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MIDLAND, Texas -— In a faded West Texas town dotted with vacant buildings and potholed streets is a sparkling storefront window and a curious display: rows of diamond-studded Rolex watches, awaiting buyers whose pockets are packed with oil money. The surge in oil drilling has drawn money and men like a magnet to run-down communities that haven't seen a boom since the 1980s. But leaders and residents here are increasingly mindful that the runaway riches tapped by hydraulic fracturing will eventually run out. And they are determined to live by a fondly remembered bumper sticker from the last bust: Please,...

OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia is preparing to be among the first countries outside North America to use shale gas for power generation and thereby save more of its crude oil for lucrative exports. Inspired by a shale gas boom in the United States, which has transformed the country from the world's largest gas importer to a budding exporter, Riyadh plans to take its first steps to commercialise its own large unconventional deposits. "We are ready to start producing our own shale gas and unconventional resources in various types in the next few years and deliver them to consumers," Saudi Aramco...

Almost lost in all the news about the federal government “shutdown” (which has somehow left 83% of the government funded and functioning) over the last week are several new reports regarding the ongoing massive oil and natural gas Shale Revolution in the United States, First is a new projection from the US Energy Information Agency showing that the United States will likely become the world’s largest producer of petroleum products and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2013. Next is this report about the Eagle Ford shale, detailing that this play a) could become the largest onshore oil reserve ever discovered in...

Ashtabula is about to benefit from the Utica shale boom, as a Texas energy company and a technology firm from Columbus plan to build a gas-to-liquids processing plant in the city. Houston-based Pinto Energy said it will spend about $300 million to build the plant, which is expected to be completed and online in early 2016. The plant would take processed natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale plays and convert it into diesel fuel, high-end lubricants and industrial waxes used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other products. Once finished, the plant will employ about 30 people, but Pinto said...

Energy Revolution: America's natural gas boom threatens Russia's economic strategy, an expert says, leaving it with few alternatives to rescue its economy while threatening to shatter its energy stranglehold on Europe. Russia's abundance of energy resources has long allowed it to use energy both as a foreign policy weapon and as the bedrock of the Russian economy. Whenever energy prices rose, Russia benefited and its neighbors often felt the restraining leash of dependence on Russian energy, particularly natural gas. Government-controlled energy giant Gazprom was in such a strong position it could demand decade-long contracts and link the price of gas...

Shale Show 2013 will take place Tuesday-Wednesday, Oct. 1-2 at the Nolan County Coliseum in Sweetwater’s Newman Park. Shale Show is an energy technology showcase, business networking, and information sharing event that will be held in every odd-numbered year in Sweetwater, in the heart of the Cline Shale and America's Energy Solutions Region. Shale Show is open free to the oil and gas industry, regional leaders and businesses, and to the general public. A very limited number of indoor and outdoor display spaces are still available for a fee. Shale Show is a nationwide event. With more than 150 exhibitors...

A decision this week by Shell to shutter its oil shale operation in Colorado to pursue other ventures in Jordan and Canada highlights the difficulties faced by developers in the state as they wrestle with uncertain rules under the Obama administration. Royal Dutch Shell was one of the most successful companies in the state in its efforts to develop a cost-efficient technique to extract oil from shale rock. But the final act of Ken Salazar as Interior secretary earlier this year to rewrite industry rules left companies in limbo with undeterminable royalty rates, and blocked them from obtaining leases for...

The Eagle Ford Shale is more than just the Eagle Ford. Operators in South Texas are drilling into other rock formations, taking horizontal turns — and in some cases getting big results. While the Eagle Ford appears to be the mother lode — the largest and most prolific South Texas formation — several other rock layers sitting above or below it also are producing oil or gas. Jeff Seiler, managing director of the banking firm Scotia Waterous, has tracked Texas drilling permits and found hundreds of cases of companies targeting other South Texas formations, especially the Olmos Sandstone, Austin Chalk,...

One of the central tenets of anti-shale gas activists—claims that carbon pollution from methane leaked during the hydraulic fracturing extraction process makes natural gas more polluting than coal—took another, likely fatal, hit this week. A University of Texas-Austin study released Monday found that methane emissions from new wells being prepared for production, a process known as completion, captured 99% of the escaping methane—on average 97% lower than estimates released in 2011 by the Environmental Protection Agency. It is the most comprehensive shale gas emissions study ever undertaken on methane leakage, covering 190 well pads around the United States. Methane is...

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing. So it must be OK to frack now. In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades. Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value...

Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that has created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market, it seems, does it better than the EPA. Environmentalists find themselves between shale rock and a hard place after a little noticed technical report documented how the natural gas boom caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has actually helped the environment in a major way while also creating jobs and economic growth. In the report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said...

With war fears still dominating the headlines in the Middle East and the US Federal Reserve slow to end easing, now would seem like a good time to own an oil field coming on line. Global oil prices remain over $100 a barrel with plenty of geopolitical risk around to keep them there at least for now. But as companies continue to crack the puzzle for producing increasing amounts of tight oil from source rock, first here in the United States and Canada and then down the road, in any number of places such as Argentina, Russia, China, and Mexico,...

Energy: After more than five years of a fracking moratorium, a leading energy company walks away from its leases, leaving New York, its natural gas riches — and the jobs and wealth they could generate — unrealized. In 2000, people from Chesapeake Energy began arriving in Broome County, New York, a few miles north of the Pennsylvania border. Broome had seen better economic days but was lucky to be sitting right atop the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, which stretches through much of the Northeast. Over the next few years, Chesapeake was able to snap up drilling rights to some...

Far below the surface of the Promised Land, a hidden treasure lies. If it can be carefully liberated from the geological layer in which it is caught, it promises nothing less than to transform Israel’s economy. It is called oil shale. And, along with Jordan, Israel just so happens to sit upon the world’s second largest deposits of the stuff, after the United States. Oil shale deposits are overwhelmingly located outside conventional oil-rich areas such as the Middle East and North Africa. So if safe, economic processes for extracting this alternative oil resource can be put into effect, dependence on...

Unsurprisingly, oil prices are up in reaction to the Syrian mess. It’s worth keeping in mind that President Putin is at the top of the list of world leaders who benefit from this. The linkage between oil prices and Russia’s revenues cannot be ignored in calibrating what has, and may happen yet in the Middle East. Hydrocarbons account for two-thirds of Russian export revenues and nearly half of its state budget. And until very recently just two regions, Russia and the Middle East, dominated world trade in oil and gas. Russia has regularly boasted of being an “energy superpower”. Indeed...

The Baltic tiger of Estonia is the world’s first country to meet all its power needs from shale, with enough left over for neighbours and fuel exports for the shipping industry. “We are the most energy independent country in the European Union, and we will not compromise our energy security. We have a large neighbour,” said Juhan Parts, the economy minister. It is the same story wherever you go across Eastern Europe: the fuel debate comes down to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Gazprom’s stranglehold on gas supplies. Global warming inevitably plays second fiddle. “Estonia is not rich enough to experiment...

As far as U.S. shale gas goes, it's pretty much living up to the talk: the newer plays are seeing strong recovery rates over large acreage, meaning gas will keep flowing. That is not the case for shale oil. Productivity of the newest plays to come on drillers' radars have not come close to what's been coming out of the Bakken in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Texas. And even for those two, he says, peak recovery rates of new wells drilled have been declining and flat, respectively. As a result, drillers are moving on to less productive basins...

We are all, I know, just marking time until the Oprah Winfrey interview with Lindsay Lohan takes place. So let us while away the tedious, meaningless hours by talking about fracking. This, as I'm sure you are aware unless you have elected to move to the bunker early (possibly when the Winfrey-Lohan news broke), is the process of drilling holes in the ground and forcing water down them at such high pressure that it fractures the shale rock beneath, releasing gas. They do it a lot in America and David Cameron wants to do it here – starting with West...

It’s amazing how many times Rodney Bean has heard the phrase “but everyone’s doing it” from oil and gas companies, big and small. “Everyone” hires independent contractors instead of employees. “Everyone” pays a flat day rate instead of a salary or hourly wage. When these companies get a notice from the U.S. Department of Labor, they call Mr. Bean, an attorney with Steptoe & Johnson PLLC, and he tells them, in the most respectful way: Yes, you’re right. Everyone is doing it. And they’re doing it wrong. Mr. Bean is getting more and more calls these days, as the Labor...

Energy: A Saudi prince has warned that his oil-reliant nation is under threat because of fracking technology being developed in the U.S. and spreading around the world. OPEC is now caught between Riyadh and a hard place. Indicative of the panic rippling through the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries over the U.S.-led fracking boom, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal says his Gulf Arab kingdom needs to reduce its reliance on crude oil and diversify its revenues, lest the era of gold-plated toilets come to an end. In an open letter to his country's oil minister Ali al-Naimi and other...

America’s energy boom is putting a scare into Saudi Arabia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal warned in a letter to Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and others that the U.S. boom of shale oil and gas will reduce its thirst for Saudi crude oil. “With all due respect to your Highness’ viewpoint about shale gas and that it poses no danger on Saudi economy at ‘the present time,’” read a translation of the letter, dated May 13 but only recently tweeted on a Twitter page previously used by Alwaleed. “I was hoping that...

HOUSTON, July 26 (Reuters) - George P. Mitchell, a billionaire philanthropist credited with making the extraction of natural gas from shale rock commercially viable using the innovation of hydraulic fracturing, died at the age of 94 on Friday. His family said the death was from natural causes. A native of Galveston, Texas who came from meager means, the petroleum engineer was the chairman and chief executive officer of Mitchell Energy & Development Corp, which was sold to Devon Energy Corp for $3.5 billion in 2002. Mitchell drilled for natural gas in a rock formation known as the Barnett Shale in...

As I’ve now argued many times over, the Obama administration is extravagantly fond of citing statistics about how our oil imports are way down while our domestic oil production is way up, with the implicit suggestion being that their policies somehow deserve the credit for these phenomena. See, they really are about an “all of the above” energy strategy and you can’t say that they’re anti-oil or anti-fossil fuel, because America is currently experiencing an economic and employment boom via domestic oil and gas production! In fact, however, much of the credit for the current oil-and-gas boom and our decreased...

I’m often asked my opinion on what the prices of oil or natural gas are going to do. My answer is always the same: If I had the slightest idea what the prices of oil or natural gas were going to do in the future, nobody in my family would ever have to work another day in their lives, because I would quickly become fabulously wealthy. Seriously, nobody knows what the price of these commodities is going to do six months, a year, two years from now. Or even tomorrow, for that matter. But here’s what we do know: Texas...

Oil: Production data for April show how fracking has shattered not only the shale rock in formations like Texas' Eagle Ford and Permian Basin but also the myths of "peak oil" and petroleum as an energy source of the past. As Mark Perry notes on his Carpe Diem blog, Texas produced an average of 2.45 million barrels a day (bpd) of crude oil in April, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That's the highest average daily output for Texas in any month since April 1985 — 28 years ago. In only 2-1/2 years, the Lone Star State has doubled...

Continental Resources, the Williston Basin’s largest producer and one of the region’s most active and experienced explorers, has all but officially declared a significant increase in the amount of oil it believes can be recovered from the massive Bakken petroleum system. Its estimate today stands at 24 billion barrels of oil equivalent, already far exceeding the federal government’s official estimate, which it recently doubled. Continental’s recoverable calculation for the U.S. portion of the Bakken is based on a dated oil in-place estimate of 577 billion boe. Last year the company raised that in-place estimate to 903 billion boe without increasing...

The UK is sitting on a cheap energy economic revolution comparable to the heyday of North Sea Oil, the British Geological Survey suggests. The Survey’s estimate of the potential gas reserves of the Bowland–Hodder shale formation - finally published today – indicate that using today’s technology, the rocks should yield 1,329 TCF (trillion cubic feet) or 37.7 TCM (37,631 BCM, or billion cubic metres) of gas. Bowland Shale is a rock formation stretching from the Irish Sea, across the Midlands and Lancashire, to North Yorkshire. It’s just one of several promising rock formations in the UK rich in gas. Others...

Energy Policy: The Environmental Protection Agency declines to have outside experts review its study claiming water contamination from fracking in Wyoming. Why confuse an analysis based on ideology with the facts? As we noted in December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from environmental groups, tried to manufacture a crisis in which hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was said to have contaminated test wells in Pavillion, Wyo. Those claims and others made in the six-decade history of the technology's use have repeatedly proved groundless. In 2011, the EPA released the non-peer reviewed report on Pavillion in which the agency publicly...

Studies have shown repeatedly that fracking is fundamentally safe. It creates jobs and cuts dependence on foreign oil. So why is there still such backlash? Is hydraulic fracturing — used for more than 60 years to produce oil and natural gas — safe? The "safe fracking" question has been asked and answered many times over by government regulators, scientists and other technical experts, and they have concluded that hydraulic fracturing is a fundamentally safe technology. Interior secretaries and EPA heads have repeatedly said that fracking can be done, and is being done, so that it doesn't present environmental or public...

Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West. The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage. "What they basically did was make it so that nobody is going to want to spend money going after oil shale on federal government lands," said Dan Kish, Senior Vice President...

A report has revealed that 2012 saw the largest single-year increase in US oil production ever recorded. US production grew due to an increase in techniques such as fracking, a method for extracting shale oil and gas, the report by oil giant BP said. Overall, global energy consumption grew by 1.8% in 2012, a smaller increase than in 2011. China and India accounted for almost 90% of that growth.

U.S. oil production growth was the largest in the world last year, showing that despite some suggestions to the contrary, crude is plentiful, BP Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said Wednesday. He added that the real challenge for the industry is how much money and where in the world to invest to reap the greatest rewards from the changing landscape. “The supply of energy is coming from an increasing diversity of sources as the world’s energy market continues to adapt, innovate and evolve,” Dudley said. During a presentation in London that was broadcast on the Internet, Dudley outlined the British...

For frack fans out there. Russia rules the roost on shale, but those reserves are useless until it learns how to pull that stuff out of the rock.

The majority of the world’s shale oil and gas resources are concentrated in only a handful of countries, and the United States is near the top in both categories, a new study shows. The study released Monday, sponsored by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, found that more than half of the identified shale oil resources outside the United States are in Russia, China, Argentina, and Libya. It also found that more than half of the non-U.S. shale gas resources are in China, Argentina, Algeria, Canada, and Mexico. The U.S. ranks second after Russia for shale oil resources and fourth after...

Few issues divide Democrats more than energy policy, as we've learned as unions and environmentalists fight over the Keystone XL pipeline. More evidence now comes from California, where greens have lost an attempt to ban oil and gas hydraulic fracturing. Democratic leaders brought their fracking moratorium bill to the Assembly floor last week, and their rank and file revolted. The bill lost 37-24, with 12 Democrats joining 25 Republicans to defeat it. Another 18 Democrats abstained, and it's a good bet they were "no" votes who didn't want to publicly cross their leadership. This was a rare rout of the...

UK shale gas finds could mean US-type energy boom Liza Jansen Posted date: June 05, 2013 In: Business, Europe, Latest News | comment : 1 New estimates show there is a massive amount of untapped shale gas in the Northwest of England. Evidence that the UK might be close to experiencing the energy revolution that has transformed the US market continues to mount. IGas, an energy company awarded shale gas licences in Northern England by UK authorities, has announced it has found enough gas reserves to meet the UK’s needs for 60 years. IGas says there may be up to...

Petrotyrants: If there was any doubt the U.S. shale revolution is breaking the dominance of unsavory energy producers on global oil supplies, look no further than last week's OPEC meeting, where the alarm bells were going off. At Friday's Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting in Vienna, the mask of non-chalance about America's new fracking energy boom came off. After years of dismissing U.S. energy production as insignificant and expensive, OPEC suddenly said it would "study" the growth in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, a deceptively bland response to the biggest challenge the cartel has ever faced on its monopoly....

[A] move is afoot for a ... new energy development in the Golden State ... [in] the Monterey shale formation, a vast rock formation that is believed to hold one of the world's largest onshore reserves of shale oil.... Oil companies are seeking to stake their claim to this prize.... According to U.S. government estimates, as much as 15.4 billion barrels of oil could be locked within the Monterey shale. That would be more than double the amount of oil reckoned to lie within the Bakken shale, the booming play that has made North Dakota the nation's number 2 oil-producing...

An energy revolution is unfolding in the United States -- but unlike most past or promised revolutions, this one is not confined to a single fuel or technology. After falling for more than two straight decades after 1985, U.S. crude oil production has now risen for four consecutive years, and in 2012, it posted its largest one-year increase since the dawn of the oil industry more than 150 years ago. Meanwhile, in 2011, natural gas surpassed coal as the United States' biggest source of domestically produced energy, thanks to surging output and plunging prices. And all this growth in U.S....

While Texas and North Dakota's boom in oil production have been well-publicized, five other western U.S. states made a notable contribution to the growth in U.S. oil production since 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported Tuesday. Onshore oil production, including crude oil and lease condensate, grew by over 2 million barrels of oil per day (bopd), or 64 percent, in the U.S. Lower 48 from February 2010 to February 2013. Production in the Williston Basin in North Dakota and Texas' Eagle Ford play and Permian Basin outpaced other regions. However, gains in other Lower 48 states added up...

Flame-resistant overalls are the latest reason to be optimistic about America’s future. The US shale boom is creating plenty of new jobs in the oil and gas industry, but it’s having a number of knock-on effects as well. Energy-intensive industries have been bolstered by the influx of cheap natural gas, for example. And a new sector has appeared to help support the rapidly growing number of oil and gas workers in America. Firms that feed, house, and, as the the WSJ reports, clothe these workers are capitalizing on this energy revolution, too. Back in 2010, a spate of refinery accidents...

How long will the shale boom last? ODNR official sees ‘beginning of a historic era’ for oil and gas; other observers aren’t sure By Dan Gearino and Spencer Hunt Friday May 17, 2013 3:32 AM Oil and gas companies nearly doubled their production from Ohio’s Utica shale last year, part of an energy surge that is still in its early stages and whose potential is far from clear. The companies extracted 635,896 barrels of oil and 12.8 billion cubic feet of gas from the Utica in 2012, which is a year-over-year increase of 93 percent and 87 percent, respectively, according...

It’s Not The End Of OPEC…But Might As Well Be Matt InsleyMay 17, 2013If you could safely turn $8 dollars into $40, would you? What about turning $800 into $4,000? Same question, right? If you answered yes to those questions, which I’m sure you did, then you’re already onboard with half of today’s energy story. That is, most American shale oil wells are set to payout at the odds above. You see, the average shale oil well costs anywhere from $5-10 million to drill, complete and put into production – let’s call that $8 million in total upfront cost. Once...

EOG Resources, the company with the most acreage in the Eagle Ford Shale, reported its first-quarter earnings recently. And basically, EOG is making a lot of money in South Texas. Mark Papa, CEO and board chairman of EOG, said the Eagle Ford continues to surprise “in an upside manner.” EOG’s U.S. crude oil production increased 24,200 barrels per day over the fourth quarter of 2012, mostly thanks to the Eagle Ford. The company is getting a rate of return on its South Texas wells greater than 100 percent. During the first three months of the year, EOG completed 27 “monster...

The surge in oil production in the U.S. and Canada and shrinking oil consumption in the developed world is transforming the global oil market. The threat of chronic oil shortages is all but gone, U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil will continue to dwindle, and oil will increasingly flow to the developing economies of Asia, according to a five-year outlook published Tuesday by... International Energy Agency. The changes will have ‘‘significant consequences for the global economy and oil security,’’ the IEA says. The report paints a picture of a world with plenty of oil to meet modestly growing demand. Where...

A steeper-than-expected rise in US shale oil reserves is about to change the global balance of power between new and existing producers, a report says. Over the next five years, the US will account for a third of new oil supplies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The US will change from the world's leading importer of oil to a net exporter. Demand for oil from Middle-East oil producers is set to slow as a result. "North America has set off a supply shock that is sending ripples throughout the world," said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven....

Shale oil production could revolutionize global energy markets, reducing oil prices and bolstering the economy globally, but its impact will vary on a country-by-country basis. After witnessing the impact that the U.S. shale boom has had worldwide, PwC decided to examine how the development of shale oil worldwide might impact oil prices and the economy worldwide, said Adam Lyons, director of PwC and co-author of PwC's global report, "Shale Oil – the Next Energy Revolution". "Shale oil is on the same journey as shale gas," said Lyons, who discussed the study's findings at a World Affairs Council event on the...

Following up on last week’s piece detailing the reasons why the Shale oil and natural gas boom has taken place in Texas, but not in other states like California and New York, we’ve seen quite a bit of interesting, related news pieces over the last several days. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a very informative op/ed in its Review & Outlook section, titled “A Tale of Two Oil States”, which made more detailed comparisons between the economic performance between Texas and California, and the ways in which each state’s policy decisions related to shale development have affected that...

Leading oil industry groups said Thursday federal land managers are blocking new energy development and job creation by postponing all oil and gas lease auctions on prime public lands in California until October. Officials with the American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s recent announcement that it will temporarily put off energy leasing in the state will prevent economic growth. “We now know that California holds a vast amount of oil and natural gas resources, especially in the Monterey Shale located in the central part of the...

Have environmentalists already won the war over fracking in California? It’s starting to look that way. A trio of bills swiftly moving through the state’s legislature would ban hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, until the practice is deemed safe. The bills are among nine pieces of legislation currently under consideration that would effectively restrict drilling in the Monterey Shale, a geological formation that holds an estimated 15.4 billion barrels of oil, the largest such reserve in the US. Unreachable by conventional drilling, the Monterey Shale has come into play with advances in fracking, which injects chemical-laced water into wells under...