U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi Arabia

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
If you think about it, this is not a good sign.

The US has seen peek oil coming for some time. We've been holding our sources in reserve while we exchange federal reserve notes for oil from other countries. We all know what happens to countries that don't want to take our paper for their oil. If we're starting to tap our resources like this, two possibilities come to mind. Either we can't find enough foreign sources to drain to meet our needs, or we're getting dangerously close to "printing too much paper" and crashing the economy. Maybe a combination of both.

I was thinking the same thing. If the U.S. is now the major producer of oil, then why hasn't the price per barrel of crude gone down to 1990's levels. Currently, it is $104/barrel and almost $4 per gallon at the gas pump.
Something doesn't add up. I will keep researching.

a reply to: Kratos40

Consumption isn't at 1990 levels, so why would you expect the price to go down to 1990 levels?!

It's a whole lot more complex than you're thinking. The major energy companies have invested 2.5 Trillion dollars in capital since 2007 to keep supply so high, using lower EROI sources.

nevermind...

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: Kratos40

Consumption isn't at 1990 levels, so why would you expect the price to go down to 1990 levels?!

It's a whole lot more complex than you're thinking. The major energy companies have invested 2.5 Trillion dollars in capital since 2007 to keep supply so high, using lower EROI sources.

Some things have changed since the 1990's, such as more fuel-efficient/electric cars on the road. Wouldn't this make a significant impact on the demand for oil? Also let's not forget the national oil reserve and more people tele-commuting and taking public transportation.
You mention that 2.7 Trillion has been invested. In what specifically? I've read that no new refineries have been built in a long time, in order to keep prices artificially high.
Like you said, the situation may be more complex.

a reply to: Kratos40

Increased efficiency in passenger vehicles is irrelevant in the face of increase in consumption in the 2000's, compared to the 90's. We did peak out as the prices reached triple digits last decade. The US economy will only withstand ~$110-120/barrel without recession.

The monies have gone into less lucrative endeavors, like R & D into shale, tar sands, deepwater drilling, and so on. We have the refineries for conventional oil. No need for more. As for the national reserve, it's a minute supply meant for emergency use, in the face of some sort of unforeseen disruption in supplies. If I recall correctly, the reserves will last the US a mere few weeks if we needed to run solely off it.

Great news!

Im a big supporter of our Canadian Oil Sands. Canadian oil, refined by Canadians for Canadians? What a crazy idea
(Except Quebec, they get it mostly from Venezuela)

We have thee second known largest oil reserves on the planet. Our young country has the unique oppourtunity to become energy self sufficient. The way it should be. And grow our economy at the same time..


Here is a shirt I have



Edit: www.canadaaction.ca...

originally posted by: pheonix358
My opinion is that this is all bunk.

The US invaded Iraqi, stayed for more than a decade. They pumped the oil out from the oil fields, shipped it home and put it back into the ground in empty wells!

Now they are 'producing' oil.

You are all buying stolen goods. What is more, the US seems to be getting away with it. It was not theirs, it is stolen merchandise.

Just my opinion but it is not hard to figure it out. Shale oil .... yea right.

P

---
Wow.

That is the most ridiculous garbage I have ever read on ATS an I have heard some crazy things....

Despite your anti-west rhetoric of which you've painted yourself with so gloriously, you seriously have to do better that that, "we pumped oil...then shipped it over here...poured it back into empty wells...and voila, we are now the leading oil producers".
Your game is seriously loosing its edge, a certain poster with a cute starwars avatar does a better job than that.
---ANYWAYS---
I have read about this for some time, I remember reading an article about how Saudia Arabia was starting to heavily invest in Tourism to help keep the money flowing in, apparently they knew sooner or later that their oil reign was coming to an end.
I'm gonna miss those stories about lamborghini police cars and lavish lifestyles of saudi princes an kings...NOT.

originally posted by: CALGARIAN
Great news!

Im a big supporter of our Canadian Oil Sands. Canadian oil, refined by Canadians for Canadians? What a crazy idea

(Except Quebec, they get it mostly from Venezuela)

We have thee second known largest oil reserves on the planet. Our young country has the unique oppourtunity to become energy self sufficient. The way it should be. And grow our economy at the same time..


Here is a shirt I have

Edit: www.canadaaction.ca...

Self sufficient??? Hahaha what a joke. Maybe that would be possible if NAFTA allowed it, or if your Albertan government actually bothered to impose and actually collect significant royalties instead of just letting corporations do as they please.

Or maybe you Albertans should be building refineries instead of export pipelines so, you know, we could actually turn the bitumen into usable gas instead of having to import it back from the USA at obscene prices.

Canada Action Plan is a sick joke. All Harper's strategy is to focus on creating thousands of jobs in the tar sands region by making it much easier for oil corporations to develop their extraction processes and by deregulating any pesky legal or environmental barriers. Any real scientific research in Canada has been abolished by Harper, with most scientific funding going towards R&D of oil industry. Government funding for universities now goes towards trades and technology while arts and social programs dry up and die.

Must be nice to live in Alberta, where you pay three times as much for commodities like rent, and have to wait an hour just to get a $1.87 coffee at Timmies.

a reply to: xuenchen

so why is gas still $4/gallon?
lol

a reply to: AnonymousMoose

There are several reasons for the price... Mostly, I think it boils down to speculation. It is a finite resource, extractable at a certain rate (Faster extractions lead to less overall extracted, slow and steady gives a well a longer lifetime and an increase in amount retrievable)... Most wells take years to scout location, plan, build, and setup. In that time, a resource might decline in price and become subeconomic. Honestly though, you gotta look at the industrializing nations of the world, gas guzzling giant booming economies like China and India (though I hear they use compressed natural gas in place of a lot of gasoline...). They're the competition, they want the oil. Now that the US isn't the only kid on the block able and willing to buy, there can be a bidding war.

I'm not an economics expert though. Take my interpretation with a grain of salt... or a dome of salt.

originally posted by: hydeman11
a reply to: soficrow
I'd personally love it if Tesla's Towers could operate as efficiently as he believed they could, but I somehow doubt that they will... Will they work? I think so. But they don't generate power, they only transmit it without wires by electrifying the ground and reportedly the ionosphere.

So there are two big issues to be accounted for. ....Secondly, the issue of electrifying large expanses of the ground and atmosphere... I have no idea what kind of effect that might have on animals living in the air (such as birds, that navigate potentially by electromagnetism) or the ground, but I know earthworms are sensitive to that kind of thing... Shocking the ground can cause earthworms to crawl upward. I can't speak for other things, but earthworms are potentially some of the best bioturbators on land. Without them, plants have a much harder time growing, so there might be some issues with that.

That said, it'd be great if it would work without serious issues. All energy has a downside, so please don't be offended by my skepticism.

I'm not offended. I agree. I know that ultra low frequency geomagnetic activity can cause strokes, heart attacks and other health issues. WIFI is suspect too. So one of my first thoughts about the Tesla Tower was, "But, but?" Still, as you say, maybe someone can work out the kinks. We can hope.

originally posted by: pheonix358
My opinion is that this is all bunk.

The US invaded Iraqi, stayed for more than a decade. They pumped the oil out from the oil fields, shipped it home and put it back into the ground in empty wells!

Now they are 'producing' oil.

You are all buying stolen goods. What is more, the US seems to be getting away with it. It was not theirs, it is stolen merchandise.

Just my opinion but it is not hard to figure it out. Shale oil .... yea right.

P

Christ almighty that's some delusion you have there lol

Any proof off this?

Do you honestly think there would not be evidence of this?

Perhaps you could do some research on the ground breaking shale extraction methods and see just how much untapped oil the US is sitting on instead of making baseless claims, much of it has been hard to het to or too costly to mine/extract until now

originally posted by: pheonix358
a reply to: hydeman11

Anyway, yeah... Not stolen oil and gas, just suddenly extractable and economic thanks to new tech.

Well then! What an amazing co-incidence. The perfect timing of these events is just what? A co-incidence .... I do not think so. Yes I am sure some shale oil is being extracted, but to suddenly lead the world in oil production.

No, I think not!

P

As I said before education and research

The timing you say, well for a start the US has been long know to be reserving and sitting on trillions in untapped resources, this is nothing new it's been debated for well over 4 decades, the US economy needed a shot of life, so while overseas gas and oil has been bought while the times where good, it's now time to open up closer to home wells, it's not coincidence it's "strategy"

a reply to: pheonix358

Suddenly? Please, US Oil producers have been looking at "shale-oil" since the 1970's, it was never profitable until oil went north of $3 a gallon.

Humans have been using shale oil on an industrial scale since the early industrial revolution. Again, many simply didn't find it profitable until petroleum rocketed north of $3 a gallon and stayed there.

a reply to: hydeman11

Oil / gas prices are always determined by speculation. The industries top investors would lose money if it was due to anything else. Instead, false crises are proclaimed by the oil industries when prices get to low, typically just before holidays/ long weekends. The flow itself doesn't really fluctuate, but the influx of dollars into the industry does.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Apparently the U.S. has surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia in oil production.

One main factor is oil fracking oil shale production.

Not bad. The economy might be moving ahead slow as it be.

The story also say the U.S. has been the leader in natural gas since 2010.

And of course, the U.S. is the largest oil consumer.

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. 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.

U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi Arabia

pump 'n burn pump 'n burn CO2

Say what you want about Obama but he has really favored energy independence as a whole. Too bad our oil is still sold on the world market rather than giving priority to just domestic selling so we could have it "cheap" like the other nations that produce oil, though that's still limited by the costs to obtain it, shale drilling is expensive.

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: LeoStarchild

The bulk of US oil imports does not come from the middle East. It comes from Canada and South America.

Being number one only to lose it around 2030 is not something to celebrate. I also find that time table interesting from a business aspect. Why advertise the so called "Hubbard Peak" for the United States?

Regardless of the rate of extraction I think we're all in on having an alternative to oil at this point. 2030 vs 2050 is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

A buddy in college told me that after his professor told the class "he belives the world is directed by a few," that we use everyone else's oil on purpose as not to use ours incase there's any oil crisis.

a reply to: Flesh699

This has been a popular theory for a long time. I remember coming up with it in high school and I know people came up with it before me. The US is a very oil rich country and if you include Natural Gas we're even further ahead. The thing is though most of our oil is very expensive to extract so it only makes sense once it's above $x/barrel. That's why we're seeing fracking and shale now. The real reason we use others oil is because it's cheaper, in absolute terms it also best to be the last person in oil as far as national interest goes.

The problem is even if we're the last ones with an abundance of oil, it's only good for 20 or 30 years, then we're in the same boat as everyone else. That time is fast approaching, we need alternatives to oil and we need them soon. We already have one for automotive travel and some flight with electric motors but then the issue becomes electricity generation. Our best option there is Uranium but Uranium is actually in very short supply too, it's projected to run out around the same time as oil at current consumption +/- a few years. Which brings us to Thorium. It's abundant, doesn't melt down, has a "short" half life, and produces nuclear power. We haven't been willing to use it though, the best news on that front is that India is trying to develop it these days. The other major hurdle is battery technology.

a reply to: Aazadan

The USA is also opening up its strategic oil reserve fields, such as those in protected Alaskan parks. This means that the best quality and easiest to access oil that the Americans have traditionally been extracting, is depleting at rapid rates.

Depletion does not mean that all the oil is being sucked out. Depletion is a "half-life" process, where a well is fine until it hits its peak output. Then it becomes much harder and more costly to extract the rest of the oil under the well.

When you consider this on scales higher than just one well, like an entire field or a country's total reserves, then it gets murky. Even though estimates may claim billions of barrels are left, it becomes exponentially more difficult and costly to scrape at the second-half of the extraction process (after peak output).

Strategic reserves are good to have but the entire economic system of the global economy depends on economic growth. This means that oil consumption is always rising, so oil production must always be on the rise as well.

The next generation of economic and military superpowers will be defined by which nation controls enough strategic energy and mineral resources. The USA is already doomed. It will never be able to sustain both its internal economy and global military.

While the USA boasts record oil production now, it is really only a desperate action to sustain itself with strategic oil reserves that were protected until such a scenario was to take place.

Fracking will not save the USA. Underground aquifers of fresh water take 100s-1000s of years to refresh themselves, and fracking destroys them as if they never mattered. And it causes earthquakes. American citizens would be experiencing catastrophic water issues and crumbling infrastructure already due to serious over-urbanization and neglect, and fracking will make this so much worse.

Fracking itself is a process that was only developed with the last two decades. The long term affects of vast fracking operations will become apparent within the coming decades. It literally is geoengineering of vast geographic areas. Fracking will wipe out entire ecosystems and long term, maybe even the aridation of forests.

And no, I do not know of any alternative to sustaining economic growth. The only solution will be a new economic system. And we will probably see it by 2050 when only a minority of citizens and the state have access to fuel. And the USA will not be the only country in the situation either.

a reply to: Vovin

Right, I'm aware of how well depletion works. Essentially every barrel pumped out of a well is more difficult to pump than the previous barrel because pressure drops. Eventually this causes the output of a well to decline, even the very first wells drilled in the US could still produce a barrel or so per day despite being officially depleted, but the energy cost of doing so and the output just isn't worth the hassle.

I remember hearing back in the 90's that our strategic reserve in Alaska could supply the nation on it's own for 10 years but that was at 1990's consumption and I'm sure involved some sort of oil rationing beyond that. I bet today at full capacity it would only supply us for 1-2 years. That's not our only source of oil however, we have fracking like it or not (personally I'm against it... we're selling out our future for a slightly better present), and we have shale oil. The US has a lot of shale.

I agree that the US needs to cut back on the military but right now our military is what sustains our economy. It's a very bad situation to be in but the military industrial complex is our economy. By cutting back on our military or military demand for goods/services we're destroying our pathetic excuse for an economy. This all comes back to needing a replacement for oil which with current technology (barring something miraculous that's hidden away) comes down to electricity generation and batteries. Essentially we need to convert our shipping industry from trucks back to rail that can be powered via electricity along the track, and we need to convert our automobile industry over to electric vehicles. Doing so however puts a lot of strain on the electric grid and requires us to build new power plants. The coal lobby screws everything up there as do environmentalists who think solar and wind can solve everything.

When it comes to an economic system that doesn't rely on growth, the solution isn't that difficult. I've come up with one before. Basically you need to put an economic focus on reuse and disincentivize purchasing new goods unless necessary. There's actually a lot of good that can come from such a system, it's basically doing away with the idea of planned obsolence which leads to repeated purchases/growth. Here's the thread I wrote on it many months ago www.abovetopsecret.com...