There is no shortage of oil



The United States has plenty of oil
  ... and natural gas.

US led global oil production for sixth straight year in 2023.  The U.S. led the world in oil production for the sixth consecutive year in 2023, according to a new report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).  Crude oil production in the U.S., including condensate, averaged 12.9 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023 — a level which surpassed the American and global record of 12.3 million b/d that the U.S. set in 2019.  Average monthly U.S. crude oil production also reached a record high in December 2023 at more than 13.3 million b/d.  "The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row," the EIA wrote in its report.

Shell expects 50% rise in global LNG demand by 2040.  Global demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is estimated to rise by more than 50% by 2040, as China and countries in South and Southeast Asia use LNG to support their economic growth, Shell said on Wednesday.  The market remains "structurally tight", with prices and price volatility remaining above historic averages, constraining growth, the world's largest LNG trader said in its 2024 annual LNG market outlook.

Washington Update From the US Oil and Gas Association.  Why Biden halting new LNG export terminals? [...] It might motivate his core voters, but there are obvious substantial downsides for the rest of America and the world.  First, the economic downsides.  As the Obama administration wrote in 2012 when they were considering opening up LNG exports, that "the U.S. was projected to gain net economic benefits from allowing LNG exports."  And that was the Obama administration which was as anti-fossil fuel as the Biden administration.  Second, halting new export terminals will almost certainly increase carbon dioxide emissions and not reduce them.  Globally, coal use hit an all-time high in 2023.  If countries think they can get affordable natural gas, they are more likely to rely on natural gas for future electricity generation, but if it appears that future natural gas prices are going to be constrained, countries will continue to keep their existing coal plants and they will continue to build new ones.  This includes countries like Germany.  Last year, Venture Global signed a 20-year supply contract with a German firm to receive LNG from Calcasieu Pass 2, but CP2 is one of the terminals Biden is halting.  Amazingly, the United States is now the second largest source of natural gas in Europe, behind only Norway.

Alarm on Energy.  Fifty years ago, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab members of OPEC initiated an oil embargo against the United States.  The boycott was retribution for America's support of Israel during its brief war against Egypt and Syria.  What was true in 1973 remains true in the wake of Hamas's brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7: America's national strength depends on the availability of cheap, abundant, reliable energy.  Our national security, and that of our allies, depends on energy security.  Energy is the economy.  We forget these realities at our extreme peril.  Fortunately, some things that were true a half-century ago are no longer so.  Over the past decade or so, the geopolitics of energy have shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S., due mainly to the shale revolution.  Instead of relying on oil imports, the U.S. has become a huge exporter of both oil and natural gas.

Texas could be an OPEC country someday.
Drill, Baby, Drill.  In 1948, [...] Odessa [Texas] was booming.  Over the preceding decade, the population had tripled to about 29,000 people.  The town's population would nearly triple again during the 1950s as drillers, laborers, bankers, and manufacturers flooded into the region to tap one of America's most productive oilfields.  Between 1948, when Bush began working as an equipment clerk for the International Derrick & Equipment Co., and the mid-1950s, oil production in the Permian more than doubled to about 1.2 million barrels per day.  Over the next 20 years, oil production in the Permian would double again.  Today, the Permian produces nearly 6 million barrels of oil and 24 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, and it's the hottest hydrocarbon province on the planet.  I would gladly wager $100 that more oil and gas wells have been drilled within a 100-mile radius of Odessa than anywhere else in the world.  And yet, the Permian Basin continues to produce staggering volumes of hydrocarbons and attract stunning amounts of capital.

Haynesville Natural Gas Production Sets New Record — Again.  Dry natural gas production from the Haynesville shale play in northeastern Texas and northwestern Louisiana reached new highs in March 2023, averaging 14.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), 10% more than the 2022 annual average of 13.1 Bcf/d, according to data from Enverus.  Haynesville natural gas production currently accounts for about 14% of all U.S. dry natural gas production.

Biden will announce sweeping protections preventing new Arctic drilling ahead of Willow decision.  President Joe Biden on Monday is expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska, according to an administration official, as the administration is poised to soon approve a major oil drilling project in the state.  Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling.  In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.  The announcement comes as the administration is preparing to green-light the ConocoPhillips' Willow project, a massive oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve.

The Editor says...
It sounds like Joe Biden has one foot on the gas pedal — the Willow project — and one foot on the brake — putting the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits — and is pushing both as hard as he can.  If he made both decisions, it would be a sure sign that he's either incompetent or schizophrenic.  But since his decisions are made by anonymous party bosses, it means that the bosses don't talk to each other before announcing their edicts.

It Looks Like America's Energy Future Is Still Going to Be a Gas.  The fossil fuel will likely remain a mainstay of America's electrical grid for some time, according to energy experts and lawmakers.  That's a big disappointment to liberal Democrats and environmentalists.  In protests in cities and campuses nationwide, one of them fronted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, they made natural gas the new climate villain, replacing coal, the dirtier fossil fuel that's fading in the states.  Climate activists had pinned their hopes on the administration's proposal to remake the energy industry at breakneck speed.  It gives financial incentives to utilities to ramp up the deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar and would slow if not stop the expansion of gas-fired power plants.

Los Angeles County votes to phase out oil and gas drilling.  Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday [9/15/2021] to phase out oil and gas drilling and ban new drill sites in the unincorporated areas of the nation's most populous county.  Over 1,600 active and idle oil and gas wells in the county could be shuttered after the 5-0 vote by the board of supervisors.  A timetable for the phaseout will be decided after the county determines the fastest way to legally shut down the wells.  Among the sites is the Inglewood Oil Field, one of the largest U.S. urban oil fields.  The sprawling, 1,000-acre (405-hectare) site, owned and operated by Sentinel Peak Resources, contains over half the oil and gas wells in the county's unincorporated areas.  The field produced 2.5 million to 3.1 million barrels of oil a year over the past decade, according to the company.

Biden maims US energy industry, then begs OPEC for oil.  During the pre-COVID-19 Trump era, the low price of gas helped sustain an economic boom that brought wage increases for lower-class workers and spurred unprecedented low levels of unemployment.  The main reason for the low gas prices was that a huge surge in domestic and North American production was driving prices down.  Even more importantly, the production was freeing the United States energy market from the vagaries of Middle Eastern politics and weakening such malign actors as Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose ability to sow chaos depends upon oil revenue.  During that period, thanks to fracking technology and a federal government committed to commonsense regulation, the U.S. became the world's leading oil producer.  It also became a net exporter of oil, even as the nation decreased carbon emissions, thanks to the surge in natural gas production.

Oil and gas jobs map
Why Does Joe Biden Want to Kill Our Oil and Gas?  In 31 U.S. states the oil and gas industry, directly and indirectly, supported at least 100,000 jobs in each during 2019.  Texas alone had 2.5 million jobs supported by the industry, and California had over 1 million jobs attributable to the industry.  The share of employment supported by the oil and natural gas industry (including direct, indirect and induced impacts) in each state ranges from 2.6 percent in the District of Columbia to 16.7 percent in Oklahoma.  [Map]  Over the last decade, U.S. natural gas production increased by about 60 percent and oil production doubled.  Despite the push by the federal government and a growing number of states to transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy sources, demand for oil is expected to continue to increase through 2050, according to the Energy Information Administration in its Annual Energy Outlook 2021.  This is because it represents over 90 percent of the U.S. transportation sector and is used in over 6000 products essential for modern life.  All of our food, and virtually every good Americans depend upon for living are transported to them by the use of oil.


Natural Gas [is] Replacing Nuclear, Despite What Cuomo and Others Say.  Belgium is the latest country to announce it will replace its shuttered nuclear plants with natural gas generation.  The country has seven nuclear plants that will be retired by 2025 and has put in place a system of electricity production capacity auctions to replace its nuclear power.  In October, about 2.3 gigawatts of new capacity will be sold during the first auction, which will consist of two to three natural gas-fired power plants.  Germany is another country that is building natural gas plants.  As part of Germany's Energiewende — the mandated transition to renewable energy, it is shuttering its nuclear plants and is building natural gas plants with 2.4 gigawatts to be added over the next two years.  In the United States, New York has shuttered the second reactor at its Indian Point nuclear plant last month with the plant's power being largely replaced by natural gas.  In California, the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors will be shuttered in 2024 and 2025.  When the San Onofre nuclear plant shuttered in California in 2013, the replacement power was provided by natural gas.

Death of shale 'exaggerated': US oil patch springs to life.  U.S. shale oil production is ramping back up, with crude prices returning to pre-pandemic levels following recovery of demand, making drilling profitable again for the majority of companies.  The increased activity that surged in March follows a temporary slowdown in February due to freezing weather and comes after drillers shut in a record amount of production in 2020 because travel shutdowns during the pandemic sapped consumption of oil-based fuels.  The strong rebound shows that some oil producers are refusing to resist the temptation to drill from higher prices, despite the pandemic worsening financial problems that companies faced from taking on debt to pay for growth during the shale fracking boom of the 2010s, without providing sufficient returns.

Delivery is sometimes the weak link.
Natural gas supply is critically low in Texas.  Are rolling gas outages next?  As Texas electric plants slowly come back online during below-freezing temperatures across the state, natural gas has become the latest concern, as that supply is now critically low.  Atmos Energy, the gas utility in North Texas, texted customers an emergency alert on Wednesday [2/17/2021] asking them to reduce usage.

Texas governor vows to fight U.S. curbs on oil and gas activity.  The top elected official of the largest U.S. oil and gas producing state on Thursday [1/28/2021] pledged to fight President Joe Biden's executive orders that he claimed would undercut Texas energy production.  In a case of dueling executive orders, Texas Governor Greg Abbott authorized state agencies to bring legal challenges Biden's policies.  Biden on Wednesday unveiled a series of actions to combat climate change, including pausing new oil and gas leases on federal land and cutting fossil fuel subsidies.

Natural Gas About to Get Even Cleaner; What Will Fractivists Do?  Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a cutting edge catalyst made up of 10 different elements — each of which on its own has the ability to reduce the combustion temperature of methane — plus oxygen.  This unique catalyst brings the combustion temperature of methane down by about half, from above 1400 degrees Kelvin down to 600 to 700 degrees Kelvin.  What it means is that natural gas can burn cleaner and emit far less carbon dioxide.  Once again science shows that fossil fuels like natural gas can be and are clean and just fine for the precious environment.

The Editor says...
Environmentalists don't care if the combustion of natural gas emits less carbon dioxide.  They still object to the use of natural gas if it produces any carbon dioxide.  The environmentalists' goals can never be achieved in the real world.

Permian basin
The World's Next Giant Oil Discovery Could Be Here.  The Permian basin is a 250-mile-wide, 300-mile-long sedimentary basin housing the Midland Basin, the Delaware Basin and the Central Basin Platform across West Texas and Southeast New Mexico.  It currently boasts the world's thickest deposits of sedimentary rocks formed during the Permian geological period.  It's a geological wonder:  Over nearly 300 million years, layer upon layer of rock, sand, silt, and water run-off added to the mix, creating a pressure that created one of the most lucrative bonanzas of natural resources anyone has ever seen.  We're talking about a lucrative 28.9 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of gas, with no sign of letting up.  As of the time of writing, the Permian basin is producing over 4 million barrels per day.  And while today the Permian Basin is synonymous with unconventional oil and gas, the majority of the production (and value) to date has come from the conventional oil and gas plays, good old fashion vertical wells which don't need to be frac'ed, don't need a lot of water and produce for 20 years.


Under Trump, America Became a Net Exporter of Natural Gas and Crude Oil for the First Time in More than Fifty Years.  Much of America's energy boom during Trump's tenure can be attributed to his stated strategy of "energy dominance." The White House's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) 2020 report found that in 2017 the United States became a net exporter of natural gas.  It was a feat not seen since 1958.  Further amplifying Trump's success in boosting America's energy boom, the United States became a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products and will likely remain a net exporter for all of 2020 for the first time since 1949.  The CEA contended that the country's growth and dominance in the fossil fuel sector has boosted the economy and has fortified national security.  "The innovation-driven surge in production and exports has made the U.S. economy more resilient to global price spikes.  It has also improved the country's geopolitical flexibility and influence, as evidenced by concurrent sanctions on two major oil-producing countries, Iran and Venezuela," the CEA report said.

Crude Oil Market Might Soon Be In An Oil Glut Era.  Crude oil prices ended the trading session w/w on a bearish note, with losses of more than 6% on the basis that oil traders continued to worry over the outlook for energy demand, as well as a weekly surge in U.S. crude inventories raised fears that the energy market might soon be in an oil glut era.

The Editor says...
No, I don't know what "w/w" means, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to find out.

President Trump Orders Department of Energy to Fill SPR with American-Made Oil.  President Trump took another bold and decisive move during the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic, where the American energy sector is concerned.  The Department of Energy announced that by the order of President Trump, the DOE will fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to maximum capacity by acquiring 77 million barrels of American-made crude oil.

Getting Smart With the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  President Trump announced Friday [3/13/2020] that he was ordering the Department of Energy to buy up some 77 million barrels of oil to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the massive store of crude oil the federal government has stashed in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast.  The SPR's capacity sits somewhere in the neighborhood of 713.5 million barrels; currently, it holds about 635 million barrels after Congress demanded last year that oil be sold off from the SPR. The Department of Energy has the ability to store some 225,000 barrels a day of production.  It's been estimated that the effect of this buy-up could be to absorb some 430,000 barrels a day of demand.  That's the equivalent of someone opening a large oil refinery and putting production through it.  The announcement briefly halted an absolute slaughter in the oil markets, which began when Saudi Arabia announced it was ramping up oil production following a breakdown of talks between the Saudis and Russians over production levels.

Democrats Trot Out 'Peak Oil' Again, and Are Just as Wrong as Ever.  But what happens if production eventually does fall off, as it will, from recent levels in the Permian?  U.S. production will fall — unless new wells are drilled to replace those just a few years old.  Unless... there's more to the Permian than critics think.  Advances in recovery technology have steadily increased the percentage of reserves that can be recovered in any one field.  There is every reason to believe that more efficient methods will be developed in the future.  Unless... old fields, such as the Anadarko and Woodford shale basins in Oklahoma, are re-drilled using fracking techniques.  Unless... New York State and other areas now closed to fracking are opened up.  Unless... offshore fields, which, according the U.S. Minerals Management Service, contain as much as 115 billion barrels of recoverable oil (an estimate subject to increase), are opened up for drilling.

U.S. Reports First Month in 70 Years as Net Exporter of Oil.  Remember a few years ago when the United States was heavily dependent on foreign oil and experts were telling us we'd be a slave to OPEC forever?  I remember it well.  We fought wars for oil, undermined unfriendly governments for oil, but in the end, we were at the mercy of others for our oil supply.  Our economy was held hostage by OPEC, as even a small change in the price of oil would send markets reeling and slow economic growth.  But in September, that all pretty much ended.  For the first time since records were kept beginning in 1949, the United States became a net exporter of oil.

Why renewables need gas.  Everyone is predicting the continued expansion of gas through to 2050.  Jim Conca reviews the state of play in the U.S. to explain why that projection makes sense.  The welcome and rapid growth of renewables still needs something to provide backup load-following to a growing and increasingly intermittent electric grid.  Gas is the cheapest to roll out and can keep prices low for decades.  The other two contenders, hydro and nuclear, just can't match it.  There are limits to where dams can be built, and the new Small Nuclear Reactors will take decades to deploy at scale.  The other benefits are that gas is displacing the far dirtier coal, serves existing hard-to-abate gas appliances, and the U.S. has its own bountiful supply.

We're Number One!  When it comes to energy and the environment, the United States ranks a clear number one among the world's nations.  Not only have we increased our energy production, courtesy of fracking, to the point that we are the world's pre-eminent energy power, we have, at the same time, reduced our pollution and our CO2 emissions (if you think that matters) more than any other country.  So when it comes to energy, the U.S. is the undisputed champion.

US Fracking Will Continue Its Forward March.  The Abqaiq attack in Saudi Arabia by Iran, or one of its proxies, is the largest oil and petrochemical disruption in over fifty years.  Over 5.7 mb/d was lost, and estimates are that it will take months or weeks to return to full production.  The interruption highlights Saudi Aramco's vulnerabilities and how energy infrastructure can be shut down via military forces or environmental demonstrations like what recently occurred in Houston, Texas.  The world needs U.S. fracking to continue unabated.  No other country has the stability and proven reserves like the U.S.  Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia want higher oil prices to balance their budgets.  However, the U.S. shale revolution that has upended global oil supplies and geopolitics is the deterrent to energy attacks.  American fracking has changed the world, and the U.S.-led liberal order in place for over seventy-five years, for the better.

America's Exclusive, Math-Challenged Party.  The notion of the federal government going door to door to confiscate something like 8.5 to 15 million weapons, especially since the definition of "assault weapon" is so fluid and unclear, is both unconstitutional and politically and practically preposterous.  Though I suppose it's no more ridiculous than Bernie Sanders's promise to criminally prosecute fossil-fuel executives for "the destruction they have knowingly caused."  Some destruction.  Affordable energy that makes our high standard of living possible.  As we are now the world's leading producer of essential fuel, we have minimized the power of Middle Eastern oil magnates to manipulate the West and bleed our economies dry.  And the President in opening up the Arctic Reserve for drilling will see us in the catbird seat for a long, long time.

Natural Gas, America's Wonder Fuel.  One of the many idiocies of the "Green New Deal" and other such anti-fossil fuel crusades is that all of this arrives on the political scene at a time when the price of producing energy from fossil fuels is lower than at any time before in human history.  The Wall Street Journal reported last week that natural gas prices "in Europe and Asia have plummeted this year to historic lows."  Meanwhile in the United States, the natural gas price is flirting with a price of $2 per million BTUs.  This means natural gas prices have fallen by 80% since 2005 and the advent of the shale gas revolution. [...] America is now the OPEC of natural gas production as our exports surge.

If there is a shortage, you can thank the left-wing anti-pipeline protesters and left-wing activist judges.
US is overflowing with natural gas, but not everyone can get it.  Earlier this year, two utilities that service the New York City area stopped accepting new natural-gas customers in two boroughs and several suburbs.  Citing jammed supply lines running into the city on the coldest winter days, they said they couldn't guarantee they'd be able to deliver gas to additional furnaces.  Never mind that the country's most prolific gas field, the Marcellus Shale, is only a three-hour drive away.  Meanwhile, in West Texas, drillers have so much excess natural gas they are simply burning it off, roughly enough each day to fuel every home in the state.  U.S. gas production rose to a record of more than 37 trillion cubic feet last year, up 44% from a decade earlier.

It's Time to Celebrate American Energy Independence.  This summer we reached a milestone in the American energy industry.  The United States now produces 12 million barrels of crude oil per day.  This shatters the record set a year ago, which in turn shatters the U.S. production record set way back in 1970.  The United States is now the world's top energy producer.  We didn't break the record by sheer luck.  In fact, if the Democrats had their way, we wouldn't have broken the record at all.

Another Record for U.S. Crude Oil Production: 12 Million Barrels Per Day in April!.  Two recent reports confirmed the preeminence of the United States in its production of crude oil and its related derivative, natural gas.  Earlier this month British Petroleum (BP) released its "Statistical Review of World Energy" for 2019 in which it reported that the United States extended its lead as the world's top oil producer to a record 15.3 million bpd (barrels per day):  11 million bpd of crude and 4.3 million bpd of natural gas liquids (NGL) in April.  BP added that the United States led all global oil producers by increasing its production by more than two million bpd in 2018, 98 percent of the total new global production.

Quietly, the US just became the world's largest oil producer.  Of course, it's a summer holiday week.  So, this good news somehow slipped by most media critics of this president.  But the latest government figures just showed that in April the United States produced a new record amount of oil per day — a stunning 12.16 million barrels of oil every 24 hours.  That's up another quarter-million barrels a day from March and the third straight monthly increase, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Editor says...
Just imagine what will happen when fracking operations move into Alaska, like they have in West Texas.

The End of the Oil Age Keeps Getting Postponed.  Oil production in the Permian Basin dates back to the 1920s although production data from the Texas Railroad Commission only goes back to 1940 when production reached 84 million barrels annually.  The Permian Basin is one of the oldest as well as one of the largest and thickest deposits of sedimentary rocks in the country, covering the western part of Texas and eastern portion of New Mexico.  Annual production grew to about 550 million barrels in 1957 and then began a decline that took about a decade to get back to the 1957 level.  It continued to increase and didn't peak until about 1975 when it hit 750 million barrels.  The 70s were a time of price and wage controls and a belief that domestic oil production was on the verge of exhaustion.  By 1998, oil production had fallen to less than 400 million barrels annually.  Today, as a result of horizontal drilling and "fracking", production has reached almost 4 million barrels a day meaning that it exceeds its 1975 production peak in a little more than 6 months.  Not only has technology unlocked a tremendous amount of output, it has also helped to lower the break-even cost per barrel from $60 to $33.

The Solar Energy Racket.  [Scroll down]  It is useful to remember that 86% of CO2 emissions come from outside the United States, where they are increasing.  But U.S. emissions have been decreasing due to substitution of natural gas for coal and due to energy conservation.  The other justification for solar is that we will run out of fossil fuels.  The sun won't run out of sunshine for around 10 billion years.  There is no prospect for running out of fossil fuels anytime soon.  Fracking has just unleashed a 100-year supply of natural gas and oil.  The U.S. has coal for 500 years.  The supply of nuclear fuel is, for practical purposes, unlimited.  What we have is an alliance among hysterical environmental groups, profit-making solar developers, and politicians eager to make important friends.  The environmental groups need a stream of impending catastrophes for which they propose impracticable or crackpot solutions.  That's how they excite interest and stay in business.

US annual crude oil production, 1920 to 2018
Chart of the Day shows annual US oil production from 1920 to 2018.  From the previous peak of 3.5 billion barrels in 1970, conventional oil production steadily declined and fell below 2 billion barrels during the seven-year period from 2004-2010 during a period when concerns about "peak oil," rising gas prices that nearly tripled from January 2002 to September 2005, CO2 emissions and dependence on foreign oil motivated Congress to enact the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2005 and expand it in 2007.  But then the technology-fueled Great American Shale Revolution supercharged US oil production, which doubled from about 2 billion barrels in 2011 to slightly more than 4 billion last year.  That eye-popping 2X increase in US oil production in only seven years is arguably the most remarkable energy success story in US history, maybe in world history.


AOC would make a great poster child for Russia.  The United States has established itself as the greatest oil producer in the world ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.  There is a power dynamic from being oil independent that cannot be ignored.  Putin knows this.  The Saudis know this.  The 184 countries that signed the Paris Accord know this and are aware they need to align themselves with an energy giant.  Traditionally that giant was the U.S., but the gild is coming off the lily.  Russia has traditionally been painted as the bad guy.  Prosperity around the world from deep earth minerals/fuels is now being weaponized against the West since the oil, natural gas and particularly coal prosperity has led to reduced infant mortality, extended lifespans, and allowed the movement of goods and people anywhere in the world via the diesel engine and jet turbine.  Both have done more for the cause of globalization than anything else; and both get their fuels from oil.

US Oil Output Hits 12 Million Barrel-A-Day Milestone Way Ahead Of Schedule.  U.S. crude oil production hit 12 million barrels per day in mid-February, according to the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) latest report.  EIA's weekly petroleum report, for the week ending Feb. 15, showed crude output jump more than 1.7 million barrels per day compared to the same time in 2018 — from roughly 10.3 million barrels per day to 12 million barrels per day.

US [is] Predicted to Drill More Oil Than Saudi Arabia and Russia Combined by 2025.  The far left media will not report this success but it means more than just being number one.  By drilling more oil in the US, the US economy benefits and billions of dollars remain in the US rather than going to terrorist regimes around the world.  President Obama had a policy of preventing oil drilling in the US and this only prevented the US from being energy independent from oil producers elsewhere.  It made no sense unless Obama wanted to keep the US poor and dependent.

Peak Oil Theory's No Good Terrible Very Bad Week.  Just when you thought continued belief in any of the various brands of "Peak Oil" theory could hardly become less sustainable, you get a week like this one.  No matter whether you come at Peak Oil from the supply side or the demand side, several events this week would have had to put you in a definitively sour mood.  Starting off this "No Good Terrible Very Bad" week for the Peak Oilers, UN International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol debunked a popular piece of the demand side of the theory.

US to Become Third Largest LNG Exporter in 2019.  The coming year is expected to make the U.S. the third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world, creating jobs stateside while reducing emissions and providing reliable energy to countries around the world, said American Petroleum Institute (API).  API, Center for LNG, and LNG Allies, the three national trade associations specializing in U.S. LNG, today issued a first-of-its-kind joint statement on the extraordinary developments expected in U.S. LNG in 2019.

USGS Finds Record Reserves Expected to Yield 46 Billion Barrels of Oil.  The U.S. Geological Survey said oil and natural gas reserves straddling the New Mexico-Texas line amount to the largest such continuous energy field ever found in the region.  The find was assessed to harbor 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to USGS, which did not assess the financial cost-benefit analysis of tapping into the reserves.  "Christmas came a few weeks early this year," Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement.  The previously undiscovered reserves are deemed to be technically recoverable using currently available drilling equipment and technology, and stretch across the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico's Permian Basin.  Oil companies currently operate in the area using both traditional vertical drilling, horizontal drilling and fracking.

'Christmas came a few weeks early': Ryan Zinke announces massive new oil find.  The U.S. Geological Survey announced Thursday that it discovered one the largest new sources of oil and natural gas under Texas and New Mexico. [...] The new shale oil and gas formation known as Wolfcamp, which is adjacent to the oil-rich Permian region in Texas, contains an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

New Report Shows How Incredibly Wrong Obama Was About Energy Independence.  Has any politician ever been more wrong than Barack Obama was about U.S. oil production and energy independence? [...] Crude oil production in the U.S. has climbed more than 67% in just the past six years.  And the Department of Energy expects it will climb an additional 11% next year.  Earlier this year, U.S. production hit 11 million barrels a day, surpassing Russia as the world's largest oil producer, after having blown past Saudi Arabia in February.  This explosion in domestic oil production is largely due to fracking, which has opened vast expanses of once-inaccessible crude oil.  It was also never supposed to happen.  At least not if you'd been listening to President Barack Obama.  For eight years, Obama told the country over and over again that the U.S. would forever be dependent on foreign countries for oil.

The United States is Probably World's Largest Crude Oil Producer, Government Report Says.  The United States has "likely" become the largest crude oil producer in the world, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia, a new government report states. [...] EIA credits the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") revolution for increased U.S. domestic oil and natural gas production.  With the widespread use of fracking, U.S. oil production has increased 84 percent and natural gas production has increased 39 percent over the last decade.  "Much of the recent growth has occurred in areas such as the Permian region in western Texas and eastern New Mexico, the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico, and the Bakken region in North Dakota and Montana," says the EIA report.

America becomes the world's largest oil producer after overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia for the first time in 45 years.  America has risen to the top the list of oil-producing countries for the first time in more than four decades, analysts believe.  The US overtook Saudi Arabia for monthly crude oil production back in February and likely surpassed Russia some time in June or August, new data shows.  It comes after the development of fracking led to a boom in shale oil production while massively reducing drilling costs.

North Dakota Is Now Pumping as Much Crude as Venezuela.  North Dakota's oil production surged to a new record in July, putting the mid-western state on par with OPEC member Venezuela.  Home to the Bakken shale play, North Dakota pumped 1.27 million barrels a day in July, according to state figures released Friday.  That's roughly the same output as Venezuela during the month.  The South American nation, whose oil industry has collapsed amid a prolonged financial crisis, saw production fall further in August to 1.24 million barrels a day — about half the level seen in early 2016, according to data from OPEC secondary sources.

US says conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative.  Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs.

Hundreds line up for gushing West Texas oil jobs.  More than 500 men and women flocked to the hotel in Odessa, Texas, on a Thursday last month to be courted by Halliburton, which needs people to handle everything from oilfield technicians to truck drivers, as oil production booms and qualified workers become more scarce.

Oil prices drop on reports of U.S. inventory build.  Crude oil prices turned sharply lower ahead of the start of trading Wednesday [8/1/2018] in New York after a surprise build in crude oil inventories in the United States.

Texas to pass Iraq and Iran as world's No. 3 oil powerhouse.  The shale oil boom has brought a gold rush mentality to the Lone Star State, which is home to not one but two massive oilfields.  Plunging drilling costs have sparked an explosion of production out of the Permian Basin of West Texas.  In fact, Texas is pumping so much oil that it will surpass OPEC members Iran and Iraq next year, HSBC predicted in a recent report.  If it were a country, Texas would be the world's No. 3 oil producer, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia, the investment bank said.

Move over OPEC, America is the new king of oil.  U.S. oil production is booming and oil exports are following.  In its latest weekly update, the U.S. Energy Information Administration also reported that oil refining hit its highest level on record last week.  The EIA report comes after U.S. crude exports surged to a record 1.76 million barrels per day in April.  This is a big change for a country that just a few years ago wasn't exporting any crude.

Billions of Barrels in Oil Untapped in Texas' Eagle Ford Shale, Say Feds.  The Eagle Ford shale formation, a Texas oil and natural gas powerhouse, appears primed for another energy boom.  According to the latest report from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the land sits on billions of barrels of untapped oil and natural gas.  The feds estimate these shale fields contain approximately 8.5 billion barrels of oil, 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, all undiscovered and technically recoverable resources in continuous accumulations.

U.S. oil output jumps to record 10.47 million barrels per day in March:  EIA.  U.S. crude oil production jumped 215,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 10.47 million bpd in March, the highest on record, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a monthly report on Thursday [5/31/2018].  Production in Texas rose by 4 percent to almost 4.2 million bpd, a record high based on the data going back to 2005.  The Permian basin, which stretches across West Texas and eastern New Mexico, is the largest U.S. oilfield.

Time to gush for American oil production.  Spring has sprung, and you might have noticed that gas prices have sprung a little, too.  It's never pleasant to fill your tank and feel your wallet empty at the same time.  But console yourself by recalling how much higher prices were in the spring of 2014.  Things would be a lot worse today if not for America producing ever-more oil to counteract OPEC's price manipulation.  This calendar year is projected to set a new record for domestic production.  The resurrection of the U.S. oil and gas industry has been a godsend.  Even President Barack Obama, for all his dedication to carbon reductions, couldn't resist taking credit for it in his 2012 State of the Union address.

Goodbye, OPEC.  I have argued many times on these pages, and elsewhere, that the shale oil and gas revolution is the story of the decade.  Since 2007 U.S. oil and gas output has risen by about 75 percent and the renaissance is still in its infancy stages.  This year the surge in domestic energy production has further accelerated in part due to higher world prices for oil (approaching $70 a barrel) and to massive drilling operations in rich oil patches like the Permian Basin in Texas and in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota.  The Energy Information Administration reports that the U.S. could surpass Saudi Arabia in oil and gas by the end of the year.  With massive oil and gas shale reserves, we could be No. 1 in the world before the end of the decade.

Trump's revenge:  US crude oil floods European markets in blow to OPEC and Russia.  THE United States is flooding the European markets with record amounts crude oil as US producers seize on Russia and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pact to cut output resulting in soaring oil prices.

US oil production will lead world by 2023: IEA.  America is on its way to becoming the largest oil producer in the world.  The nation will surpass Russia, the current No. 1, by 2023, the International Energy Agency estimated on Monday.  U.S. crude production is projected to hit a record of 12.1 million barrels a day in 2023, which would reflect an increase of roughly 2 million barrels compared with this year.  Russia pumps about 11 million barrels of oil each day.  IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, speaking at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, said the U.S., Brazil, Canada and Norway will contribute to supply growth by non-OPEC nations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The World's Energy Superpower:  Us.  It is ironic that our myopic press obsesses on trivialities like Russians posting on Facebook, while largely ignoring the geopolitical implications of the policies that are freeing up U.S. energy production.

US to overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become top oil producer in 2019.  The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia next year to become the world's largest oil producer.  Surging output from its shale fields boosted output by 846,000 barrels per day in just the three months to November last year.  The country is on course to jump from third largest producer to global leader.

The Triumph of American Oil.  There are a couple of articles, one at the New York Times and the other at Reuters, which are required reading for anyone who isn't aware of perhaps the greatest American economic victory in recent times.  There was a War for Oil, for the benefit of our friends who remember fondly the protests from the previous decade, and we won — without firing a shot.

U.S. Awash in Oil Production.  According to the EIA, "U.S. crude oil production has increased significantly over the past 10 years, driven mainly by production from tighter rock formations including shale and other fine-grained rock using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to improve efficiency."  Drilling has long been criticized by leftists, both because of its alleged detrimental effects on the environment and its supposed lack of sustainability.  The evidence puts both of these narratives to rest.  For starters, carbon dioxide emissions here in the states aren't rising.  That's largely thanks to the boom in natural gas that's being derived from fracking — another extraction procedure the Left despises.  Secondly, for decades leftists have said that oil extraction can't be maintained.  Yet exploration and innovation keep proving them wrong.  All of this benefits the economy big time.  U.S. imports have fallen from 12.9 million barrels a day in 2006 to just 2.5 million now.

U.S. On Track To Unseat Saudi Arabia As No.2 Oil Producer In the World.  New forecasts from the International Energy Agency say the United States is on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the second-largest oil producer in the world, just behind Russia, according to the organization's report on Friday [1/19/2018].

US Quickly Becoming The 'Undisputed Global Oil And Gas Leader,' Says IEA Head.  The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) told U.S. Senators during a hearing that the U.S. is becoming the world's "leader" in oil and natural gas production.  IEA chief Fatih Birol said one of the "[f]our large-scale shifts in the global energy system set the scene for the coming decades" is "the U.S. becoming the undisputed global oil and gas leader."  "The remarkable ability of producers to unlock new resources cost-effectively pushes the combined United States oil and gas output in 2040 to a level 50% higher than any other country has ever managed," Birol said in his Senate testimony.  IEA is an independent agency set up in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo to keep global energy statistics and respond to supply shocks.

United States is Still the World's Largest Oil and Natural Gas Producer, EIA Reports.  Demonstrating the dramatic shift in global energy production over the past few years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports the United States remained "the world's top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons in 2015."  According to EIA's June 2017 estimates, U.S. petroleum and natural gas production first surpassed Russia's in 2012, with the United States being the world's largest producer of natural gas since 2011 and the world's leading producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013.

Seven Reasons America Should Pursue Energy Dominance.  Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the innovations behind our shale revolution, have been the catalysts for America to become the world's largest producer of natural gas and petroleum since 2013. For the decade 2007-16, U.S. crude oil production rose 75% to 8.9 million barrels a day.  Over the same period, marketed production of natural gas rose 40%, to 78.7 billion cubic feet per day.  America remains a net importer of energy, but perhaps not for long.  In its January 2017 Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that under most scenarios, the U.S. will be a net exporter of energy by 2026, the first time this has happened since 1953.

Say, Whatever Happened To 'We Can't Drill Our Way To Lower Prices'?  The Energy Information Administration projects that, next year, U.S. oil production will average almost 10 billion barrels a day, which would beat the previous record of 9.6 billion in 1970.  What's more, a quarter of this production is coming from one oil field:  the Permian Basin in West Texas.  Those "obscene" industry profits?  They've fallen as well.  ExxonMobil's (XOM) revenue in 2016 was about half what it was in 2011.  In its most recent quarter, the company earned $3.4 billion — or 78 cents share.  In the same quarter in 2011 it earned $10.7 billion, or $2.18 a share.  Oil companies for a time even had to borrow money to pay dividends.  Low oil prices have also led to a sharp drop in the taxes paid by the industry to the federal government.  In 2016, the federal government collected about $6 billion in royalties, rental costs, and other fees from oil production on federal lands.  That's down from $14 billion in 2013.  Now Shell is saying that it's bracing for low oil prices forever.

The World Keeps Not Running Out of Oil.  "Peak Oil" — the idea that global oil production will soon reach a maximum and then begin to decline — attracted a significant number of believers in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Then unconventionals happened.  Unconventional resource production blossomed in the United States.  With rising crude production, the U.S. stopped soaking up the world's excess oil supply.  Instead of cutting back crude production to balance the market, Saudi Arabia increased production to protect its market share.  And ta-da! — we got a global glut of crude and liquids, along with a truly major price collapse.

Trump Launched An Energy Revolution While Everyone Was Obsessing On His Tweets.  On Thursday [6/29/2017], Trump said he was ushering in a new energy policy that marked an end to decades of fretting about an alleged "energy crisis" brought on by supposed limited domestic supplies and an insatiable demand for fossil fuels.  "We now know that was all a big, beautiful myth," Trump said in remarks at the Department of Energy.  "The truth is that we have near-limitless supplies of energy in our country."  Trump had already taken several steps toward unleashing domestic energy supplies, but he announced six more that he plans to take, including reviving nuclear energy, lifting barriers to building coal plants overseas, building more energy pipelines — including one into Mexico — increased natural gas exports, and creating a new offshore-leasing program.

Signs of oil boomlet in North Dakota after pipeline finished.  More than two years after the state's unprecedented oil bonanza fizzled to a lull, North Dakota — the nation's No. 2 oil producer behind Texas — is experiencing a sort of boomlet that has pushed daily production back above 1 million barrels daily.

Game Changer: Huge Alaskan Oil Find.  Oilprice.com has announced discovery of 1.2 billion barrels of oil on Alaska's North Slope, which they expect will revitalise Alaska's oil industry.

The Problem of Success.  The twilight of Saudi oil dominance has arrived, a point underscored by the announcement of a giant onshore oil find in Alaska.  "Some 1.2 billion barrels of oil have been discovered in Alaska, marking the biggest onshore discovery in the U.S. in three decades.  The massive find of conventional oil on state land could bring relief to budget pains in Alaska brought on by slumping production in the state and the crash in oil prices."  But the impact of that change has not yet been assimilated in public perception.

Companies claim largest US onshore oil discovery in 30 years.  Spanish energy company Repsol says an oil reserve of 1.2 billion barrels has been identified in Alaska's North Slope, which the company says is the largest onshore discovery in the United States in three decades.

Revisiting Obama's Energy Lies.  [Scroll down]  [I]n the U.S., "proven oil reserves" has nothing to do with the total amount of oil in the ground.  It includes only those hydrocarbons that are "commercially recoverable" under "current economic conditions" (which means that when the price of oil increases, our "proven reserves" increase, too) and, most notably, under current "government regulations."  So, for example, ANWR has never been included in the tabulation of U.S. oil reserves, nor has offshore oil in the areas — most of them — where drilling is prohibited by regulation, nor has oil on federal lands where current regulations don't allow it to be developed.  In fact, the U.S. has more fossil fuel reserves than any other country.  More than Russia, more than Saudi Arabia.  Fracking has alerted most Americans to the fact that we have far more recoverable oil than they thought, but it only scratches the surface of what we could do under a pro-America regime.

Warmists convert a stunning scientific discovery into a sign of looming Armageddon.  This new discovery seems to be consistent with existing theories of abiogenic petroleum, "which propose that petroleum and natural gas are formed by inorganic means rather than by the decomposition of organisms."  These theories suggest that the actual hydrocarbon deposits of the Earth are virtually limitless, since they are not dependent on dinosaur bones and plant life decomposing over millions of years, but rather come from below, the product of the very composition of the earth's interior.  Of course, at current oil and gas prices, drilling deep into the Earth's crust to tap deep gas and oil is not practical.  In fact, under current technology, it is impossible.

The Oil War Is Over, and We Won.  Last week was a bad week for Saudi Arabia.  First, Congress overrode Obama's veto of the bill letting Americans sue the kingdom for its alleged role in the 9/11 attacks.  And second, Riyadh finally decided to throw in the towel in its two-year war on American energy producers by announcing that it was prepared to cut oil production by half a million barrels.  That war was supposed to collapse America's fracking industry.  Instead, as reported on OilPrice.com, "Saudi's entire economy is collapsing" — and they are desperate to push oil prices back up again.

The USGS Just Found 20 Billion Barrels of Oil.  In what seems to becoming a weekly occurrence, the oil industry just produced another stunning example of its ability to find new reserves in the 21st century.  A new assessment of the so-called "Wolfcamp shale" formation near Midland, Texas estimates that the region contains some 20 billion barrels of crude and another 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.  Take that, "peak oil" doomsayers.

Permian's Wolfcamp formation called biggest shale oil field in U.S..  In a troubled oil world, the Permian Basin is the gift that keeps on giving.  One portion of the giant field, known as the Wolfcamp formation, was found to hold 20 billion barrels of oil trapped in four layers of shale beneath West Texas.  That's almost three times larger than North Dakota's Bakken play and the single largest U.S. unconventional crude accumulation ever assessed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.  At current prices, that oil is worth almost $900 billion.  The estimate lends credence to the assertion from Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield that the Permian's shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field.  Irving-based Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the company's engineers and geologists forecast.

USGS announces largest estimate of oil and gas 'ever assessed in the United States'.  Tuesday the U.S. Geological Survey announced the largest ever assessment of "continuous oil" ever made in the United States.  The Wolfcamp shale in the area of Midland, Texas is estimated to contain three times the oil and gas of the Bakken shale formation in Montana and North Dakota.

The coming Trump administration's yuuge transformational opportunity.  [Scroll down] Now here's where it gets really, really interesting from a geopolitical point of view.  The Saudi regime is headed toward a crisis.  Their receipts from oil have been cut in half, roughly, so now they are covering half of their bills, roughly.  There have been plenty of rumors flying about the Saudis pushing OPEC to restrict production to drive up prices.  But even without any new discoveries, American frackers can fairly quickly ramp up production if OPEC succeeds in raising prices, at the expense of market share.  And because American engineers and managers never stop finding a better way, fracking is getting cheaper and better as time goes by.  Now the Saudi Royal Family, who number in the thousands, have justified their appropriation of oil wealth for lives of indolence and luxury by essentially claiming to use it to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world.  And in that, they have succeeded.  Now that we don't really need their oil in America, and can start replacing their exports elsewhere with our own supplies, we can tell them to stop funding the spread of violent jihad's religious infrastructure.

What a Trump Presidency Might Mean for Your Electric Bill.  Trump's policies will likely make American energy production not "great" again — the so-called shale revolution guaranteed that — but even greater.  "Producing more American energy is a central part of my plan to making America wealthy again, especially for the poorest Americans," Trump told the Shale Insight Conference during his campaign.  "America is sitting on a treasure trove of energy."  What will this entail?  Oil- and gas-pipeline construction, which the environmental Left has hindered, will soon likely proceed apace.  Restrictions on offshore drilling and fossil-fuel production on federal land will be eased.  TransCanada has begun to lobby for the approval of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, the construction of which would confer $3 billion in economic activity and scads of dollars in property taxes to counties traversed by the pipeline.  The $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline, stalled by tribal and environmental disputes over easement issues, is poised to receive the federal permits it needs to begin service.

Big Oil:  Feds Call West Texas Deposit 'Largest' in History.  A western Texas oil and natural gas shale formation was labeled the "largest" of its kind by the U.S. Geological Survey on Tuesday [11/15/2016].  Federal surveyors announced that the Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas' Permian Basin now holds the record for most oil, natural gas, and gas liquid deposits that are "undiscovered, technically recoverable resources."

Time to Unlock America's Vast Oil and Gas Resources.  The doubling of U.S. oil production between 2008 and 2015 is an amazing story of American ingenuity, persistence, and, of course, drilling.  The story is made more amazing by the fact that federal energy policy actively hindered this energy renaissance as it was taking place.  What sort of energy powerhouse, then, could the U.S. be with an energy policy that unleashes America's total energy productivity?  The combination of a rational regulatory environment with open access to energy sources would put a 50 percent increase within reach.  Heritage Foundation energy policy analysts explain the Heritage Energy Model that shows these results, and how needless regulations hurt American consumers and companies.

U.S. importing more oil for the first time since 2010.  The U.S. Energy Department said it expected more crude oil will enter the country from foreign countries in part because U.S. oil was less cost effective.  During the first half of the year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, part of the Energy Department, said total crude oil imports increased 7 percent year-on-year.  The increase marks a first since 2010, when imports started to decline in response to rising domestic output.

Apache Discovers 3-Billion Barrel Field in Texas Shale Country.  Apache Corp. said it made a "significant" discovery in a Texas shale formation that holds enough crude oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast for a year.  The Alpine High discovery in West Texas contains an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Apache said in a statement on Wednesday [9/7/2016].  The asset is in the Delaware Basin, a subsection of the Permian Basin that has been a hotbed of acquisition activity among oil explorers this year.

Feds Sued For Illegally Refusing To Sell Oil Leases.  Western Energy Alliance (WEA), an industry-aligned interest group, sued the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Thursday [8/11/2016] for failing to hold quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales on public lands.  Though the Mineral Leasing Act requires BLM to hold quarterly oil and natural gas lease sales in each state where lands are available and industry interest exists, the agency has cancelled lease sales and auctions during the Obama administration.  Environmental groups have simultaneously organized to lobby the federal government to postpone the sales so as to discourage or delay drilling on the public range.

Natural-gas Futures Pare Gains After EIA Says U.S. Supplies Up 29 Billion Cubic Feet.  Natural-gas futures pared their gains to trade nearly flat on Thursday [8/11/2016] after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that supplies of the commodity rose 29 billion cubic feet for the week ended August 5.

U.S. Natural Gas Exports Begin.  In a development few could have foreseen as recently as a decade ago, the United States recently exported its first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG).  A tanker bound for Brazil departed Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass LNG export facility in late February.  Cheniere originally intended the Sabine Pass facility to receive imported LNG.  The U.S. natural gas boom, resulting from hydraulic fracturing, prompted Cheniere to "reverse-engineer" the Louisiana terminal for the export of LNG.  Cheniere is the first U.S. company to receive a federal permit to export LNG.  "Ten years ago, the experts thought the United States needed to import natural gas," said Dan Simmons, vice president of the Institute for Energy Research.  "Now, we are a natural gas exporter.  "It is difficult to understate [sic] the impact of the hydraulic fracturing revolution on the global natural gas market," Simmons said.  "The biggest problem for producers is not too little natural gas in the United States, but too much, leading to super low prices."

US Oil Reserves Now Top Saudi Arabia.  The world of energy, which is to say the course of the world economy, has been turned upside down with the fracking revolution.  Less glamorous than information technology, perhaps, but the extraction of the formerly inaccessible reserves embedded in shale is having a profound effect on the world's political economy, and in particular on the United States' preeminence, strategically and economically.  Nothing could better symbolize the change than the revelation that the United States is now calculated to have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

America's Energy Outlook Is Bright — and Obama Hates It.  [By 2040, oil and coal] will provide for 80% of the world's energy needs.  Nuclear energy, projected to double by 2040, will provide most of the remaining 20%.  Wind power will deliver a mere 2% of global energy.  Solar even less.  Fortunately, there are ample supplies of oil and gas to power the world economy well beyond 2040.  The International Energy Agency estimates that recoverable oil and condensate resources now stand at 4.5 trillion barrels, replacing earlier "peak oil" estimates of one trillion barrels.  By 2040, it is likely that recoverable oil will have risen again, perhaps by a factor of five and certainly enough to power the global energy through the end of the century.  Recoverable natural gas resources are even greater.  According to IEA, current gas resources are enough to supply the current level of global needs for another 200 years.  And this estimate does not include vast reserves that will result from new exploration and advances in technology.  With the U.S. now self-sufficient and exporting natural gas, the West's energy security is assured to a degree that has not existed in the past.  That's good news for the American people and for the world, even if it is not news that Obama wants to hear.

In 1977 Jimmy Carter Said We Should Have Run Out of Oil by Now.  Global Warming/Climate Change advocates claim that the debate is over.  The science is settled.  Debating the "science" behind the certainty of man-made Climate Change is like debating whether the earth is flat or round.  So say supposedly 97 percent of all scientists.  Rubbish.  A similar no-debate claim was made in the 1970s about peak oil — that there was a limited supply and we had nearly reached the limit.  Keep this prediction in mind every time you hear some scientist tell us what the future will hold regarding this claim or that claim.

Oil, America's inexhaustible resource.  In August 1859 on the eve of the Civil War, Col. Edwin Laurentine Drake completed the first commercial oil well in the United States on Oil Creek just outside of Titusville, Pa. Over the next century and a half, oil and gas companies have extracted tens of billions of barrels of oil from the ground from California to New York and nearly everywhere in between.  During that time period, one thing has been constant:  Doomsayers and declinists have predicted that we would soon drill the last barrel of oil.  Famously in the 1920s, the U.S. Department of Interior projected less than a few decades worth of recoverable oil in the United States.  Jimmy Carter declared in 1980 that by 2000 we'd be nearly out of oil — running on empty.  Last month, the Department of Energy reported that the U.S. hit a new energy milestone:  We produced 9.52 million barrels a day.  That was very close to the highest output level in recorded history.  So much for running out.

Natural gas discovery could be largest ever.  In what could be the largest natural gas discovery in history, Italian energy company Eni says it has unearthed a "supergiant" gas field in the Mediterranean Sea covering about 40 square miles.  The gas field could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  Eni says that's the energy equivalent of about 5.5 billion barrels of oil.  The company won't know the field's true size until it begins to develop it.

Peak Oil Barrel.  The reported death of peak oil has been greatly exaggerated.  [Web site.]

Texas natural gas
Texas Now Produces More Natural Gas Than All Of OPEC.  Everything is bigger in Texas, especially natural gas production.  The Lone Star State alone produces more natural gas than every country in the world, except Russia, and that includes every member state of OPEC.  The American Petroleum Institute has released a graphic showing that Texas produces 18.81 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, well above any member of OPEC.  The graphic is meant to show how hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling into shale formations has made the U.S. the world's liquid fuels producer.


Imports
America's Net Petroleum Imports 1971-2015.  In the first three months of 2015, net petroleum imports fell to a 44-year low of 25.5%, the lowest dependence on foreign sources of petroleum since 1971.


Obama admin gives final OK to Md. natural gas facility; environmentalists sue.  The Obama administration on Thursday granted final approval to a $3.8 billion natural gas export facility in Calvert County, Maryland — the first gas export site on the East Coast — but environmentalists sued within hours to stop the project.  After an extensive review that spanned multiple federal agencies, the Energy Department gave the green light to the Cove Point liquefied natural gas terminal.  The move allows the project's operator, Virginia-based energy giant Dominion Resources Inc., to ship fuel to countries with which the U.S. does not have free trade agreements.  The site, expected to come online by late 2017, is now authorized to export up to 0.77 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day for the next 20 years.

The Mysterious Explosion In U.S. Oil Reserves.  Since 2008, domestic oil and gas production has exploded, and so have the nation's oil and gas reserves.  How is that even possible?  Weren't we supposed to be running out of oil and gas 40 years ago?

Oil council urges US to drill in Arctic.  The U.S. should immediately begin a push to exploit its enormous trove of oil in the Arctic waters off of Alaska, or risk a renewed reliance on imported oil in the future, an Energy Department advisory council says in a study to be released Friday [3/27/2015].

The Keystone Pipeline — Will It Ever Be Built?  Canada's vast reservoir of tar sands in eastern Alberta has long attracted people looking for alternative sources of oil.  The Athabasca Tar Sands are the largest deposit of bitumen oil in the world and that's only half of it.  Two other giant formations lie in the Peace River and Cold Lake formations.  Together these total 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, equal to all the other proved reserves in the world.  Since the 1970s, energy enthusiasts have been asking why this "black Golconda" (a reference to India's famous diamond mine) was not being developed.

State of Energy: Enough Gas for 100 Years.  There is enough energy in the ground right now to supply the needs of the U.S. for the next 100 years, and we can get to it economically.  That's the premise of Exxon-Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson's 'State of Energy' address to the Greater Houston Partnership.

Oil Output to Exceed 2 Million Barrels Per Day in West Texas.  Thanks to technological advances including fracking, some older oil fields in Texas are now booming again, according to the Wall Street Journal.  "Refracking" — the process of drilling in wells where fracking took place years ago — is simultaneously taking hold of the industry and encouraging the industry's boom.

A New American Oil Bonanza.  With the Labor Day weekend approaching, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.43 on Thursday [8/28/2014], according to the AAA motor club, nearly a dime lower than a month ago.  Energy and travel analysts project the lowest gasoline prices this holiday weekend of any Labor Day since 2010, and the highest level of motor travel since 2008.

U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi Arabia.  The U.S. will remain the world's biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation's economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said.  U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today [7/4/2014].  The country became the world's largest natural gas producer in 2010.  The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids.

Of course, development will have to wait until the Democrats are out of the White House.
Shell announces new Gulf of Mexico discovery.  Shell Oil Co. on Tuesday [7/15/2014] announced an offshore discovery in the Gulf of Mexico it believes contains 100 million barrels of oil equivalent.  The discovery was made about 75 miles offshore in the eastern portion of the Gulf in water that's nearly 7,500 feet deep.

America the Lone Bright Spot in International Oil Outlook.  One side effect from the chaos in Libya following the armed conflict in 2011 has been constant disruptions of the country's considerable supplies to the global oil market.  But while its output remains just a fraction of what it was under Qaddafi, it does seem to be rebounding recently, [...]

Texas oil production set to top No. 2 OPEC country.  Texas now is pumping 36 percent of the nation's oil, more than doubling its production in three years, according to new federal data.  The Energy Information Administration reports that Texas oil production topped 3 million barrels per day in April, for the first time since the late 1970s.

Doubled Oil, Natural Gas Estimates Invite Fracking in Bakken, Three Forks.  The US Geological Survey (USGS) ignited the Williston Basin oil boom in 2008 with its assessment of over two billion barrels of recoverable oil from the Bakken field but gave made no assessment of America's Three Forks field to the south.  The USGS just announced that its 2013 survey doubled its 2008 estimates for combined shale oil and recoverable natural gas deposits in the Bakken and Three Forks areas of the Williston basin to 7.4 billion barrels of oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  The USGS survey results are expected to dramatically increase oil and gas investment in the region.

'Saudi Dakota' Tops One Million Barrels a Day in Oil Production.  It is the most remarkable economic story of our time and it comes in the midst of the Obama economy's miserable performance.  The United States of America leads the world again in petroleum production, which includes crude oil, natural gas, and other liquids.  We're number 3 in crude oil production behind Russia and Saudi Arabia and the Financial Times notes that we will eventually surpass both countries and become the leading producer of crude oil in the world.  Four decades of declining oil production has been reversed in just the last 5 years.

No great loss, since Californians oppose oil drilling anyway.
Government Cuts California Oil Reserve Estimates 96 Percent.  A federal agency reported Tuesday [5/20/2014] that its previous estimate of the amount of recoverable oil from California deposits was way too optimistic.  Its 2012 estimate that the Monterey formation contained 13.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil was cut to 600 million barrels, just four percent of its previous estimate. [...] The Monterey formation has been described as "folded," "jumbled," and "shattered" instead of neatly piled up like a stack of pancakes as in North Dakota's Bakken or the Eagle Ford formations in Texas, making it more difficult and costly for oil companies to extract the oil deposits.

Shale riches helping South Texas towns help pay for upgrades.  South Texas communities seem to have come to the same conclusion:  The Eagle Ford is here and they'll be dealing with it for the long term.  Although no one anticipated the oil boom or was able to plan for it, communities have started devoting more money to long-term planning.  McMullen County Judge James Teal joked this week at the Eagle Ford Consortium's annual conference that if he had known the Eagle Ford would have been so big, he would have "probably kept my job in oil and gas."

Don't let politics ruin Alaska's energy future.  During the summer of 1977, I worked in Alaska, 160 miles above the Arctic Circle, as a weather observer on the shores of the Chukchi Sea.  Today, I long to see this truly wild and wonderful state continue to prosper as not just a terrific employment or tourist destination, but as an even bigger energy lifeline to the lower 48 states, as well.  But, there is considerable difficulty in tapping Alaska's frozen frontier for its copious energy reserves.  The difficulty is not so much physical as political, and the politics are sometimes laundered through the courts.

Gushing about America's Energy Future.  In November, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognized the remarkably positive developments in the U.S. energy sector of the past few years.  Not only did the IEA project that U.S. oil production would exceed that of Saudi Arabia by 2020, it also projected that the United States would become virtually energy independent by 2035.  However, what the IEA did not do was emphasize how much of this good news has occurred as the result of market forces rather than government planning aimed at securing energy independence.  The IEA is now projecting that U.S. oil production will increase markedly to over 11 million barrels a day by 2020.  That should allow U.S. oil imports to decline to 4 million barrels a day from their present level of around 10 million barrels a day.  The IEA is also forecasting that the United States will become a major natural gas exporter over the next few years.

US energy security threatened by prairie chicken and sage grouse.  The Obama administration seems hell-bent on sabotaging domestic energy production, one way or another.  As James Freeman writes in the Wall Street Journal, "Delaying approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, maintaining export limits and discouraging refinery construction haven't stopped a revolution that will soon make the United States the world's largest producer of crude oil."  But the administration, goaded by radical environmentalists, has a new weapon to curtail production: more endangered species. Washington may add a record 757 new species to the endangered list by 2018.

Fracking is turning the US into a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia.  The expansion in volumes of oil and gas produced by hydraulic fracturing is taking experts and politicians by surprise, with profound consequences for US geopolitics, and even Europe's reliance on Russian gas.

The Oil and Gas Boom Booms On.  The domestic oil and gas boom is rolling on, with no end of positive effects for the American economy.  At the official end of the recession, in June 2009, we pumped 158.266 million barrels of oil that month.  In November 2013, we pumped 233.051 million barrels, a 47.2 percent increase.  This has led directly to much less imported oil, a much improved balance of trade, and a less influential OPEC.  But as Investor's Business Daily points out, the economic benefits of the energy boom spread far beyond the oil industry into the economy as a whole.

An opposing viewpoint:
Reversal of Fortune: The Fate of Oil.  The shale gas boom has given the U.S. another couple of decades of higher fossil fuel production.  Will we squander that bounty on riotous living, or will we set the nation up for cheap energy and a high standard of living in the post-fossil fuel eternity?  Any scientist, engineer, or politician who has contributed to the demonizing of carbon dioxide, or has been silent on that issue, has disqualified himself from being involved in providing the solution.

The Year of the Dud.  Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not.  We were supposed to have long ago reached "peak oil" and an age of always-higher gas prices.  Wind and solar power — and a reduced lifestyle — were our dismal future.  But someone or something did not cooperate with gloomy government predictions.  After all the failed subsidized green companies, the postponement of the Keystone Pipeline, the radical restrictions of new gas and oil leasing on federal lands, and the promises for radical climate-change legislation curtailing carbon-energy use, the United States nevertheless seems awash in old energy.  Gas prices have been going down.  Oil and natural-gas production is going up.

Time to Call Climate Change for What It Is: The Weather.  [A] report last year confirmed what I've been saying for three years now:  There's enough fossil energy available domestically for the United States to not just be energy independent, but for the U.S. to be the great exporter of energy for the world.  "Shale oil (light tight oil) is rapidly emerging as a significant and relatively low cost new unconventional resource in the US," writes PWC in its February, 2013 report Shale oil: the next energy revolution.  "There is potential for shale oil production to spread globally over the next couple of decades.  If it does, it would revolutionise global energy markets, providing greater long term energy security at lower cost for many countries."  The big winner in all this would be the United States because it has large reserves of this type of energy.

Electricity Prices Soar As Government Regulation Surges.  In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Electricity Price Index hit 202.284, an all-time record and nearly 20% higher than just six years ago.  This might strike some as strange, given the private-sector shale-fracking boom going on in the Midwest, Northeast and Texas, which has led to soaring new domestic supplies of natural gas and oil.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as recently as 2008 the U.S. produced 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.  Today, it's 12.3 billion cubic feet and growing fast — truly astounding growth.

Report: U.S. energy industry flirting with all-time high crude-oil production record.  In yet another testament to just how big a thank-you the Obama administration owes to the oil-and-gas industry and particularly hydraulic fracturing for helping to spur onward what has otherwise very largely been a paltry excuse for an economic "recovery," the Energy Information Administration released their 2014 energy outlook report on Monday [12/16/2013]  — and the United States has not only far and away surpassed the EIA's own forecasts of yesteryear but is on track to hit new production records.

Second Life for an Old Oil Field.  The Permian Basin — 86,000 square miles centered on Midland, Texas — has been pumping oil since the 1920s, though production peaked at about 2 million barrels a day in the early 1970s.  For decades, geologists have known that oil could be found in different layers of rock piled up like a stack of geologic pancakes.  But now drillers are starting to tap those layers simultaneously from a single site — and are committing billions of dollars to do so.

Hackin' and frackin', &c..  What has given this nation its dynamism recently is hackin' and frackin', computer technology and oil (and natural gas).  Do you realize that the United States has passed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the top producer of oil and natural gas in all the world?  This is a greatly underreported fact.  A hugely significant fact.

U.S. has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become the world's biggest oil producer on jump in output from shale.  The United States is now the world's biggest supplier of oil overtaking the world number one, Saudi Arabia, according to latest output figures.  A surge in US oil output, which includes natural gas liquids and biofuels, has swelled 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2009.  The spike in oil production is the fastest expansion over a four-year period since Saudi Arabia's output surge from 1970-1974, energy analysis firm PIRA said in a statement.

In Oil and Gas, We're No. 1.  Guess who is the world's largest producer of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels (oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids)?  For years it has been Russia, which is deeply dependent on the production and export of such products (taxes and tariffs on them provide 40 percent of the government's budget).  But this year, probably already, Russia will be overtaken by the United States, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.  U.S. oil production increased by more than a million barrels a day last year, the largest annual increase since oil production began in 1859.  Russian oil production has been falling.

U.S. Is Overtaking Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer.  U.S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade ago.  A Wall Street Journal analysis of global data shows that the U.S. is on track to pass Russia as the world's largest producer of oil and gas combined this year — if it hasn't already.

The US is the Gassiest Country.  Over the past seven years, the US has firmly established itself as the global king of natural gas production (and consumption).  In 2011, the US produced 62.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) — more natural gas than any country had ever produced in a single year.  That record fell in 2012 when the US produced 65.7 bcfd — which represented just over 20% of all the natural gas produced in the world.

Basic Power Gen Cost Information.  Natural gas (NGCC) power plants require the smallest investment, and while natural gas prices are below $4 per million BTU, will generate the least expensive electricity; above $4 per million BTU, coal is likely to generate electricity at lowest cost.

The Editor says...
Natural gas and coal are two energy sources of which we have plenty.  Why then must we waste money on windmills and solar panels?

Two West Texas plays poised for surge in production, investment.  Exploration and production giants such as Apache Corp., ConocoPhillips, and Chevron are positioned to lead an investment boost in the oil fields, and in five years, capital expenditures could jump 57 percent to $22 billion in the two Permian Basin plays.  Together, the Bone Spring and the Wolfcamp plays could pump 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2018, Wood Mackenzie reports.

Energy Manipulation.  Why is it that natural gas sells in the U.S. for $3.94 per 1,000 cubic feet and in Europe and Japan for $11.60 and $17, respectively?  Part of the answer is our huge supply.  With high-tech methods of extraction and with discovery of vast gas-rich shale deposits, estimated reserves are about 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet.  That translates into more than a 100-year supply of natural gas at current usage rates.

Texas Oil And Gas Numbers Fly Off The Charts.  We've pointed out a couple of times that Texas's oil production represents roughly 30% of the total US output, an amazing statistic, especially considering that the percentage was below 15% just a few years ago.  In May, that statistic became even more amazing, as Texas accounted for 34.5% of total US oil production, thanks to continued production growth in the Eagle Ford Shale and in several shale plays in the Permian Basin region of West Texas.

Texas will continue to lead US oil boom.  The growth in the energy sector is expected to continue to grow like gangbusters — led by Texas, according to Karr Ingham, a petroleum economist for the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers and creator of the Texas Petro Index, speaking at the Petroleum Club on the latest release of the index.  "We would be the 14th largest oil producing country on the planet, if Texas were a country," Ingham said.  "You have the Permian producing 925,000 barrels a day and the Eagle Ford escalating to 540,000 barrels a day — that is just extraordinary."

Exactly what the environmentalists dont want:
US shale oil supply shock shifts global power balance.  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.

What If We Never Run Out of Oil?  In the 1970s, geologists discovered crystalline natural gas — methane hydrate, in the jargon — beneath the seafloor.  Stored mostly in broad, shallow layers on continental margins, methane hydrate exists in immense quantities; by some estimates, it is twice as abundant as all other fossil fuels combined.  Despite its plenitude, gas hydrate was long subject to petroleum-industry skepticism.  These deposits — water molecules laced into frigid cages that trap "guest molecules" of natural gas — are strikingly unlike conventional energy reserves.

The Editor says...
"Methane hydrate" is no more jargon than "carbon dioxide."  This is an example of a writer dumbing down a technical article, presumably to avoid alienating poorly educated readers, of which there are so many.

A Tale of Two Oil States.  Barely unnoticed [sic] outside energy circles, Texas has doubled its oil output since 2005.  Even with the surge in output in North Dakota's Bakken region, Texas produces as much oil as the four next largest producing states combined.

10 Points to Consider in the Great Natural Gas Vehicle Debate.  [#3]  The number of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in the world could reach 65 million by 2020, according to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, which indicates an annual growth rate of 19%.  Another study by Navigant Consulting puts this number at a much more modest (but still impressive) 35 million.

Companies line up to drill after survey shows Dakota oil, gas fields far bigger than believed.  Energy companies are lining up for their shot to drill in the Dakotas and Montana after a new government report revealed that a massive geological formation stretching across the states contains twice the oil and three times the amount of natural gas than was originally believed.

N.D. oil is more plentiful than previously thought.  The sea of oil and natural gas underneath North Dakota is far larger than first thought.  There are 7.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the western part of the state and extending into Montana, according to the latest estimate by the U.S. Geological Survey.  That's more than twice the oil the USGS estimated could be recovered five years ago.  What's more, the USGS has nearly tripled its estimate of the natural gas available in the area.

An Era of Endless Energy Is At Hand.  The cost of energy is one of the key determinants of economic growth, and the United States is poised to become the world's great energy superpower for the foreseeable future.  Cheap energy is like an across the board tax cut:  it lifts all the boats.  If the U.S. only had a competent government, there would be no stopping us.

ND oil production has increased more than 600%.  Oil production in North Dakota has increased more than 600% in the past several years, from 35.7 million barrels of oil in 2005 to 237 million barrels in 2012.  In 2005, North Dakota was the No. 8 oil-producing state in the nation, and in just seven years has moved up to become the No. 2 state for oil output in 2012, behind only No. 1 Texas.

Gas News: North Dakota building first US oil refinery since 1976.  In one of the biggest news to come out of North Dakota, one of the first domestic oil refineries in the U.S. is under construction, the first since 1976.  This, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, could help the U.S. wean itself from past over-reliance on foreign oil.

Texas oil and gas jobs flourished in 2012.  A recent report confirms what you already knew:  People in the oil and gas industry make more money than you, and Texas is producing lots more oil.  The Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association's "State of Energy Report" says the industry employs more than 971,000 people in the U.S., including about 379,800 in Texas.

America Can Drill Its Way Out Of The Middle East.  Iraq, relieved of a tyrant and transformed into a representative government, is falling under Iran's command.  Meanwhile, Afghanistan resists progress.  We need a new Mideast policy, which begins with a new energy policy.

Peak Oil Cult Is Proved Spectacularly Wrong.  In December, U.S. oil exports hit a record of 3.6 million barrels per day, thanks in part to soaring domestic petroleum production.  Last year, domestic natural gas production averaged 69 billion cubic feet per day, a record, and a 33% increase over the levels achieved back in 2005.  That year, Lee Raymond, the famously combative former CEO of ExxonMobil, declared that "gas production has peaked in North America."

UK Shale Gas Numbers Could Be Stratospheric.  While Europe dithers over whether the blatant economic success of the US shale gas 'miracle' will translate to these shores, the UK Government has been slightly more pro-shale active.  But, while the threat of (liberal democrat-instituted) over-regulation still casts a shadow, the pro-shale (mostly conservative) wing of government looks set for a stratospheric boost.

Oil's new reign in Texas draws comparisons to the Kingdom.  Oil production in Texas is soaring, jumping to an average 2.139 million barrels a day in November — the best showing in more than 25 years.  Analysts are chalking up Texas' booming production to shale plays, especially South Texas' Eagle Ford, where production was minuscule just five years ago, along with a revival of West Texas' Permian Basin.

Oil in abundance
The President's Energy Policy Leaves a Lot of Energy Out.  In Obama's big Energy Speech, at the truck plant in North Carolina, he reiterated his usual excuse that "America has just two percent of the world's oil, but we use twenty percent of the world's oil."  President Obama's two percent is that teeny little red pyramid on the top.

Oil production to grow at fastest rate ever.  Driven by the shale boom, the United States in 2014 will hit its highest daily oil production level since 1988 and will grow oil output at the highest rate ever, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted Tuesday [1/8/2013].  U.S. daily oil production, which averaged 6.4 million barrels a day in 2012, will surge 23 percent to average 7.9 million barrels a day in 2014, the administration said.

Robber Barony: Obama Energy Policy By Another Name.  It is time for more Americans to learn about the real energy boom that the Obama Administration is trying to keep under wraps in major and countless minor ways.

California could edge out Texas in oil production.  Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sold 15 leases for about 18,000 acres in California's Monterey Shale, which stretches 200 miles south from San Francisco.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the shale formation could hold 15.4 billion barrels of oil, which would be double the combined reserves of the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas, Bloomberg News reports.

Energy to Spare.  Coal, natural gas, and oil remain the least expensive and most convenient fuels.  That's why they supply more than 85 percent of energy today.  There are technical alternatives to these energy sources, but no economic alternatives. [...] Americans could produce even more energy if the U.S. government freed up access to existing resources.  The U.S. alone is estimated to possess 30 billion barrels of oil reserves based on current technology.  Total resources are far greater and will yield even more recoverable supplies as technology advances.  Off-shore oil deposits add even more.

Oil and Gas Jobs Hit 25-year High; Coal Slumps.  The number of oil and gas jobs in the U.S. climbed to 196,300 in November, according to Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly jobs report.  This is their highest level since February 1988.  According to the BLS report, oil and gas jobs rose from 183,200 in November 2011, and grew slightly over October's numbers, continuing a trend of resilient job growth in the oil and gas sector.  Meanwhile, coal job numbers continued to slump down from 81,100 in September to 80,500 in November.  Those numbers are both down from the 87,00 coal jobs reported in November 2011.

U.S. To 'Become Largest Global Oil Producer' By 2020, 'Net Oil Exporter' By 2030 — If We Let It.  In a striking blow for the environmental left, the International Energy Agency has released a report detailing how the United States is on track to outpace Saudi Arabia in oil production.  This surely puts the Obama administration in a bind concerning its green energy monomania that has dominated their energy policy for the past four years.  This finding shows that the United States can be energy independent, and we have the resources to do so.  However, the boot of government is trying to centralize and control those resources to expand their dependency agenda.

IEA: U.S. to Become the World's Largest Oil Producer Oil.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) is telling us what we already know:  the shale oil boom will make the global energy picture with the United States as the top oil and natural gas producer.  According to the IEA, the United States will become the world's largest producer of oil by 2017 overtaking both Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Company drilling in Nevada could be sitting on 187 Million oil barrels.  U.S. Oil and Gas, of Dublin, has been using 'groundbreaking' technologies for its first major drilling project in Hot Creek Valley, Nevada, with local media suggesting it is sitting on an enormous oil lake.  One well could generate a breathtaking 187 million barrels of oil, reports suggested — although the company has insisted testing is not yet complete and the size of the oil field is not yet certain.

The U.S. will be the world's leading energy producer, if we allow it.  As readers of these pages know, the key to this U.S. energy boom has been technological innovation and risk-taking funded by private capital.  Specifically, the private oil and gas industry pioneered the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) to tap unconventional deposits such as shale that once were technologically out of reach.  It also wouldn't have happened if the industry wasn't able to drill on private land, free from federal regulation.  This is a real energy revolution, even if it's far from the renewable energy dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates.

Barack H. Obama is doing everything he can to prevent this:
U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia's by 2020.  U.S. oil output is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia's in the next decade, making the world's biggest fuel consumer almost self-reliant and putting it on track to become a net exporter, the International Energy Agency said.  Growing supplies of crude extracted through new technology including hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations will transform the U.S. into the largest producer for about five years starting about 2020, the Paris-based adviser to 28 nations said today [11/12/2012] in its annual World Energy Outlook.

U.S. may soon become world's top oil producer.  U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the U.S. could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer.  Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day.  This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951.  The boom has surprised even the experts.

Bankrupt California.  I thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas — and had to wait in line to get it.  The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom.  I mentioned to one exasperated motorist that there are estimated to be over 20 billion barrels of oil a few miles away, in newly found reserves off the California coast.  He thought I was from Mars.

Making Sense of the U.S. Oil Boom.  The U.S. has long been seen as an energy hog.  Thanks to hydraulic fracturing and deep water technology, it is now pumping more oil than it has in more than a decade, and its growing status as a crude producer is taking the world by storm.

After Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars, Green Transportation Is A Bust.  [Scroll down]  Back in 1944, the first estimate of total global crude oil reserves was 51 billion barrels.  Today, that figure is 1.4 trillion, with cumulative production over the last 66 years clocking in at twenty times the original estimate.  And regarding natural gas, the U.S. has expanded its proven domestic reserves to 2.6 trillion cubic feet — enough to power this country for centuries to come.

Natural gas vehicles get a second look in the U.S..  As America finds more reserves of natural gas, the auto industry is sure to take notice. [...] New methods of extracting the gas are one of the biggest changes affecting the auto industry in years, General Motors chief economist Mustafa Mohatarem said.  "The U. S. now has a 100-year supply of natural gas," he said.  "I'd make a bet it's the next big transportation fuel.  The price is so much lower than gasoline — people will find a way to use it."

The Editor says...
And the government will find a way to tax it as a motor fuel, when natural gas is used as such.

August Reports Shows U.S. Has Plenty of Oil, Gas and Coal.  According to a story in CybercastNewsService, the Congressional Budget Office, using estimates provided by the Department of the Interior, estimates that lifting the ban on drilling for oil in certain areas could increase the oil reserves of the United States by 30 percent.  Eight billion of those barrels of oil would are attributable to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the rest from other federally regulated areas such as the Outer Continental Shelf.

U.S. Oil Reserves Jumped in 2010.  The Energy Information Administration said in its annual report that proven reserves of crude oil jumped by 13%, with the highest increases seen in Texas, North Dakota and the Gulf of Mexico.  Proven reserves of natural gas rose by 12%.  The increases were the highest recorded by EIA since it began publishing the estimates in 1977.

Shale will free US from oil imports, says ex-BP boss.  The big growth in oil extracted from shale rock means the US will not need to import any crude within two decades, the former boss of BP has said.  Lord Browne told a conference in Oxford the US would be "completely independent of imported oil, probably by 2030".  He also said the amount of shale gas in the US was "effectively infinite".

The Tyrannical Agenda of Environmental Activists.  The United States has more energy resources than Saudi Arabia, but for some strange reason we are not allowed to access these resources.  As a result, we are an energy-rich nation behaving like an energy-poor nation.  Rising energy prices should be benefiting the U.S. economy thanks to our natural resource abundance, but instead rising energy prices stifle our economy.  This is entirely the result of poor political decisions, and it borders on the surreal.

Expanded Oil Drilling Helps U.S. Wean Itself From Mideast.  America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of this decade and could end it completely by 2035 due to declining demand and the rapid growth of new petroleum sources in the Western Hemisphere, energy analysts now anticipate.  The shift, a result of technological advances that are unlocking new sources of oil in shale-rock formations, oil sands and deep beneath the ocean floor, carries profound consequences for the U.S. economy and energy security.

Derry well sites empty as low gas prices stop Marcellus Shale drillers.  Natural gas prices have fallen to the lowest levels in a decade, leading drillers to move rigs to places like Ohio where more profitable natural gas liquids and oil are available.  As a result, the rigs have taken a hiatus in Derry.  The evidence can be seen on Mr. Gera's property, where the hole has been drilled but the rock hasn't been hydraulically fractured.  No gas is coming to the surface to be fed into a pipeline — and no royalties will be paid until then.

U.S. — The Saudi Arabia of Oil?  I recall how in the late 1970s, back during the dark ages of the government-caused "energy crisis," President Jimmy Carter liked to say that the United States is "the Saudi Arabia of coal." Yes — there was a time when liberal Democrats were in favor of expanded coal use (unlike today), and Carter's pro-coal policies led to a significant expansion of coal-fired electricity in the 1980s.  But as usual Carter was too narrow.  Turns out the United States might well be regarded as the "Saudi Arabia of oil" as well as coal (not to mention natural gas, about which everyone has caught up to speed).

U.S. hits record for distillate exports.  U.S. distillate fuel exports hit a record high in April, as production grew and imports fell to the lowest in 27 years, according to a report Thursday [7/5/2012] by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  In April, the United States shipped a net 981,000 barrels of distillate fuels per day — primarily diesel and heating oil.

The US unconventional oil revolution: are we at the beginning of a new era for US oil?  Everyone is familiar by now with the unconventional (shale) gas revolution in the US, which has transformed US and global gas markets.  Less well known to the wider public is that an unconventional (shale) oil revolution is also gathering pace, with equally far-reaching implications.  It is not unlikely that the US, the world's largest crude oil importer, could go a long way towards self-sufficiency by 2035.  This would drastically change the global energy equation.

North Dakota Achieves Record Oil Production.  North Dakota is cementing its reputation as "U.S. OPEC," with a record number of oil rigs now operating in the state.  Government records show 214 oil rigs now operating in the state, with 95 percent of the rigs producing oil from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in the western part of the state.

US could outproduce Russia, Saudi Arabia in oil and gas.  The United States is seeing a dramatic surge in oil and gas production and could overtake the world's biggest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in another decade, a US official said.

GAO To Obama: More Oil Than Rest Of The World.  The Government Accountability Office tells Congress the Green River Formation out West contains an "amount about equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."  So why are we keeping it locked up on federal lands?

Government, Environmentalists Blocking Access to Rich Shale Reserves.  The President has recently made a habit of claiming that oil self-sufficiency is impossible because the US has just 2% of the world's oil reserves.  However, congressional testimony given Thursday May 10th reinforces that America is exceedingly rich in natural resources, especially a type of oil reserves known as oil shale.  However, the testimony also pointed out that the future development of these resources, 72 percent of which is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, is largely up to the federal government.  The present administration doesn't seem very eager to get at those (or other) natural resources.

GAO: Recoverable Oil in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming 'About Equal to Entire World's Proven Oil Reserves'.  The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world's proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday [5/10/2012].  The GAO testimony stressed that the federal government was in "a unique position to influence the development of oil shale" because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.

Report: Booming Eagle Ford Shale created 48K jobs.  The Eagle Ford Shale has been touted as a modern-day Spindletop, and a study released Wednesday [5/9/2012] underscored that view.  The vast oil and gas play in South Texas contributed $25 billion in total economic output to a 20-county South Texas region last year and provided 47,097 full-time jobs, according to a study by the Center for Community and Business Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Institute for Economic Development.

Republicans say new study belies Obama claim US has 2 percent of world oil.  Republican senators are accusing President Obama of pushing a "less-than-honest" claim about the scarcity of domestic oil, after a U.S. Geological Survey study showed the United States might actually hold a quarter of the world's untapped, undiscovered supply.  The president often uses a much different statistic in speeches.  He said Tuesday [4/17/2012], as he has before, that "the problem is we use more than 20 percent of the world's oil and we only have 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves."

North Dakota Oil Boom Should Inspire Federal Energy Policy.  North Dakota's per-capita income jumped 78% in the past 12 years, largely due to its fossil fuel boom.  Imagine the impact at the national level if Washington stopped blocking energy development.

N.D. Oil Production Surpasses OPEC Nation Ecuador.  Oil production in North Dakota has surged to more than a half-million barrels per day, now surpassing the production levels of OPEC member Ecuador.  North Dakota's 6,300 wells produce enough oil to displace U.S. imports from foreign suppliers such as Iraq and Colombia, according to the state's Oil and Gas Division.

What Happened To Our Cheap Oil?  It didn't disappear.  It's still here. [...] There hasn't been an oil refinery built in the U.S. since 1976, ironically the same year that Jimmy Carter was elected.  He was responsible for the creation of the Department of Energy and the enabling legislation was passed and signed into law on August 4, 1977.  Hundreds of billion dollars later with a budget of $24.2 billion a year, 16,000 federal employees and approximately 10,000 contract employees, we are no closer to being independent of foreign oil.  That's how a bureaucracy operates — it produces nothing except a mechanism to drain money from taxpayers.

Rethinking America's Energy Policy.  Consider oil and natural gas.  Not long ago, many believed supplies had peaked and it was only a matter of time until we were left with nothing but dry holes in the ground and increased dependence on foreign imports.  Based on this belief, Washington decided that American taxpayers needed to spend dramatically on developing alternative supplies to replace hydrocarbons.  President Obama continues this policy today.  During his recent energy public relations tour, he repeatedly referred to Republicans as subscribers to the "flat earth" worldview because we do not share his affinity for massive taxpayer spending on more expensive energy sources.  But if anyone is stuck in the past, it's President Obama, as he has refused to acknowledge the great potential of America's energy resources thanks to new technologies that help us unlock them.

Is North America the New Middle East for Oil?  I don't know if North America is the next Middle East, although it's worth recalling that we were the world's biggest oil supplier before the first well was drilled in Saudi Arabia, and DOE estimates suggest we have as much oil left as we've produced to date since 1859.

Peak oil doomsayers ignore human ingenuity.  There has been a revolution in power production over the last decade, one that has been driven by engineering and science.  The proliferation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, means that the US will be the world's second largest gas producer by 2035, with its output dwarfed only by Russia, according to the International Energy Agency.  The US currently has record low gas prices because the new technology has created a glut of natural gas.

The Old Democrat Party: FDR Expanded US Domestic Oil Production.  In spite of the Obama Administration, a rag tag assortment of small "wildcat" oil and gas entrepreneurs have proven that America has over 100 years' supply of natural gas and over 50 years' supply of oil.  With Obama's green initiatives in tatters, his new strategy seems to be taking credit for drill, baby, drill achievements, but remains fearful of the political consequences to build the pipelines to pump, baby, pump all that oil and gas to markets.

Scarce Oil?  U.S. Has 60 Times More Than Obama Claims  When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.  "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said.  "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves."  Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices.  It's the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%.

On Energy, Massachusetts Tilts At Windmills.  A nationwide boom in natural gas production is set to fuel nearly 900,000 jobs and add roughly $1,000 to annual household budgets by 2015, according to a study by HIS Global Insight, a Denver energy research firm.  It is estimated that we have at least a 100-year supply of the relatively cheap, cleanest-burning fossil fuel.

Big Lies on Big Oil.  According to the Institute for Energy Research, we have more than 1.4 trillion barrels of oil that is [sic] technically recoverable in the United States with existing technology.  The largest deposits are located offshore, in portions of Alaska and in shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain states.  So the United States has more recoverable oil than the rest of the non-North American world combined.  The Heritage Foundation says this is enough to fuel every passenger car in the nation for 430 years. ... When you add in recoverable resources from Canada and Mexico, the total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.  "To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves."

U.S. oil gusher blows out projections.  The United States' rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts.  After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009.  Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation's oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon.

Surprise! Our energy future isn't so bad.  The EIA report suggests three important conclusions.  First, despite big gains in energy efficiency and increases in "renewables" (wind, solar, biofuels), fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of America's energy system for years.  In 2010, fossil fuel represented 83 percent of U.S. energy consumption, with oil at 37 percent, natural gas at 25 percent and coal at 21 percent.

Enough Oil?  A report for November 2011 indicated that, for the first time in forty years, the U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products.  Liberals seized on this report as evidence that the U.S. needs no acceleration in drilling, no XL pipeline — indeed, no new exploration or production of any kind. ... In reality, the U.S. still imports 51% of its oil despite the existence of vast undeveloped reserves to be found offshore and onshore.  The fact that America imports 51% of its oil, at huge cost and from unfriendly regimes including Venezuela, is hardly an argument to halt drilling.

Americans Gaining Energy Independence With U.S. as Top Producer.  Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years.  The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal.  Methanex Corp. (MX), the world's biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices.  And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.

Oil Fields Gushing in the U.S..  The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six million barrels daily.

Wake Up and Smell the Energy.  In terms of oil, the proven reserves of 1.79 trillion barrels available in North America is more than will likely ever flow through the Strait of Hormuz and in fact twice that of all the OPEC nations combined.  That's enough to fill the tank of every passenger car in the United States for the next 30 years.  Our natural gas future is even brighter.  An estimated 4.244 quadrillion cubic feet of recoverable resources could keep every home well-heated for the next 575 winters at current usage rates.

The Hype Surrounding Renewable Energy.  [Scroll down]  America is blessed with vast amounts of coal (providing nearly half of our electricity), and natural gas (about 23% of power).  We also have huge land and offshore oil reserves vital for transportation fuel, including enormous amounts contained along with gas in oil shale deposits amounting to hundreds of years of supply.

Oil and Gas Bubble Up All Over.  You'll know the U.S. energy industry is really on the rebound when North Dakota's newfangled Bakken oil field starts pumping more crude than Alaska's stalwart Prudhoe Bay.  Energy experts expect it to happen in 2012.

Informative animated graphic:
Bakken formation oil and gas drilling activity mirrors development in the Barnett.  Oil production growth in the Bakken shale play mirrors somewhat the growth in natural gas production in the Barnett play.  Like the Barnett, the Bakken drilling and production animation above shows that drilling activity built up gradually and eventually led to rapid growth, particularly from 2006 to 2010.  Production grew because of increased use of horizontal drilling and the addition of hydraulic fracturing, coupled with elevated prices for crude oil and other natural gas liquids.

Unlimited Domestic Energy... Right Now.  The National Petroleum Council estimates that by 2035 — if the regulators will just stop endlessly excreting new hurdles — the U.S. will hit 3 million bpd of shale oil alone.  There are about 14 to 16 new American shale oil fields just starting to be exploited.  This has led the federal Energy Information Administration to raise its estimates for total American liquid fuel output by nearly 40% — for next year alone!

In a first, gas and other fuels are top US export.  Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990.

Ohio set to see oil boom thanks to fracking.  Ohio hasn't been an oil powerhouse for nearly 100 years.  But thanks to controversial new drilling technology, the state that once produced a third of the nation's crude and was the birthplace of John D. Rockefeller's mighty Standard Oil could once again be a significant source of domestic supply.

How we became a net petroleum exporter again.  This one will probably come as a surprise to many of you.  Despite the best (read: worst) efforts of the Obama administration and the counter-intuitive nature of what you're paying for gas and heating bills this winter, the United States is on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in more than half a century.

The Volt Administration.  The United States is an energy colossus.  Just this week, the state of North Dakota announced that it had produced 488,068 barrels of oil per day in October, up 100,000 barrels from June of this year.  State officials predict that by 2013 to 2014, North Dakota will be producing 900,000 barrels a day, putting it ahead of California and Alaska and behind only Texas (at 1.2 million barrels per day) in domestic oil production.

Climate talks, then climate tax.  Beneath our feet lies a treasure trove of affordable energy resources that warmist adherents, who include President Obama, have placed off-limits.  The United States possesses 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, more than the oil the entire world has consumed during the past 150 years, according to an Institute for Energy Research report released last week.  Add in an estimated 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas and 486.1 billion short tons of recoverable coal, and our energy reserves exceed those of any other nation on Earth.

America's Vast Energy Resources.  For a long time, the Left has gotten away with underselling America's energy resources.  The old chestnut that the U.S. uses 25% of the world's oil but only has 2% to 3% of the world's oil reserves has been repeated endlessly by Barack Obama and many others.  This claim fooled millions of people who didn't understand that in the U.S., "reserves" means petroleum that is 1) legally available for development, and 2) profitably extracted at current prices.  So if Democrats would stop preventing drilling, we could vastly increase our "reserves," as legally defined, overnight.

Oil-Rich America?  There is a revolution going on in America.  But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests.  Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling.  Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable.

Gasoline: The new big U.S. export.  The United States is awash in gasoline.  So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.  The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Green Energy Skepticism.  Although our energy needs have been increasing rapidly, the U.S. didn't build a new refinery between 1998 and 2008, even then over the strong objections of liberal progressives. ... Saying that the U.S. is rich in energy resources is an understatement.  At today's consumption levels, we have enough coal to meet our needs for the next 500 years.  We have 22,450,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves, and we are finding new oil reserves all the time.  The U.S. has 250 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves.  We are finding new gas reserves daily, and we are discovering new ways to tap into hard-to-get gas deposits.

The Oil Industry Can Save America — If Washington Lets It.  Have we drained the "natural wealth" of America dry?  Hardly.  Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm sees the big picture of American wealth.  As head of the 14th-largest oil company in the nation, he knows how much fossil fuel America possesses.  He observes that if America had the right energy policies, it could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade.  We can become the Saudi Arabia of oil and gas in the 21st century.  President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy."  Hamm adds that so-called "green energy," despite billions in taxpayer subsidies, will not work.

A Disastrous Presidency.  The gulf lost 40,000 jobs when the president decided it was best to shut down all oil production after the BP oil spill.  The approval for Keystone XL Pipeline sits on his desk, awaiting his signature.  It would connect Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta with refineries in Cushing, Oklahoma and Nederland, Texas, while providing 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs.  With recent discoveries and improvements in drilling techniques, some have called America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.  America also has the largest oil reserves in the world; the Bakken Formation alone is said to contain more than 11 billion barrels.

Tight oil loosens up.  Vast fortunes await those willing to quickly claim Canada's still-unknown troves of tight oil reserves, though it may cost them a small fortune first.  New technologies have provided access to energy resources that for decades appeared wholly unreachable.  Advanced horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques have in recent years spawned countless land grabs across North America for new plays like the Bakken.  Interest has also been reignited for older plays like the Cardium.

Warren Buffett, the Keystone Pipeline, and Crony Capitalism.  A decades-long crusade by the environmental left to convince us that oil is evil, unsustainable, and destroying our planet has yet to accomplish its goal of eliminating oil as a fuel, but it has succeeded in making oil [very] expensive.  However, new technologies for the extraction and transport of previously unrecoverable oil promise to reverse that trend.  One such project is the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport bitumen from the oil sands of Alberta to the refineries and ports along the Gulf coast.

Activists Move to Prevent Canada from Supplying U.S. with Oil.  Canada is eager to provide the United States with valuable oil from a friendly nation, but environmental activists are urging the Obama administration to block construction of an oil pipeline that would deliver the oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.  At issue is a long-delayed, $7 billion, 1,700-mile expansion of a pipeline that would make possible the sending of crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.

Science, Lies, and Videotape.  [Scroll down]  As the world economy weakens and it turns out that we are sitting on enormous quantities of natural gas and oil, it grows more likely that this childish nonsense — which, probably not coincidentally, has proven a financial boon for Democrat-backers, too — shall pass.  But faster, please, so we can get back to being the world's powerhouse.

How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia.  Harold Hamm ... came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism:  With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade.  We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

Report: North American oil output will hit all-time record by 2016.  U.S. oil production in areas like the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford, Bakken and others will rise by a little over 2 million barrels per day between 2010 and 2016, according to data compiled by Bentek Energy, a Colorado firm that tracks energy infrastructure and production projects.  It's a reversal of the steady downward production trend that started around 1970, when U.S. oil production peaked at around 9.5 million barrels per day.

America Can Be An Energy Superpower.  America could have enough oil resources to meet today's oil demand levels in the future for decades without importing from unfriendly foreign countries.  That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Petroleum Council.  The report also finds that America has huge volumes of natural gas that can meet decades of demand.

Chevron makes potentially big oil find in Gulf's Moccasin play.  Chevron has made a new oil discovery in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico. ... Chevron started drilling the well in March 2010 but had to stop in June 2010 when the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon accident.  In March 2011 it became the first wildcat well in the Gulf to resume drilling after the accident.

Blueprint for Western Energy Prosperity.  The West is projected to generate 1.3 million barrels of domestic oil and condensate production a day by the year 2020, an amount that exceeds the current daily oil imports from Russia, Iraq and Kuwait combined.

Exxon makes major oil discovery in Gulf.  Exxon Mobil said Wednesday [6/8/2011] it has discovered an estimated 700 million barrels of oil equivalent at a deepwater well off the Louisiana coast, a major find that a top House Republican argued should push the administration to speed up offshore permitting.  "This is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade," Exxon Mobil Exploration Company President Steve Greenlee said in a statement.

Drill here Drill now works -- because it already has!.  Once again the fraudulent message from the environmental activists in the EPA is being echoed by a willing media, claiming drill here drill now won't have an effect on gas prices when there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary.  Where is the proof you ask?  Currently there is one commodity that has not adjusted with inflation, is not tied to the devaluation of the Dollar, nor follows the rise in Gold and Oil.  America's Natural Gas is trading at 2003 rates and when adjusted for inflation is closer to 2000 rates.  Why?  Because multitudes of Americans are developing this vast resource not a handful of multinational concerns.  They are bringing an abundant supply of American energy to the market; in New York State alone we have over 3000 gas wells.

The Big Energy Lie.  Geologists and engineers make estimates of petroleum resources, the total potential future recoverable quantity of oil and/or gas.  Right now, the U.S. has considerable potential resources in places like the Outer Continental Shelf, ANWR and the Colorado Oil Shale.  Reserves, on the other hand, is the term applied to that subset of resources that have been proven to exist by drilling and can be recovered with existing technology.

The truth behind all that 'The U.S. has only 2% of the world's oil reserves' malarkey.
The Big Energy Lie, Revisited.  In 1986, we produced 8.7 million barrels a day, or an annual total of 3.2 billion barrels.  The ratio of reserves to production is 8.5 years — often incorrectly reported in the press with alarm:  "We have only 8.5 years of reserves left!  We're running out of oil!"  If this were true, we'd have run slap out of oil in 1995.  The dashed line on the graph [in this article] shows the cumulative amount of oil produced since 1986.  Sure enough, by 1995 we had produced over 27 billion barrels, and we still had reserves in the ground of over 22 billion barrels.  Fast forward to 2010:  we're still producing 2 billion barrels a year, and we still have over 20 billion barrels in the ground.  In fact, we've produced 58 billion barrels since 1986, over twice the 1986 reserve total.

The incoherence of Obama's energy policies:  As Americans watch skyrocketing gasoline prices (up an average of nearly 80 cents a gallon from this time last year) frustrate their hopes for economic recovery, they should be outraged by a new report on America's energy resources from the Congressional Research Service.  The report shows that the United States is sitting on the largest batch of energy resources on the planet.  In fact, these vital fuel sources add up to more than the resources of energy-rich Saudi Arabia, China and Canada combined.

Straw Man Environmental Alarmism 101, California Style.  How many times must it be proved that the world is not close to "exhausting its supply of petroleum" before environmentalists stop making the claim?  And as Americans are realizing in greater and greater numbers, there is no objective support for the shrill claim that "greenhouse gas emissions… threaten the planet we call home."

Oil Without Apologies.  It's the day after President Obama delivered his most recent vision of America's energy future, and I'm sitting in the sunny corporate offices of Chevron, the country's second-largest oil company.  Let's just say John Watson has a different view.  The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these days:  an unapologetic oil man.

More about Obama's (alternative) energy speech.

Drill, Baby, Drill (Again).  It may come as a shock to many that rather than having a mere 2 percent of global reserves, this country is energy-rich, with known reserves far exceeding those of any other nation.  Many Americans already know that our proven coal reserves will hold out for another 400 years — and probably much longer.  Less well known is that in recent years there has been a quiet natural-gas revolution in this country.  [...] Even less well known is that the U.S. sits on at least three times as much recoverable oil as the entire Middle East.  The techniques used to uncover vast new sources of natural gas, are now being transferred to the shale-oil deposits in the Midwest, where they are unlocking trillions of barrels of oil.

Energy Secretary: I'm Not Going To Talk About Drilling In ANWR.  After testifying before the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee about his department's FY2012 budget, CNSNews.com asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu if — given the high price of gasoline — he supports increasing offshore drilling and opening up ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] to domestic drilling?  Chu responded, "I'm not going to talk about ANWR, but I think there's many areas in the arctic that are potential exploration sites.

Did someone mention ANWR?

U.S. Has Earth's Largest Energy Resources.  America's combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth.  They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined — and that's without including America's shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.  The energy facts in the CRS report should be making front page news all over America.  Mostly it isn't.

Solving US Energy Problems:  The big problem is the Democratic agenda to destroy US oil.  Currently, this agenda is well illustrated in the Gulf of Mexico.  BP's Macondo Prospect well, which blew out in the Gulf of Mexico last year, was reported by the federal government to be producing 62,000 barrels of oil per day.  At the present oil price, that is $2.2 Billion a year.  This well may have been the largest oil well in the history of the world.  Yet, it was plugged and abandoned, and the federal government would not allow the development of the large oil reservoir it was in, which may have created thousands of new jobs.  No other nation on earth would do that to an oil well which may have been the largest oil well in world history.

Green Goons.  It's getting so people are afraid to drive more than 150 miles for fear that they won't be able to afford the gas to get home again.  Still, President Obama refuses to allow oil development either on government-owned land or just off our coasts.  We have enough petroleum in the ground right here in the United States to last us centuries but Obama, the Democrats and their green goons won't let us get at it for fear there might be a spill and a sea gull might get oil on its wings.  It's all right though to send $1,000,000,000 a day to Muslim countries who use much of it to finance jihad against us in their radical quest to destroy western civilization.  Our liberal Democrat rulers want fossil-fuel energy prices to go up in hopes that Americans will turn to solar panels, windmills and Chevy Volts.

The Green Dream Is an Economic Nightmare.  A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental foolishness of the green vision of energy production — the vision long regnant in academia and the one that informs the Obama regime. ... The first report is the happy news that the number of new American oil wells is increasing at a pace not seen in over three decades.  According to the major oil drilling company Baker Hughes, the number of new oil rigs it has installed is over 800 last year — over twice last year's total, and a tenfold increase over the yearly average during the late 1990s.

Deliberately making Americans poorer.  The Obama administration's policies are causing Americans to pay far more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary.  America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with almost 30 percent of the world's coal and 80 percent of the world's oil shale — which contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.  Canada, with its oil sands, has the world's third-highest oil reserves, after the United States and Saudi Arabia.  New technologies that enable low-cost natural gas production from shale mean that many countries, including the United States, will have gas for centuries at current production rates.

Canada's Oil Sands Are a Jobs Gusher.  For all its soaring rhetoric, President Obama's "jobs speech" last week didn't demonstrate a lick of insight into why economies grow or how wealth is created.  It was merely trademark Obamanomics:  using government diktat to move money that's over here, over there.  Having spent an hour the day before with Ron Liepert, the energy minister from the Canadian province of Alberta, I found it especially disturbing to hear nothing in the speech about reversing the administration's anti-fossil-fuels agenda.

Eagle Ford seen fueling fast growth.  The Eagle Ford shale, a vast oil and gas play in South Texas, will become one of the state's fastest-growing areas for new business and job creation over the next decade, a group of experts said Wednesday [2/23/2011].  That's if they can get the oil out.  Pipelines already are full, and companies are having to truck it out or ship it by rail.

Wind Power:  Questionable Benefits, Concealed Impacts.  America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches — as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. ... The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé:  the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens' Plan and forests of wind turbines.

A Shale Of A Difference.  On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama administration is going to take a "fresh look" at oil shale leasing rules put forward in 2008 by President George W. Bush to develop oil-rich land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ... The Bush rules would have opened up about 2 million acres of federal land in what is known as the Green River Formation to the possible commercial-scale development of oil shale and tar sands.  The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the region, dubbed the "Persia of the West," may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries.

Is America's Energy Policy Perverse?  The U.S. is the only country in the world that, as a matter of policy, does not develop its own energy reserves.  It is hard to see a rational basis for that policy.

The Bakken factor.  The news may not rate with a No. 1 ranking in the college football polls, but residents of North Dakota have reason — make that 11 billion reasons — to have their own celebration in this new year.  Eleven billion barrels is the latest estimate of reserves in the state's share of the Bakken Formation, which extends for some 25,000 square miles from Canada down into Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.  Increasingly, the Bakken is being viewed as a major oil resource in the United States.

2011 may be a gusher in South Texas.  Though still facing uncertainty on many fronts as 2011 begins, the oil and gas industry knows one thing:  It likes what it sees in South Texas.  That's the site of the Eagle Ford shale formation, a vast underground network of dense rock layers, discovered only recently and now thought to be one of the nation's biggest oil and gas fields.

Energy independence is close at hand.  Washington's political class often seems impervious to changing facts.  Case in point is the nation's current and probable future access to essential energy resources, especially fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.  This trio of carbon-based fuels accounts for the vast majority of the nation's electrical and other forms of power, and will continue to do so through at least 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.  The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but is also the world's most productive economy, so demand here for energy resources is going to continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

A Few Questions for President Obama.  [Scroll down]  America is not running out of oil.  It is running out of places the government allows us to drill. ... Companies have been drilling in deep waters, because most onshore and shallow water areas are off limits.

The U.S. has an abundance of fossil fuels.  Most Americans are surprised to find out that the two largest suppliers of oil to the United States are Canada and Mexico.  Each nation draws billions of dollars in economic activity from the United States to provide these vast supplies.  Is it not logical to conclude that the United States, lodged between these two massive suppliers, has resources of its own that remain untapped?  Of the three major fossil fuels, the United States is in the top ten of two of the fossil fuels' proven reserves globally.  The U.S. has the largest proven reserves of coal and the fifth-largest proven reserves of natural gas.

Firms announce big oil find beneath shallow Gulf waters.  McMoRan Exploration Co. today announced what it said could be one of the largest oil and natural gas discoveries in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico in decades.  The discovery was made at the Davy Jones ultra-deep prospect located on South Marsh Island Block 230 in about 20 feet of water and 10 miles off the Louisiana coast, the New Orleans company and Energy XXI, one of its Houston partners in the project, said in statements this morning.

Governor announces 1.9 billion barrels in Three Forks.  The Three Forks Formation could yield nearly 2 billion barrels of petroleum, according to a geologic study released today [4/29/2010] by the North Dakota Geological Survey and Department of Mineral Resources.  Results of the study essentially double the estimated recoverable amount of oil in the Bakken and Three Forks formations.  Current estimates now put the amount of recoverable oil from the Bakken Formation at 2.1 billion barrels and the Three Forks Formation at 1.9 billion.

North Dakota may produce 700,000 barrels of oil per day by 2014-2017.  Continental oil estimates that the Bakken and Three Forks-Sanish oil formations have 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil based on current technology.

Beneath the Gulf, drillers uncover bounty.  Despite a tough economy that forced cuts elsewhere, oil and gas producers in 2009 continued their push into the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, and many of their efforts were rewarded.  So far this year, there have been 12 discoveries in at least 1,000 feet of water, representing some 1.35 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the most found there in a single year since 2002, according to an analysis by Wood Mackenzie, an energy industry consulting firm.

NYS:  drill, baby, drill!.  The Paterson administration has finally given a green light to proposed drilling in the Marcellus Shale, considered by many to be the nation's largest natural-gas reservoir.  Covering several states and extending more than 600 miles, the basin may contain as much as six decades' worth of US natural-gas needs.

Energy reserves

Power To Spare.  As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves.  From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity.  So why are we importing anything?

New North Dakota Oil Find Could Be a Gusher.  Dozens of very productive new wells near North Dakota's Bakken oil field have state officials believing another massive new oil find may be at hand.  A newly discovered oil field in the Three Forks-Sanish formation is producing high yields, and some analysts believe it may surpass production in the huge Bakken oil field just above it.  The Bakken oil is sandwiched between shale above and below, while the Three Forks-Sanish oil sits in porous rock and sand directly beneath the Bakken shale.

Oxy oil discovery could spark new interest in California's energy potential.  The Westwood company revealed in July that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil and natural gas in an undisclosed part of Kern County using techniques that the oil company's executives would rather not talk about.  It was California's biggest find in 35 years.  Some experts say it could herald a period of new exploration in California and the U.S.

Oxy Petroleum's oil and gas discovery may be California's largest in 35 years.  Occidental Petroleum Corp. said it had discovered oil and natural gas in a Kern County field that might represent the biggest find in California in more than 35 years.  The nation's fourth-biggest oil company said Wednesday [7/22/2009] that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil, adding that two-thirds of the new source was believed to be natural gas.

Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale.  It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already "protected" by the federal government.  It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these "protected" acres.  The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.

The Bias Against Oil and Gas.  Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States still has huge oil and natural-gas resources.  The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today's "proven" U.S. reserves.  The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, about 22 times a 1995 estimate.  And then there's upwards of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado.  If 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that's triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

Environmental Policy Constrains U.S. Oil Supply.  Consider the volumes of U.S. oil resources.  The most conservative measure is "proven reserves."  To be proven, it must be reasonably certain that the crude oil can be produced using current technology at current prices, current commercial terms, and with government consent.  The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates the U.S. has 21.8 billion barrels of oil (bbo) in "proven reserves."  At today's consumption rates, proven reserves would last 50 years.  Yet the amount of proven reserves might jump to more than 50 billion barrels if the government "consented" to development of areas now off-limits.  And "recoverable reserves" — known oil resources capable of recovery, but with more cost and technical difficulty than proven reserves — hold several thousand times more.

Drill, Drill, Drill.  Onshore and offshore drilling restrictions for oil and natural gas have to be removed.  Deregulate the energy sector.  Open the door to nuclear power.  Drill the shale regions for natural gas.  Exploration has dried up in the new Obama environment, which is so very anti-fossil-fuel and anti-nuke.  If we are going to power our way to economic growth, fossil fuels and nuclear energy have to play key roles.  Alternative-fuel technologies may grow up, but that's gonna take several decades.  Right now they're about 2 percent of our power.  That's all.

Start Drilling.  It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.  We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits.  These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.  By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

A crude October surprise?  In 2006, the Interior Department estimated about 85.9 billion barrels of "undiscovered technically recoverable" oil sit offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf within U.S. territory.  In 2007, the Energy Department's "Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels" reported that:  "America's oil shale resource exceeds 2 trillion barrels, including about 1.5 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in high quality shales concentrated in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. ..."

Only Action Can Put America Back in Drive.  First, we must increase production and open up access to explore for American-made energy.  For too long our own precious resources have been off limits, and competing nations are gaining from our neglect.  Right now, China, Venezuela, and others are working with Cuba to extract oil near our waters.  Yet American companies are not able to extract our own resources to provide for American consumers.  This is outrageous.  How can we honestly demand OPEC nations pump more oil when we will not even utilize our own resources?

Dakota Oil Fields of Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers.  Unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude needs little refining.  Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides.  It's light  — almost like gasoline — and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur.  Best of all, the Bakken could be huge.  The U.S. Geological Survey's Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion barrels.  If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.

U.S. Policies Put Most U.S. Oil Off-Limits to Drilling.  Huge basins of untapped oil can be found on federal lands throughout the United States, according to a new report from the federal government.  But much of it cannot — and may never be — recovered, because it lies under national parks and national monuments, or it is subject to environmental laws and restrictions that make drilling prohibitive. … If you add in the 85.9 billion barrels of oil that lie offshore, as determined by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, there are 117 billion barrels of oil on lands owned or managed by the U.S. government.

Who was in the White House when those "national monument" land grabs took place?
Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Cult of Gaia (1999):  [Scroll down]  Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, who is recognized as the driving force behind the administration's environmental agenda, the American people have witnessed rather extraordinary actions designed to stop economic development. … [President Clinton] designated 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah as a national monument, placing it off limits to development.  This area reportedly contains billions of barrels of oil, minerals and tens of billions of tons of low sulfur clean-burning coal.  It could have produced thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue for the state and federal governments.

Montana Governor is Sitting on an Oil Mine.  Here's some very good news about oil that the manipulators on Wall Street don't want you to know:  there could be as much as 40 billion barrels of crude lying untouched in eastern Montana.

North Dakota town sitting on oil jackpot.  In this tiny reservation town about two hours from the Canadian border, a Southern twang is sometimes heard over the din at the local diner and there's talk of Texas tea beneath the streets.  Roughnecks from Texas and Oklahoma have travelled here on hopes that they now share with the town's 1,000 or so inhabitants — that there is oil in Parshall.

Drivers Say U.S. Should Drill for Oil on Federal Lands.  A recent Department of Interior report, requested by Congress, estimates there are 139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the United States, onshore and off-shore combined — more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq or Russia.  But most of that oil cannot be tapped because of environmental regulations.

Who Will Pay For Promises Of Politicians?  Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply problem.  Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey's estimate, increase our proven domestic oil reserves by approximately 50%.  The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.  These energy sources of oil have also been placed off-limits by Congress.  Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been built.  Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be.

Is oil's price run-up a problem?  Maybe.  Is oil in short supply?  No.  In fact, the world's ability to produce more oil than it needs is better now than it was after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, which spotlighted how tight global oil production had become.  Then why are prices going up?

Environmental Alarmists Have It Backwards.  President Bush chides us for our "addiction to oil."  But under current conditions, using oil makes perfect sense.  Someday, if we let the free market operate, someone will find an energy source that works better than oil.  Then richer future generations won't need oil.  So why deprive ourselves and make ourselves poorer with needless regulation now?  Anyway, it's not as if we're running out of oil.

State of the Union 2007:  A Counterproductive Energy Policy.  Recent Department of the Interior studies, conducted pursuant to the 2005 energy bill, confirm that the United States has substantial oil and natural gas deposits.  These studies also show that much of these onshore and offshore resources are off-limits due to legal and regulatory constraints.  In fact, America remains the only nation on earth that has restricted access to a substantial portion of its domestic energy potential.  Removing the federal impediments on domestic exploration and drilling will allow for greater domestic supplies and potentially lower prices in the years ahead.

Energy Answers Await At Our Doorstep.  As gasoline prices continue to soar, few Americans realize that a key element for strengthening our energy security is right next door.  Nearly 50% of our energy imports come from our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.  Canada is our single-largest energy supplier, providing 17% of U.S. oil imports.

Abundant Domestic Supplies are Off-Limits.  The Bureau of Land Management recently published [a report which] concludes that onshore federal lands are "estimated to contain 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 21 billion barrels of oil, which represents 76 percent of onshore Federal oil and gas resources."  That 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply all of America's households for 39 years, and 21 billion barrels of oil represents over 30 years' worth of current imports from Saudi Arabia.

Abundant energy supplies off-limits.  Good news:  The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find.  That might even be great news — if so much of the energy wasn't out of reach.  According to a new Interior Department report, there are substantial onshore energy deposits on federal lands.  A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the same conclusion.  But both reports found much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so.

A Big Dose of Energy Reality.  Representative Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Committee on Resources, will tell anyone who will listen that "for the foreseeable future, America has no shortage of oil or other traditional energy resources.  Washington, D.C., has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it."  For example, "The United States has enough non-park federal resources to supply natural gas to 100 million homes for 157 years.  But, despite that massive supply, we cannot deliver even one year of affordable natural gas to Americans right now."

Late Word from the Oil Patch:  When people tell me that America is too dependent on foreign oil imports, I keep telling them we have lots of oil, but thanks to the environmentalists, our own government has made it either too costly to get at it or access has been restricted because the bulk of our undeveloped energy resources is found on federal lands or federally controlled areas offshore.  This is what happens when the federal government owns nearly half the landmass of the nation.

Don't ignore America's oil reserves.  Driving through Sistersville, W.Va., a little town alongside the Ohio River, you would never know that 110 years ago it was the center of an oil boom.  But in the first decade of the 20th century, if you were in the oil business, it was the place to be.

Natural Gas, America's Best Bet.  There is little question why natural gas is considered the best energy investment due to its growing demand, environmental advantages, and supply breakthrough that has radically changed the outlook for cleaner energy.  Arguably, shale gas, slated to account for 17 percent of total US natural gas supply, is the largest story in the energy business in the last 20 years.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart



Alaska is floating on oil

Alaska Sues Biden Admin Over Canceled Oil Leases.  Alaska is suing the Biden administration for cancelling oil and gas leases sold in the state under the Trump administration.  The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) formally filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior on Wednesday, a move which it had promised to make in response to DOI's September decision to retroactively cancel seven oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  The DOI hailed the cancellations as a strong action to protect the environment, but industry groups and political officials slammed the revocations for their questionable legality and effects on the U.S. energy sector.  "The federal government is determined to strip away Alaska's ability to support itself, and we have got to stop it," Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said of the lawsuit.  "We will not allow illegal actions to occur against Alaska and I fully support this lawsuit."

Biden Admin Cancels Seven Oil Leases in Alaska.  While the Americans living paycheck to paycheck struggle to cope with the high prices at the gas stations, the Biden administration continues to impede American oil drilling.  Cancelling seven oil and gas leases that were issued by the Trump administration for drilling oil in Alaska is the recent such effort by this government.  On September 6, Biden's Department of the Interior (DOI) canceled the seven oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska that were issued by the outgoing Trump administration in early January 2021 to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA).  The Oregonian wrote that the decision likely comes as a counter-measure to the Biden administration's approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska earlier this year, which disappointed environmental groups opposed to oil exploration in the region.  Left-leaning environmental groups welcomed the cancellation of the leases as a victory for the Arctic Refuge.

Legal battle awaits Biden's Alaskan oil crackdown.  The Biden administration's decision to restrict oil activity in Alaska last week will likely face at least one legal challenge, E&E News reported Monday.  The Department of the Interior (DOI) declared Wednesday its intention to retroactively cancel seven leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) owned by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), asserting that the environmental review process for the Trump-era sales was inadequate, according to E&E News.  The AIDEA, a public corporation that promotes economic growth in the state by providing various types of financing, called the cancellations "unlawful" and pledged to fight the decision to invalidate the leases, which total about 365,000 acres.

"Who Is Biden Working For?" Admin Under Fire For 'Illegal, Reckless' Cancellation Of Alaska Oil Leases.  After canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project, draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to dangerously low levels (some of which was sold to a Hunter Biden-linked Chinese energy giant), and vowing "no more oil drilling" on US soil while America's geopolitical adversaries — two of whom paid his family handsomely — beef up their own energy independence, the Biden administration has done it again.  Last week the regime confirmed that it will cancel seven controversial oil and gas leases in an area of Alaska known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which were legally awarded from a 2021 sale.

Manchin trashes Biden administration decision to pull US oil and gas leases in Alaska.  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) trashed the Biden administration's decision to pull oil and gas leases from Alaska on Wednesday, claiming the move was the latest example of the administration "caving to the radical Left."  The Department of the Interior said on Wednesday it would prohibit oil and gas drilling on more than 10.6 million acres in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve, ensuring "maximum protection" for more than 40% of the reserve, which is located in Alaska's North Slope and is the largest undisturbed public land in the United States.

Biden Cancels Previously Issued ANWR Oil and Gas Leases in Alaska.  24 hours before Joe Biden announced he was cancelling all previously issued oil and gas leases in Alaska's ANWR region, Saudi Arabia and Russia announced oil production limits would continue.  Oil prices spiked near $100/bbl and then Joe Biden amplifies the problem by cancelling previously sold oil and gas leases.  There's no other way to look at the timing here, other than to accept this is Joe Biden intentionally driving up the cost of domestic energy in the U.S. and creating as much pain as possible.

Biden Under Fire for 'Unlawful Cancellation' of Oil Leases as Prices Hit Highest Point of 2023.  I don't think I'm the only one who believes the Biden administration is hellbent on destroying America.  In the latest move to undermine the country, President Joe Biden and his team announced Wednesday they will cancel oil leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  The move will block new drilling on millions of acres at a time when gas prices are at their highest level of the year and crude oil prices are surging, according to MarketWatch.

Biden to Cancel Alaska Oil, Gas Leases Issued Under Trump.  President Joe Biden's Interior Department said it would cancel the oil and gas leases issued in the latter days of President Donald Trump's administration.  Biden has said he would move to protect roughly 19.6 million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for polar bears and caribou.

Biden Bars Oil Exploration on 13 Million Acres of Arctic Wilderness.  Joe Biden enraged environmentalists in March when he gave the go-ahead to allow the $8 billion Willow Project to drill on Arctic land.  The greenies felt that Biden had betrayed a campaign promise of "no new drilling, period" on federal lands.  They needn't have worried.  Biden has never wavered from his goal of destroying the fossil fuel industry, nor has he ever deviated from his position that the U.S. will be weaned off of fossil fuels even if it costs tens of thousands of jobs and an untold amount of pain to consumers.  The Biden administration announced that it would prohibit drilling on 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.  Furthermore, the administration is canceling all drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Alaska's Budget Problems Are A Cautionary Tale For Texas.  What would happen to Texas if it's the Biden administration's ongoing efforts to restrict its oil and gas industry were to succeed?  What would happen to the state's budget and economy if, say, the proposed endangered species listing of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard or Environmental Protection Agency's threat to hold the entire Permian Basin in violation of ozone standards had the impact of cutting production of oil and gas in half?  What has been happening in Alaska in recent years could provide a real-world example.  Biden's anti-energy policies have played a big role in leaving that state with a big budget hole, and some proposals to address the problem could place the state on a path to a California-like high-tax, slow-growth economy.

Biden indefinitely blocks oil drilling on millions of acres of federal land.  The Biden administration announced Sunday evening [3/12/2023] that it will indefinitely block fossil fuel drilling on 16 million acres of federal land in and around Alaska.  News of the decision came through the Interior Department, which announced plans to bar drilling on nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska and limit drilling on more than 13 million acres across the National Petroleum Reserve, located in North Slope Borough, Alaska.  The National Petroleum Reserve is a vast swath of federal land set aside by Congress for resource development.

Biden administration to approve major Alaska oil drilling project Willow.  The Biden administration is soon set to approve ConocoPhillips' Willow Project, a major oil drilling project on Alaska's North Slope, according to a congressional source familiar with the details.  The decision will be announced next week, the source confirmed.  The expected approval is a victory for Alaska's bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region.

Alaska prepares for Biden to deny Willow project: This is 'the end of oil in America'.  As Alaska labor and political leaders plead with President Biden to approve America's largest pending oil and gas project in his final deciding moments, the state's governor revealed he's expecting the White House to turn it down.  "We're preparing for them to deny this," Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on "Cavuto: Coast to Coast" Tuesday. "And it's sad to say that, but their idea of a compromise, apparently, is to allow only two drilling pads for this oil play called Willow, about 180,000 barrels per day at peak, instead of the three or more that really the investors, ConocoPhillips, need to have to make this thing work for everybody."  The Willow project — currently the largest pending oil and gas plan in the U.S. — is a proposal by ConocoPhillips to develop energy resources in a small portion of what's known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on Alaska's North Slope.

A federal judge just destroyed American energy independence with this one devastating ruling.  Just forty years ago, the vast majority of Americans were totally onboard with the idea of America seeking its own sources of scarce energy resources like oil and other fossil fuels.  But the modern so-called "progressive" Left has waged a war against American energy independence all behind the guise of concern for "climate change" and the environment — even though modern extraction technology leaves almost no footprint on the local environment at all.  The Left has — with some success — beat Americans into submission to fall in line with their "green" agenda.  The latest American to conform to the radical Left's wishes is none other than Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason who has thrown out federal approval of an oil project in Alaska.  The kicker is that it was disapproved because the project didn't account for the effects it would have on polar bears.

Trump administration removes close to 475,000 acres from Arctic refuge oil lease sale.  The Bureau of Land Management on Friday [12/18/2020] said it was removing 10 tracts, encompassing nearly 475,000 acres, from its Jan. 6 oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain.  The federal agency also said it will begin receiving bids for the remaining available tracts on Monday.  The 10 tracts no longer available for bidding are in the southeastern corner of the coastal plain.  The Bureau of Land Management had initially proposed offering the vast majority of the coastal plain — the northernmost 1.6 million acres of the 19 million-acre refuge — to bidders.

Trump Administration Opens ANWR for Oil, Gas Leasing; Green Groups to Challenge.  Energy Secretary David Bernhardt signed a Record of Decision on Monday [8/17/2020] to open a tiny part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to leasing.  Auctions could take place before the end of the year, said Bernhardt, adding, "Congress directed us to hold lease sales in the ANWR Coastal Plain, and we have taken a significant step in meeting our obligations by determining where and under what conditions the oil and gas development program will occur."  Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy was pleased:  "Today's announcement marks a milestone in Alaska's 40-year journey to responsibly develop our state and our nation's new energy frontier."  Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski called it "a capstone moment in our decades-long push to allow for the responsible development of a small part of Alaska's 1002 area."  Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan said, "Today, we are one step closer to securing a bright future for these Alaskans and their families."  That "1002 Area" is indeed tiny:  Just 2,000 acres would be developed out of the more than 19-million-acre ANWR on the North Slope of Alaska.  Development of that area was approved as part of the Trump administration's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.  It could eventually provide as much as 10 billion barrels of crude oil.

The Editor says...
That's five million barrels of oil per acre, potentially.  Ten billion barrels of oil is almost a million acre-feet.

Trump administration paves way for large drilling project in Alaska Arctic petroleum reserve.  The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday took a step toward development of the Willow oil prospect in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a large ConocoPhillips effort that could help revive Alaska's sagging economic fortunes, though critics say it endangers polar bears and the climate.  The agency, releasing the final environmental review of the project, said the development could produce more than 160,000 barrels of oil daily over 30 years, helping offset dwindling oil production and state revenues in Alaska.  Construction would produce more than 1,000 jobs, and lead to more than 400 jobs when it begins operating.

Trump pushes to expand offshore drilling in the Arctic.  Surrounded by members of Alaska's congressional delegation, President Donald Trump on Friday [4/28/2017] signed an executive order that directs the Interior Department to rethink some of President Barack Obama's regulations and decrees that put large swaths of the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil drilling.  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the order will require him to review previously issued five-year development plans for offshore oil and natural gas leases and regulations governing oil, gas and renewable energy leasing in waters of the Arctic and Atlantic.

Seven Ways Obama Is Trying to Sabotage the Trump Administration.  [#3] Ban on oil drilling:  An overt act of sabotage directed at the American economy itself, leaving an especially heavy bootprint on Alaska.  Smug administration flacks spent the past couple of weeks assuring media talking heads that Obama's unprecedented abuse of an obscure law was impossible for his successor to reverse.  It's like they stayed up all night, looking for executive actions that can't be undone by the new President four weeks later.

Obama's Last-Minute Offshore Drilling Ban Could Be Illegal.  Outgoing President Barack Obama used his executive authority to "permanently" ban oil drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, but this move may be illegal, according to an industry group.  Obama's administration used a legal strategy crafted by environmental activists to remove sections of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans from future offshore drilling lease sales, which they claim will be "permanent."  "It is pretty clear that this is a hollow 11th hour action," Christopher Guith, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.  "In spite of the narrative that extreme interest groups who pushed the White House to do this, there's nothing about this that's permanent.  The White House itself didn't use the phrase permanent, they said it was 'indefinite.'"

Obama Oil Drilling Ban on Thin Ice.  President Obama apparently wants his legacy to be one of energy starvation for the United States and dependence on foreign energy from friendly places like Saudi Arabia and Iran.  His ban on offshore drilling in federally owned waters off our Atlantic and Arctic coasts makes no sense, either environmentally or economically.

Obama urges Trump to resist executive action, then goes it alone on Arctic oil ban.  During a Monday [12/19/2016] interview with NPR, President Obama urged his successor to avoid relying on executive action.  The next day, he did the opposite, unilaterally closing millions of acres of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to oil exploration.  The episode offers a primer on the Left's double standard on presidential power.  While Obama urges President-elect Trump to work with Congress, he's acknowledged another set of rules for his own actions.  Whatever is not expressly forbidden — and more importantly whatever a Democrat president can get away with — is permissible.  The drilling ban at once solidifies Obama's legacy as an environmentalist as well as an imaginative and overreaching executive.

President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic ocean.  President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.  Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia.  In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

Obama expected to bar drilling in swaths of Atlantic, Arctic.  President Barack Obama is expected to order wide swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans placed permanently off-limits for oil drilling, people briefed on the administration's plan said, in an 11th-hour push for environmental protection before he leaves office.

Trump's choices of Cabinet renew debate over opening Alaska's Arctic refuge to oil drilling.  Oil companies who have long coveted an environmentally sensitive Alaskan refuge may be on the verge of tapping its huge reserves under a Donald Trump administration that has signaled its support for fossil fuels.  Trump's nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state — along with rumors that he will choose Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke as Interior Secretary — have buoyed the hopes of many energy industry insiders and Alaskan lawmakers who have seen attempts to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge thwarted during President Obama's time in office.  "This is exactly the time we need to start developing the area," Nick Loris, an energy expert at the Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, told FoxNews.com.  "It will take more of a hurdle given what Obama has done, but it can be undone."

On his way out, Obama cedes Arctic energy control to Russia.  This isn't really the same as prying the W's off the keyboards in the Oval Office, but Barack Obama seems determined to leave some unpleasant going away presents for his successor on the domestic energy front.  Before leaving office, the President has modified the agreement for future oil exploration leases to eliminate nearly all Arctic sites.  Needless to say, the energy industry isn't exactly ecstatic over this.

Obama blocks new oil, gas drilling in Arctic Ocean.  The Obama administration is blocking new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean, handing a victory to environmentalists who say industrial activity in the icy waters will harm whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbate global warming.

The Editor says...
How does Mr. Obama know the environmentalists' fears have any merit?

Obama to block new Arctic drilling.  President Obama is planning in the coming days to release an offshore oil and natural gas plan that blocks new drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean through 2022, people familiar with the plan said.  The decision is part of the Interior Department's five-year plan for offshore drilling, which lays out all of the proposed auctions for drilling rights on the outer continental shelf.

Caelus claims offshore Arctic oil discovery that could rank among Alaska's biggest ever.  Caelus Energy Alaska said Tuesday [10/4/2016] it has made a "world-class" oil discovery that, if estimates prove true, could be one of the largest finds ever in Alaska.  The Smith Bay site, in shallow waters about 50 miles southeast of Barrow, could "provide 200,000 barrels per day of light, highly mobile oil," the company said in a press release Tuesday.

First oil flows from Alaska reserve set aside in '23.  ConocoPhillips is the first oil company to draw crude from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area the size of Indiana which President Warren G. Harding dedicated as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy in 1923.

Drop in oil prices rocks producer states, triggers historic tax hike plan in Alaska.  The plunge in oil prices has given a needed break to drivers this holiday season, but it's causing some real pain in states that rely on oil revenue to fuel their economies and shore up their budgets.  Perhaps nowhere is the impact more pronounced than in Alaska, where Gov. Bill Walker is proposing a raft of new taxes, including the first personal income tax in over three decades, along with budget cuts to offset the damage from the price drop for the oil-reliant state.

What Shell's decision on Arctic drilling means for the Alaska economy.  Views on the impact of a Shell pullout from the already fragile Alaska economy ranged from dire to cautious Monday [9/28/2015], with economic observers citing near-term job losses and long-term prospects for Arctic development.  But there is a bright spot:  Sunday's announcement that the company is putting on the brakes in the U.S. Arctic Ocean comes at a time of record-high employment in the Alaska oil patch and estimated 4.5 percent unemployment in the state's largest city, providing a buffer against the fallout of lost work associated with Shell's project.

Alaska fears fallout of Shell's Arctic drilling decision.  Royal Dutch Shell's dry hole in the Chukchi Sea may be disappointing to shareholders, but it's potentially devastating to Alaska.

Alaska residents to receive boost of $1,900 each from state oil wealth fund.  Residents of Alaska are set to receive $1,900 each this year in oil dividends — the best return on the state's oil wealth account since the Great Recession.  In one of the most highly anticipated days of the year, residents yesterday learned of the boost in an announcement by Governor Sean Parnell.  The state's Permanent Fund Dividend was created to benefit all current and future generations of Alaskans, and pays out a dividend every year.

Most Alaskans will get $900 for 2013 share of state's oil wealth.  The dividends are distributed annually to people who have lived in Alaska for at least one calendar year.

The Editor asks...
Why can't Texas do that, too?

BP to spend $1 billion in Alaska's North Slope.  BP announced Monday [6/3/2013] that it will sink $1 billion into revving up crude production from Alaska's declining North Slope, weeks after the state decided to give the oil industry a $750 million annual tax cut.  The British oil giant plans to add two drilling rigs to its Prudhoe Bay field, bringing the count up to nine, the highest in about six years.  New well work and drilling, along with upgrades of existing facilities, could support 200 new jobs, the company said.

An Alaskan Challenge for 'All of the Above' Energy.  An accident with no environmental impact is being exploited for political purposes in an effort to halt offshore exploration in Alaska.

Morons Who Hate Oil:  According to the US Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service at the Department of Interior that regulates America's on- and off-shore oil reserves, they estimate that America holds more than 21 billion barrels of "proven" conventional oil reserves.  Add to this the estimated 100 billion barrels of oil reserves in the postage stamp-sized proposed drilling area of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.  According to the Congressional Research Service, America's combined energy resources, oil, coal, and natural gas, are the largest on Earth!

Murkowski uses rising gas prices to call for opening Alaska's oil fields.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), citing rising gas prices, called on the administration Thursday [3/10/2011] to open up Alaska's oil reserves for further exploration.  "We are the only country that has identified a huge resource base and then absolutely refused to use it," said Murkowski, referring to her state's massive oil reserves that remain untapped because of their designation as a wildlife refuge.  "We need to develop a coherent national energy policy."

More about ANWR.

Alaska Can Meet U.S. Energy Needs.  The United States is now facing a decision on how to meet its future energy needs.  In the coming months, the U.S. Department of the Interior will weigh whether to allow oil and gas exploration on Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to be expanded.  Such exploration could set the country on a clear and sustainable energy path for decades to come.

Peak Government, Not Oil.  Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey says the Chukchi Sea off Alaska holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.  The Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has been called the "Persia of the West."  This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

Seeing Chukchi.  Back in July [2008], ... it was thought that Chukchi's waters northwest of Alaska's landmass held 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas.  Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.  That's enough U.S. energy to achieve self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again.  The only thing left to do is drill.

Pipeline, Not Pipe Dream:  Credit Palin.  It must be sweet vindication for Alaska's governor.  Against critics who said her 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline project would never get off the ground, who should the project bag but the "big gorilla" of American energy — Exxon Mobil.  In a major surprise, Exxon announced Thursday [6/11/2009] that it had forged a partnership with TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline company that holds the state license for Palin's $126 billion Alaska Gasoline Inducement Act project.

Obama's Great Alaska Shutout.  President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he's had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it.  The latest example is the Interior Department's little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly half of the 23.5 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.  The area is called the National Petroleum Reserve because in 1976 Congress designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the "energy needs of the nation."  Alaska favors exploration in nearly the entire reserve.  The feds had been reviewing four potential development plans, and the state of Alaska had strongly objected to the most restrictive of the four.  Sure enough, that was the plan Interior chose.

Obama Is Right.  Every other month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar withdraws more land from potential energy development.  Most recently, he put nearly half of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska's North Slope off-limits, restricting development to 12 million acres with potentially 549 million barrels of oil.  In 2002, the Reserve, designated almost a century ago by Congress for energy development, was thought to hold 9 billion barrels of oil.  Mysteriously, in 2010, this estimate was reduced to 900 million barrels.  People notice when you pull billions of barrels of oil from potential production.  Change the story by redefining the estimate, and the news item goes from page 1 to page 19 when the administration puts America's resources off-limits.

Obama's Alaska Oil Debacle Is a 'None of the Above' Energy Policy.  The Obama administration's decision to block oil drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) is the latest symbol of an energy policy that could be described as "none of the above."  It is an even worse decision when you consider the recent history of the Reserve, which was partially opened to oil and gas drilling and exploration by the Clinton administration in the late 1990s.

Obama's Great Alaska Shutout.  President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he's had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it.  The latest example is the Interior Department's little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly half of the 23.5 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.  The area is called the National Petroleum Reserve because in 1976 Congress designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the "energy needs of the nation."  Alaska favors exploration in nearly the entire reserve.

Shell gears up to tap into Arctic crude again.  A new chapter in U.S. oil exploration could open within days as Shell sails into seas north of Alaska, hoping to tap into a potential 90 billion barrels of crude that have beckoned for decades.  The company has been there before, drilling exploratory wells in the 1980s and 1990s that tantalized with promise of riches deep below the freezing Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Heavy sea ice could mean slight delay in offshore Arctic drilling.  The heaviest polar ice in more than a decade is clinging to the northern coast of Alaska and could postpone the commencement of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic until the beginning of August — a delay of up to two weeks, Shell Alaska officials said Friday [5/25/2012].  Unveiling the newly refurbished ice-class drilling rig that is poised to commence plumbing two exploratory wells this summer in the Beaufort Sea, Shell executives said the unusually robust sea ice would further narrow what already is a tight window for operations in a $4-billion program designed to measure the extent of what could be the United States' most important new inventory of oil and gas.

The Editor says...
Wait a minute.  I thought the global warming alarmists said the ice at the North Pole was disappearing!  And I thought the environmentalists said there was no more oil to be found!

Exxon to drill in the Arctic.  The Arctic will have oil rigs.  Except they will benefit Russia, not the United States.  21 years after ridding itself of communism, Russia welcomes capitalism.  Meanwhile, the United States government will celebrate Lenin's birthday on Sunday by calling it Earth Day, an excuse to shutter capitalism in this nation.

Arctic Ocean drilling: Shell launches preemptive legal strike.  Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday [2/29/2012] against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer.

ANWR — Is President Obama Serious About Domestic Oil Production?  President Obama admitted in the State of the Union that energy production creates jobs, so why isn't he opening up new areas like the North Slope of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas production?  As we have noted numerous times, the federal government leases a mere 3 percent of federal lands for energy production.  The United States is already the world's third largest oil producer, but we could produce a lot more oil if the federal government would let the American people explore for oil on more federal lands.
[Italics in original.]

More about ANWR.

What's the Hold-Up on Alaskan Oil?  My state's ANWR region could produce one million barrels of oil per day if only Washington let us.

First permit OK'd for oil drilling in Alaska reserve.  After rejecting the project nearly two years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today [12/19/2011] issued ConocoPhillips a permit to begin work on the first commercial oil well in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, according to news reports.

Congressman warns Alaska pipeline could be dismantled within 10 years.  The Obama administration is setting the stage for the dismantling of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and poses the greatest threat to its existence today, according to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings.  The 800-mile pipeline cost $8 billion to construct in the 1970s, and has moved more than 18 billion barrels of crude oil.  Three oil companies constructed it, in the face of significant opposition from environmentalists, in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

Our elected leaders are the problem.
Drill in ANWR!  A 1998 United States Geological Survey (USGS) study indicates that there are a minimum of 4.3 billion and possibly (though unlikely) as many as 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  But ANWR, for all the press it has received, is only the tip of the oil iceberg.  John K. Carlisle, of the National Center for Public Policy Research, claims that the US likely has more than 110 billion barrels total of recoverable oil (which is five times the estimated current supply).  But we are not drilling for this oil.  Why?

Don't Let the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shut Down.  Lack of oil volume due to administration bans on new Alaskan drilling may force the shutdown of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, denying us even the tens of billions of barrels left in already developed fields.

Drill, Dems, Drill.  That an Alaskan senator-elect wants to drill in ANWR is not a surprise.  That he's a Democrat is.  Were high oil prices what helped push Detroit over the edge?

GOP staking out offshore drilling as major issue.  Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate has served to underscore the significance Republicans are putting on opening new areas to energy exploration.  As governor of Alaska, Palin championed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling — something even McCain has opposed.

Alaska's Real Bridge.  A recent study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that alternative energy will at best supply 16% of global electric and transport needs — by 2030.  In reality, drilling ANWR is critical, as [Alaska's] two senators urge.  "We almost passed it in 2001," Stevens said.  "Some said that if we had acted then, we would have had (the oil) to market right now."  Yes, getting oil into production would take time.  But [Sen. Lisa] Murkowski thinks the very act of passing the bill would damp price speculation.

Feds grim on gas line.  Prospects for an Alaska natural gas pipeline "are more remote than a year ago," and the holdup is political indecision in Alaska, says a new report from federal energy regulators. … The seven-page report says the federal government stands ready to move the megaproject forward, but the "main obstacle" is the state's "failure to resolve" tax or other issues that major oil companies have said must be settled before they can commit to building the multibillion-dollar pipeline project.

Trans Alaska pipeline could do job for 30 more years.  When engineers first turned the spigot on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977, they thought it would run for about 30 years.  Accountants were a bit more generous, saying it would be 34 years before the 800-mile, $8 billion asset could be written off the books.  But with its 31st anniversary approaching in June, the pipeline, known as TAPS, is primed for another 30 years.

Alaska governor wants to tap oil resources.  Speaking to a group of Hillsdale College supporters, the governor said, "Alaska has so many resources to tap into, so that this state can be a contributor, not a recipient of the federal government."  The governor announced that another $30 billion to $40 billion pipeline for natural gas has just been made possible through the efforts of an independent company for moving natural gas to the lower 48 states and is about to begin construction.

To Drill, or Not to Drill.  Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that he's taking another look at the possibility of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and as part of that assessment McCain says that he plans to talk to the nation's most prominent advocate of drilling in ANWR, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Zapped crude oil flows faster through pipes.  Zapping thick crude oil with a magnetic or electric field could make it flow more smoothly through pipes.  The technique, which reduces the viscosity of the liquid, could make transporting crude through cold underwater pipes easier and cheaper, researchers claim.

Why might Alaskans favor Arctic drilling?  A $2,000 check.  This year's Permanent Fund dividend check — what Alaskans receive each year from the state's oil-revenue investment fund — is likely to be more than $2,000, the first time since the state began making the payments in 1982 that the dividend has topped two grand.  The biggest previous dividend was $1963.86 in 2000.  Last year's was $1,654.  The dividend spins off the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state's $37 billion oil wealth savings account.

Open ANWR.  Many votes against drilling [in Alaska] come from California, Northeastern and Midwestern legislators who have made a career of railing against high energy prices, "obscene" oil company profits, unemployment and balance of trade deficits — while simultaneously doing everything possible to constrict supplies, increase demand and drive up prices.  For instance, air quality rules — coupled with a virtual prohibition on building new nuclear plants — mean that most new electrical generating plants are gas-fired.  So demand for natural gas continues to climb, while domestic supplies continue to decrease.

Oil Prices and the Media:  Don't Believe the Hype.  With regard to folks blocking drilling for oil in ANWR due to environmental concerns, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) offered the following analogy:  If ANWR was the size of a basketball court, the proposed area for drilling would be the size of a dollar bill.  He also said that if President Clinton had not vetoed ANWR drilling in 1995, the U.S. domestic oil supply be 20 percent higher today.

ANWR and Our Nation's Energy Future.  Many of the same people that are now complaining about our dependence on foreign oil consistently oppose opening Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to production.  This is not some radical idea.  The 1980 law that doubled the size of ANWR to 19 million acres explicitly called for Congress to develop a process through which exploration and production could be conducted on the 2000 acre Coastal Plain.  Yet, across the past 24 years, anti-development forces in Congress have ignored America's energy needs and, through the use of filibusters, prevented oil and gas development.  This inaction is irresponsible.

Alaska senators make another push for oil drilling in ANWR.  Hoping to capitalize on consumer concern about gasoline prices, Alaska's two Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if the price of oil hits $125 a barrel.  With oil hovering near $110 a barrel and gasoline expected to reach $4 a gallon, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens said that they hoped the continuing price spiral would spark consumer clamor and overcome opposition to opening the wildlife refuge to drilling.

The Editor says...
Why wait for $125 a barrel?  This issue should have come up when oil hit $40 a barrel.

Green movement also behind gas hike.  What if we had our own Iraq-sized supply that we haven't even touched yet?  We do.  According to the U.S. Geological Survey and American Petroleum Institute, we have at least 112 billion barrels of undrilled oil — "enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years."  By comparison, Iraq has 115 billion barrels and Venezuela 80 billion.  At least 16 billion barrels of our oil is in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Drilling would only touch 8 percent of 17 million acres — but environmentalists say it's off-limits.

More information about ANWR can be found here.

And not only oil...
Study:  Tap natural gas from Alaska's frozen areas.  Today's technology could extract enough untapped natural gas, frozen in Alaska's North Slope, to heat millions of homes for years, federal officials announced Wednesday [11/12/2008].  An estimated 85.4 trillion cubic feet of "undiscovered, technically recoverable gas" is frozen in the state's North Slope region, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released by the Interior Department.  The deposits could heat more than 100 million homes for a decade, the study says.

Thawing Fuel For Palin's Pipeline.  A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of frozen natural gas crystals lie buried beneath Alaska's icy North Slope, a region where the crude production peaked in 1988 and had to be replaced by imported oil.  The frozen gas, known as gas hydrate, is a new Made-In-U.S.A. energy source that's nearly three times the 30 trillion cubic feet of estimated U.S. reserves from conventional gas sources; it had not even been counted in current estimates of domestic energy reserves.




The world is not running out of oil

Donald Trump has Mexico over a barrel.  Mexico is going to cave, and it's not just the tariffs.  We've got the Mexicans over a barrel on energy, and if we want, we can wipe their economy out.  Without American energy imports, the Mexican economy collapses.  This actually doesn't make any sense.  Mexico is awash in petroleum and natural gas.  But the Mexicans just can't get it out of the ground.  American petroleum engineers were critical to the early success of the Mexican oil industry.  From 1918 to the late '20s, Mexico was second only to the United States in oil production, and it was number one in petroleum exports.  But the bounty was not fairly shared, and an inflamed Mexican nationalism booted the American oil industry out of the country.  The Mexican oil industry never recovered.  Take a look at a map of the Permian basin, the source of millions upon millions barrels of daily oil production.  You'll notice that the geological formation containing this plentitude of hydrocarbons extends well into Mexico.  But there is no oil development on the Mexican side of the border.  They can't get to the oil without our help.

Oil Discoveries Suggest Mexico's Bet to Open Energy Sector Is Paying Off.  When Mexico gambled on ending decades of state control of its energy industry, officials said they hoped the move would promote investment and give the country access to technical expertise.  That wager now appears to be paying off.  The government began auctioning off rights two years ago to drill in parts of the Gulf of Mexico.  On Tuesday [7/11/2017], an international consortium of energy companies said they had discovered a large oil field, and another firm said it had discovered more oil than expected in a separate area.

Something very odd is being hidden in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and Gulf of Mexico.  Hundreds of oil tankers are being forced to turn back to their point of origin or simply park in the middle of the sea because of a shortage in fuel storage facilities across the US and Europe, creating a logjam of vessels in some of the world's busiest shipping channels.  Maritime tracking maps show concentrations of oil and chemical tankers effectively sitting stationary from the US to China.

Three Cheers for Holiday Lighting!  World oil reserves are over 20 times greater now than they were when record-keeping began in the 1940s; world gas reserves are almost four times greater than they were in the 1960s; world coal reserves have risen fourfold since 1950.  Political events can drive supply down and prices up, but the raw mineral resource base is prolific — and expanding in economic terms thanks to an inexhaustible supply of human ingenuity and exploratory capital.  Record energy consumption has been accompanied by improving air quality.  Urban air quality is significantly better today than in the 1970s in the United States.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that air emissions of the criteria pollutants declined by 60 percent from 1970, while energy usage increased by a third.

Biggest Arctic Gas Project Seeks Route Around U.S. Sanctions.  Total SA (FP) and its partners will use a record 16 ice-breaking tankers to smash through floes en route to and from the Arctic's biggest liquefied natural-gas development.  They're still looking for a way around a freeze in U.S. financing.

Plunging Oil Prices Set Off A Global Chess Game.  In the U.S., the positives of lower gas prices are obvious — more money for Americans to spend on other things, less stress in family budgets.  At the same time, lower prices that reflect a global oversupply of oil and gas change the cost-benefit equations for drilling and fracking.  That fact could lower the temperature a bit next year on controversies like natural-gas fracking.  The downside, many analysts point out, is that many wildcatters and smaller exploration companies need oil above $80 a barrel to survive; [...]

Rosneft Says Exxon Arctic Well Strikes Oil.  Russia, viewed by the Obama administration as hostile to U.S. interests, has discovered what may prove to be a vast pool of oil in one of the world's most remote places with the help of America's largest energy company. Russia's state-run OAO Rosneft (ROSN) said a well drilled in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean with Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) struck oil, showing the region has the potential to become one of the world's most important crude-producing areas.

Russian $8.2 Trillion Oil Trove Locked Without U.S. Tech.  Even as the decision to stop gas supplies to Ukraine aggravates tensions with the U.S. and Europe, Russia faces a dilemma:  it still needs Exxon Mobil Corp., Halliburton Co. and BP Plc to maintain output from Soviet-era oil fields and develop Arctic and shale reserves.  Russia will require Western companies to provide the modern drilling and production gear — and techniques such as hydraulic fracturing — that are essential to unlocking its $8.2 trillion worth of barrels still underground.

The World's Resources Aren't Running Out.  How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population?  The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff — metals, oil, clean air, land — and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption. [...] But here's a peculiar feature of human history:  We burst through such limits again and again.  After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone.

Extracting oil and gas: When bad news becomes good news.  Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the royal billionaires, says Saudi Arabia is under "threat" because of fracking, the technology of extracting gas and oil from energy deposits deep underground.  Growing supplies — actual supplies, not merely reserves — in the U.S. have dramatically cut demand for Saudi oil.

Massive Oil Discovery Challenges Saudi Reserves.  An intelligence brief said that a small Australian town called Coober Pedy has A$20 trillion worth of shale oil — the biggest find in 50 years, the Money Morning TV reported.  The oil deposit is estimated to be six times larger than the Bakken, 17 times the size of the Marcellus formation, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford shale.  The recently discovered Arckaringa Basin, located just outside the sleepy Australian town, contains more oil more than in all of in Iran, Iraq, Canada, or Venezuela.

Trillions of dollars worth of oil found in Australian outback.  The discovery in central Australia was reported by Linc Energy to the stock exchange and was based on two consultants reports, though it is not yet known how commercially viable it will be to access the oil.  The reports estimated the company's 16 million acres of land in the Arckaringa Basin in South Australia contain between 133 billion and 233 billion barrels of shale oil trapped in the region's rocks.  It is likely however that just 3.5 billion barrels, worth almost $359 billion (£227 billion) at today's oil price, will be able to be recovered.

America's Big Fat Advantage.  "Peak oil" and our "oil addiction" were supposed to have ensured that we ran out of either gas or the money to buy it.  Now, suddenly, we have more gas and oil than ever before.  But the key question is:  Why do we?  The oil-and-gas renaissance was brought on by horizontal drilling and fracking that opened up vast new reserves that were previously either unknown or considered unrecoverable.  Both technological breakthroughs were American discoveries, largely brought on by entrepreneurial mavericks and engineers exploring on mostly private lands.

BP CEO: 'Peak oil' talk quieted by abundance.  BP CEO Robert Dudley said booming oil-and-gas production from sources including onshore shale formations and deepwater regions has defeated arguments that global oil production will soon peak and go into an irreversible decline.  Dudley, in a speech, noted projections of overall global demand energy growing by over a third by 2030, including the need for around 16 million more barrels per day at that time.  But he said that the ability produce from oil-and-gas reservoirs that were once out-of-reach will enable supply to keep up.

Is the Theory of 'Peak Oil' Dead?  Yet another voice has questioned the theory of "peak oil," which posits future scarcity, rising prices, and economic collapse due to the lack of precious fuels that drive the global economy. [...] In North America oil supply has grown annually by roughly 500,000 barrels per day while demand shrinks because vehicles are increasingly burning less gasoline.

End of an Era: The Death of Peak Oil.  For decades, pundits have been trying to predict a tipping point for Peak Oil — when a sustained and unabated climb in oil prices sparks a near-collapse of the global economy.  According to Peak Oil theory, the rate of petroleum extraction will crest and then begin an immutable decline, pushing oil prices ever higher as demand for this finite resource permanently exceeds supply.  However, an array of structural shifts in the Energy industry is conspiring to insulate the global economy from any such dramatic increase in the price of oil.  After decades of indifference, pivotal U.S. consumers have radically altered their consumption of petroleum and related products, moderating demand for the world's largest market.  Concurrently, heightened investments and technological breakthroughs have spurred an explosion in resources, as source rock has expanded the definition of "finite resource."

Great Moments In Failed Predictions.  In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England's factories would grind to a standstill.  In 1885, the US Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California.  In 1891, it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas.

Mexico details Gulf oil find.  After more than a dozen attempts, Mexico's national petroleum monopoly has struck significant oil very near the U.S. boundary in the ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday [8/29/2012].  "This is a great discovery," Calderon said in announcing the find by Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, beneath more than 8,300 feet of water and miles of earth, the first successful well in a system that he said ultimately may hold as much as 10 billion barrels of oil.

We face a worldwide glut of oil, with profound implications, most of them good.  So much for peak oil.  According to a fascinating new study by Leonardo Maugeri of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the the John F Kennedy School of Government, we should stop worrying about when the oil runs out and get ready for $70 a barrel prices (using the Brent benchmark).  Likely supply of the black stuff has been significantly underestimated, he reckons, with a veritable glut of new production due to come on stream over the next eight years.  If he's right, we can indeed stop worryng about a lot of things, unless a lover of windfarms and green energy.

No peak oil in sight: We've got an unprecedented upsurge in global oil production underway.  Contrary to what most people believe, oil is not in short supply and oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption.  From a purely physical point of view, there are huge volumes of conventional and unconventional oils still to be developed, with no "peak-oil" in sight.  The full deployment of the world's oil potential depends only on price, technology, and political factors.  More than 80 percent of the additional production under development globally appears to be profitable with a price of oil higher than $70 per barrel.

Meet The Oil Shale Eighty Times Bigger Than The Bakken.  Everyone has heard about the Bakken shale, the huge expanse of oil-bearing rock underneath North Dakota and Montana that billionaire Harold Hamm thinks could yield 24 billion barrels of oil in the decades to come.  The Bakken is a huge boon, both to the economic health of the northern Plains states, but also to the petroleum balance of the United States.  From just 60,000 barrels per day five years ago, the Bakken is now giving up 500,000 bpd, with 210,000 bpd of that coming on in just the past year. [...] But as great as the Bakken is, I learned last week about another oil shale play that dwarfs it.  It's called The Bazhenov.

12 Incredible Facts About Canada's Oil Sands.  [#1]  Of Canada's 175 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered, 170 billion barrels come from the oil sands in the Alberta region.

British oil strike off the Falkland Islands.  A Huge oil discovery has been made in the Falklands, sources claimed last night [4/22/2012].  The find, by a British-backed company, could contain up to a BILLION barrels of "black gold" an insider revealed.  The strike across two reservoirs off the Falklands' southern coast was made by oil explorer Borders and Southern.

What If Oil and Natural Gas Are Renewable Resources?  The evidence is mounting that not only do we have more than a century's worth of recoverable oil in the United States alone (even if there is a limit to the earth's oil supply), but that we also actually have a limitless supply of Texas tea because oil is in fact a renewable resource that is being constantly created deep under the earth's surface and which rises upward, where microscopic organisms that thrive in the intense pressure and heat miles below us interact with and alter it.

US Firm: 3-9 Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas Off Cyprus.  A top official with United States firm Noble Energy says a field it is conducting undersea exploratory drilling in off the coast of Cyprus may contain between 3 to 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Resurging North American Oil Production and the Death of the Peak Oil Hypothesis.  The concept of peak oil is being buried in North Dakota, which is now leading the US to be the fastest growing oil producer in the world.  The belief that global oil production has peaked, or is on the cusp of doing so, has underpinned much of crude oil's decade-long rally (setting aside the 2008 sell-off).  The belief was bolstered by the repeated failure of supply to live up to the optimistic forecasts put forward by various governmental and international energy agencies.  The IEA, the industry benchmark, made a habit of putting forth forecasts for the coming year of big gains in non-OPEC supply, only to spend the next 18 months revising those forecasts lower.

Monbiot: wrong again — 'Peak Oil' this time.  Until recently George "Reverse-Cassandra" Monbiot was very, very worried about Peak Oil. [...] So you might not unreasonably imagine that, were he ever to discover that the "Peak Oil" threat was nothing to worry about and that there was more than enough extractable oil to supply our needs for the foreseeable future, the Moonbat would be over the moon.  Right?  Wrong!  Here is what George Monbiot airily declared yesterday [7/2/2012] — sounding for all the world as if he'd read neither Watermelons nor a James Delingpole blogpost in his entire life.

RIP: Peak Oil — we won't be running out any time soon.  The death of Peak Oil kicks away the underpinnings from a great deal of policy-making by our bureaucracies and their advisers.  Over the past two decades, we've seen the mushrooming of the "sustainability" sector, which is almost completely dependent on state funding and which shares similar erroneous assumptions.  The proposition we're invited to accept in each case is that modern industrial society is founded on a resource which is being depleted and which cannot be easily replaced.  The second part of that is rather crucial.

Rising Oil Production in Alberta: More Evidence Disproving Hubbert's Peak.  [There was a] theory first offered by M. King Hubbert in 1956 that claimed that oil production in the United States would reach its peak between 1965 and 1970 and begin to decline thereafter.  It was based upon the assumption that the amount of oil reserves is fixed and that it is analogous, according to peak theory supporter Colin Campbell, to a glass of beer:  "The glass starts full and ends empty, and the faster you drink it, the quicker it's gone."  From that theory, Hubbert then claimed that this would drastically alter life in the United States, predicting chaos, war, starvation, economic decline and possibly even the extinction of mankind.

Peak oil:  Although supporters of peak oil theory are correct that new oil discoveries over the last several decades have been smaller than in the past, it is unknown how much crude oil is yet to be discovered.  Predictions about hitting peak oil in the near term might be correct, but there are at least four reasons for optimism that they are not.  First, high oil prices induce more exploration by oil companies.

Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields.  At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau — roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day — since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26.

The Editor says...
Oil production has never been easy.  Therefore, any prediction of the end of "easy oil" is misleading at best.

Peak Oil Scam is Based Upon Ideological, Fact-Blind Liberalism.  While it cannot come as a surprise after so many liberal hoaxes, it's still shocking to find we've been duped again — this time by the "Peak Oil" myth.  Peak Oil is the theory the world is on the verge of a catastrophic decline in global petroleum reserves that will result in major energy crises causing chaos across the world.  This notion has now been proved demonstrably false — yet, how was it accepted in the first place?

There Will Be Oil.  Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. ... The date of the predicted peak has moved over the years.  It was once supposed to arrive by Thanksgiving 2005.  Then the "unbridgeable supply demand gap" was expected "after 2007."  Then it was to arrive in 2011.  Now "there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020."  But there is another way to visualize the future availability of oil: as a "plateau."

Hubbert's Peak or Yergin's Plateau?  Peak Oil's fundamental assumption is that the supply of oil is finite and fixed.  The peak of the oil production curve is reached when half of the total resource base has been produced, so rate vs time exhibits a symmetric bell-shaped curve.  Post peak, rate declines rapidly.  Hubbert demonstrated a peak for oil production in Texas, and he extended his theory to correctly predict the time (but not the rate) of the peak for the U.S. World oil production is supposed to have peaked in the last five years or so.  But Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, argues...

Controversy Over Oil Sands Pipeline Project Approval.  A 4-by-8-mile pit deep in the wilderness of northwest Canada is taking center stage in America's energy debate.  The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta Province is the largest mine in what is the second largest oil reserve in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia.  The United States gets 20 percent of its imported oil from Canada, about half of it coming from the vast Athabasca tar sands.  And now there are plans to more than double the oil sands production and pipe nearly all of the oil through a new pipeline that would take it to refineries in Texas.

Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil?  The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration."  He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970.  That prediction of course proved to be quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production.

Peak renewables.  The "peak oil" scare has long been used as an excuse for alternative-energy providers to demand government subsidies.  We are told that oil production will reach a zenith and the wells will run dry any day now, so failure to provide billions in handouts to the providers of other fuels would be irresponsible.  Forget peak oil — the world may be on the verge of peak renewables.  The much-hyped intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind have proved so expensive to maintain that other developed nations are trimming subsidies.

Energy Independence:  Are You Serious?  At last, some promising energy news.  A new discovery of oil and gas in an unexplored region is leading to hope for potentially more energy than that possessed by the oil-rich nation of Libya.  Enough energy to make every man, woman, and child an instant millionaire.  Americans can only dream about this happy news, because the new discovery is not in the U.S. It is off the west coast of Greenland.

Rockhopper shares jump after raising Falklands oil estimate.  Rockhopper, the Falklands oil exploration company, ... announced today [4/4/2011] that it believes there are at least 155m barrels of oil extractable from the Sea Lion well, which is some 80 miles north of the Falkland Islands.  Rockhopper estimated in June that there would be a minimum of 57m barrels recoverable from the site.

Global warming and the 'settled science' baloney.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, most big scientific questions are unsettled, from galaxy formation to the origins of the moon.  Closer to home, even 150 years after the first commercial extraction of oil in western Pennsylvania, the mechanism of hydrocarbon formation is still a hotly contested issue.  While most petroleum geologists believe that oil and natural gas resulted from the slow anaerobic decomposition of biomass over eons, many others believe that hydrocarbons are an abiotic product of simple chemical reactions in the deep earth crust.  The relative numbers of scientists in the two camps do not speak to which explanation is correct.  Scientific truth is not decided by polls.

Deep oil:  a giant discovery.  BP has announced a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, drilled to a total depth of 35,055 feet.  Drilling began at a depth of 4,132 feet below the surface of the water.  No further details of the magnitude of the discovery are being released.  But this is further evidence that deep oil and gas deposits may dwarf the resources discovered at shallower depths.

BP's oil find is big, but miles out and down.  A major new oil discovery by BP in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the potential of a highly touted deep-water area where other oil companies also scored big in recent years, but the task of producing the crude has just begun.

BP Finds 'Giant' Oil Source Deep Under Gulf of Mexico.  BP said Wednesday [9/2/2009] that it made a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts said that the find deep below the sea floor raised hopes that further exploration in the region could help sustain U.S. offshore oil production.  The discovery, known as Tiber, was made 250 miles southeast of Houston and was "in the same league" as other big fields BP has discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said.

Canada's Oil Bonanza.  Canada has the oil the American economy desperately needs — and then some.  So why do we treat this and other energy allies like pariahs?

The Problem's Not Peak Oil, It's Politics.  Some "peak oil" cassandras warn that global energy production will soon fall into permanent decline.  But a more immediate danger to world oil supplies may be the tempestuous politics of many producing countries.

Morons Who Hate Oil:  Are we running out of oil?  No.  Let me repeat.  No.  There is no such thing as "peak oil" because every time someone has made the prediction that we are using up all the oil, we find some more.  This not to say the Obama administration will let oil companies drill for it in America.  Not only do we pay less for domestic oil as opposed to importing it, but we have so much domestic oil we wouldn't have to import it.

The World Has Plenty of Oil.  The world is not running out of oil anytime soon.  A gradual transitioning on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century.  The root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior alternatives.  The overused observation that "the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones" may in fact find its match.

Environmentalists Still Can't Get It Right.  In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.  In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.  In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.  Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

Peak Oil:  An Idea Whose Time Is Up.  Some analysts believe that investors who have swallowed the peak oil theory are pricing oil higher because they fear the world is running out of crude and permanent shortages are nigh.  They shouldn't believe it.

Have we underestimated total oil reserves?  Black gold might not be as scarce as we thought.  This week oil prices escalated to a record $139 per barrel, but that may partly be because the amount of available oil in known reserves has been significantly underestimated.  So says Richard Pike, a former oil-industry adviser and chief executive of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry, who blames flawed statistical calculations.

World has enough oil supplies for 'many decades':  Nuaimi.  Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said on Sunday [6/22/2008] the world has enough crude to last for "many decades" and that his country will invest massively to be able to produce 15 million barrels a day.  "The world has enough petroleum reserves, both conventional and non-conventional, to meet oil demand for many, many decades to come," Nuaimi told a summit in Jeddah of top consumers and producers.

Kuwait oil lifespan 115 years.  The lifespan of Kuwait's oil fields could prolong to 115 years if state-of-the-art technologies are tapped, according to a new book released by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).  Kuwait's confirmed oil reserves are 101.5 billion barrels, the book said, citing British Petroleum (BP) figures in 2005.  Now that Kuwait's daily oil output is 2.415 million barrels according to February 2007 statistics, the lifespan of oil fields is 42,029 days or 115 years, the book said.

Why So High?  According to [the American Petroleum Institute], "The U.S. government estimates that deepwater regions of the Gulf of Mexico may contain 71 billion barrels of oil."  API estimates that there are 10.5 billion barrels off the shores of California and the Pacific Northwest, 3.8 billion barrels off the Atlantic coastline, and 18 billion barrels onshore and 26.6 billion barrels off the Alaska coast and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  This adds up to 138.1 billion barrels of oil, enough to power over 60 million automobiles for 60 years according to government estimates.  (These same reservoirs could supply 656 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, sufficient to heat 60 million homes for the next 160 years.)

Peak Oil Is a Waste of Energy.  Remember "peak oil"?  It's the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe.  Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, ...

The IEA Puts a Date on Peak Oil Production.  Faith Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new discoveries are made, "the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis."

At this point, it's anybody's gas!  (That's a pun.)
How much oil lies beneath the Earth's crust?  The only thing we know for sure is that history is littered with estimates so far off the mark — usually below the mark — that they border on the comical.  In the 1920s, for instance, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP) refused to take a stake in Saudi Arabia, thinking that the country didn't hold a single drop of oil.  In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the United States would run out of oil in nine years.  Yet by the time nine years had passed, huge discoveries, topped by the Black Giant field in Texas, had created a massive oil glut that almost destroyed the industry.

World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warn scientists.  Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.  BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates.  The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.

Running out of oil?  "Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels.  That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI. … There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves.  Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online.

We Are Not Running Out of Oil.  Every time oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media issue dire warnings that a crisis is upon us — it's not!  Many factors are contributing to the currently high gas prices: limited refining capacity, political restrictions on development of new domestic sources of oil, reduced supply from several oil exporting countries due to political conflicts, limited supplies due to the actions of the oil cartel, OPEC, and finally, increased demand for oil in China.  Dwindling supplies of oil is not a factor in the current price at the pump.

Geologist:  Earth has lots and lots of oil.  A University of Washington economic geologist says there is lots of crude oil left for human use.  Eric Cheney said Friday in a news release that changing economics, technological advances and efforts such as recycling and substitution make the world's mineral resources virtually infinite.

The Peak Oil Myth:  The U.S. had 321 refineries in 1981; the U.S. has 149 oil refineries today.  Many plants operate 24 hours a day (with no down-time for maintenance) to supply the growing demand for fuel, and to comply with EPA regulations that require refineries to formulate different types of gasoline in different regions of the country at different times of the year.

Plenty of oil left in the global tank.  [Scroll down] The most important reason for rejecting the "peak oil is here" argument, however, is that current production reflects investment decisions taken years ago, when prices were much lower.  It was only just over three years ago that oil rose above $40 a barrel.  A few years earlier it was $10-$11.  Higher prices will bring more output on stream.

Oil is Not a fossil fuel.  [In the 1940s] Stalin's team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a 'fossil fuel' but is a natural product of planet earth — the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide — two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth's crust.  This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the 'death' of planet earth in millions of years' time.

IEA Sees No Twilight for Saudi Oil.  Mark Twain's old line about the reports of his death being greatly exaggerated might apply to the Saudis.  If this year's oil production results and the 2008 predictions are to be believed, then the Saudis are going to continue to dominate the global oil business.

Aramco Chief Debunks Peak Oil.  "We have grossly underestimated mankind's ability to find new reserves of petroleum, as well as our capacity to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce."  So said Abdallah S. Jum'ah, Saudi Aramco's president and CEO, during his address at the 11th Congress of the World's Energy Council in Rome last November.  With the mass media focused on soaring oil prices and publishing a rash of peak oil stories, Jum'ah's latest contribution to the peak oil debate has gone largely unreported.

Oil Prices:  Cause and Effect.  The price of crude didn't rise from $12 in early 1999 to nearly $60 because the world suddenly ran out of oil.  On the contrary, the world supply of petroleum has risen 10 percent since then, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 65.8 million barrels a day in 1999 to 72.5 million in 2004.

Natural Gas Needs No Dinosaurs to Form.  Credible scientists have now demonstrated that methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, can form inorganically, as a result of natural processes that involve no biological material whatsoever — no dead dinosaurs, no rotting ancient forests, not even any little plankton trapped in the soil.

Endless oil.  Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars?  The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. ... Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.  Except in Russia and Ukraine.  What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there.  Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth's 25-mile deep crust.

Obama and the Alternative Energy Fiasco:  [Scroll down]  All of these things are happening at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap. ... Many cars could run on natural gas, much like many buses do already. ... New technologies continually revive old oil and gas fields and make new ones economically viable.  So it's little more than socialist Malthusianism to argue that the world is running out of cheap energy.

Peak Government, Not Oil.  The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil.  We've been told that for the last 150 years.  The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.

Peak Oil:  A Theory Running Out Of Gas.  One year ago, Congress responded to the chorus of Americans calling for more American energy by lifting the ban on offshore drilling.  For the first time in a quarter-century, it became legal to drill for more oil and natural gas reserves offshore.  This anniversary allows us to look back on how far we have come since 2008.  The sad reality is we have barely moved.

Petrobras:  Oil field may have 380 million barrels.  Brazil's state-run oil company says it has found a new offshore oil reserve that could hold nearly 400 million barrels of oil equivalent.  Petroleo Brasileiro SA says in a statement that the pre-salt reservoir was discovered 14,633 feet (4,460 meters) below the ocean floor off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

Giant oil pipeline in the works from Alberta to the Gulf.  In the coming weeks, the Obama administration will decide if it wants to significantly increase the amount of oil the country imports from Canada's controversial Alberta oil sands.  The State Department is set to issue what could be a final ruling to allow a massive new pipeline expansion from central Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.  A decision is expected early in the new year.

There Is No Gas Shortage.  Gasoline reserves on hand are at the highest levels since the early 1990s, which is remarkable considering the nation's refineries have been cutting back on the production of gasoline because their margins have declined.  In fact, average gasoline reserves on hand have risen since this past October [2007], while oil reserves in this country have gone up virtually every week this year — and only fog in the Houston Ship Channel that kept oil tankers from unloading their crude one week kept it from being every week.

Oil Is Not A Fossil Fuel.  To begin with, oil is not a fossil fuel.  This is a theory put forth by 18th century scientists.  Within 50 years, Germany and France's scientists had attacked the theory of petroleum's biological roots.  In fact, oil is abiotic, not the product of long decayed biological matter.  And oil, for better or for worse, is not a non-renewable resource.  It, like coal, and natural gas, replenishes from sources within the mantle of earth.  This is the real and true science of oil.  Read all about it.

The Myth Of Peak Oil:  Peak oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity and jack up prices while giving the state an excuse to invade our lives and order us to sacrifice our hard-earned living standards. ... The analysis of the oil now being produced at Eugene Island shows that its age is geologically different from the oil produced there after the refinery first opened.  Suggesting strongly that it is now emerging from a different, unexplained source.  The last estimates of probable reserves shot up from 60 million barrels to 400 million barrels.  Both the scientists and geologists from the big oil companies have seen the evidence and admitted that the Eugene Island oil field is refilling itself.  This completely contradicts peak oil theory and with technology improving at an accelerating pace it seems obvious that there are more Eugene Islands out there waiting to be discovered.

Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil?  The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration."  He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970.  That prediction of course proved to be quite untrue, but that does not stop those who want to shut down our oil production.  They just revise it when facts force them to, and continue with the theory and their efforts to shut down our oil production as much as possible.

Peak Oil, Entirely Nonsense: As is Peak Gas.  One of the things that really rather annoys me about the peak oil (and in the UK, there's a similar one about peak gas) argument is that it entirely ignores the impact of changing technology. ... Now that we've developed fracking, to do what geology hasn't done in the far more numerous shales, there just really isn't any long term, long term meaning century or more, shortage of oil and or gas.

Fracking: The Radical Left's Latest Weapon of Fear.  In 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans of a pending "national catastrophe" in a prime time nationally televised speech.  "The Oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out."  Resources were being depleted so fast that the world "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," Carter said.  Rather obviously, Carter's end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it prediction didn't happen. ... Instead of running out of oil and gas as Carter predicted, the inventory of America's recoverable domestic reserves has increased dramatically.



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