey wrench in his machinery.

[lucky american]

Puhleeeeez. How would that work?

So tell me how capitalism’s supply and demand works again?
Get smart.

[Young Werther]

North Dakota has more oil than Saudi Arabia. Why are we importing any oil. The converion of coal to natural gas means that we have about 100 years of coal gas.

[tet68]

Looking at the chart showing oil and gas production
booming one can only guess what coal would be doing
if we were still building coal facilities, not shutting
them down.

[central_va]

Too bad there is no way to get natural gas out to the rural consumers and put the propane ripoff artists out of work.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks ckilmer.

[ckilmer]

thackney, I put the question below on the Permian basin to EERinOK who sounded knowledgeable.
.............................
Maybe you know the answer to this question.

Why is that production is not just exploding in the Permian basin.

There are so many stacked pay streaks one on top of the other that you would think they would be able to zoom up volumes and push down costs fairly rapidly. That sure is the case in the Baaken where they have a third the number of pay formations. But its not happening in the permian. costs remain high and volumes move up only incrementally.
.......................

I am not certain since I don’t work the Permain, but did just read an interesting article in Jour. Petroleum Technology about it.

the Permian is legacy oilfields, land positions are established and there is far less land competition since leases are held by production. so no rush by 100s of operators from majors to mom and pops, to punch a 1000 holes in the next 1-2 years.

operators are taking a slower measured approach to locate the best of many geographic and stratigraphic targets. in a sense still exploratory, not large scale development yet.

another reason that might have to take a more diligent quality over quantity approach is that it is oil in the rock, not gas with 50 times gas viscosity in low permeability. a bust well is true bust, total loss. at least in the gas shales and eagleford there is some gas cash flow even on marginal wells.

once the geology is better understood, identifying where the permeability is located, it could go nuts like the eagleford & bakken. a lot of the horizontal activity is on the basin fringes, not in existing 50-60 year old depleted fields, so again, today it seems more exploratory rather than field development phase.