Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby tmazanec1 » Sat 01 Aug 2015, 16:02:44

I have heard that Saudi Arabia has been suppressing American fracking by pumping out a lat of oil to depress thaw price.
For as long as I have been following PO I have heard "Ghawar is Dying". When will SA be unable to continue to do this?
tmazanec1
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 506
Joined: Tue 12 Oct 2004, 03:00:00

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby kublikhan » Sat 01 Aug 2015, 18:23:00

It's not that the Saudi's are pumping more that people are complaining about. It's that they refused to cut production. The Saudis are pumping about the same amount of oil now as they were 3 years ago. The US on the other hand is pumping 50% more. It's the US that really opened up the taps in the last 3 years. The Saudis are under no obligation to cut their own production so US frackers can fill in the gap with their product. It's a dog eat dog world.

Oil production in mbpd - figures from April of year specified
country_____ 2012 2015
Saudi Arabia 9.9 9.9
US__________ 6.3 9.7

Saudi Arabia Crude Oil Production

U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil
The oil barrel is half-full.
User avatar
kublikhan
Master Prognosticator
Master Prognosticator
 
Posts: 5002
Joined: Tue 06 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Illinois

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby tmazanec1 » Sun 02 Aug 2015, 08:39:40

kublikhan wrote:It's not that the Saudi's are pumping more that people are complaining about. It's that they refused to cut production. The Saudis are pumping about the same amount of oil now as they were 3 years ago. The US on the other hand is pumping 50% more. It's the US that really opened up the taps in the last 3 years. The Saudis are under no obligation to cut their own production so US frackers can fill in the gap with their product. It's a dog eat dog world.

Oil production in mbpd - figures from April of year specified
country_____ 2012 2015
Saudi Arabia 9.9 9.9
US__________ 6.3 9.7

Saudi Arabia Crude Oil Production

U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil


Sure. I didn't expect SA to do anything else than look at their own interests. I just wondered how long they can keep it up...when does the world go POP?
tmazanec1
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 506
Joined: Tue 12 Oct 2004, 03:00:00

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby StarvingLion » Sun 02 Aug 2015, 13:16:12

The USA is hindering fracking.

Fracking costs $8 million to bring a single well into production. This is likely to dramatically increase with new EPA rules. The barrage of heavy trucks smashes the local roads that requires 10's of billions of dollars to rebuild.

The fact is Hydraulic Fracturing is extremely inefficient and error prone. The drill bit is not steered in real time to the sweet spots and constant refracs are required that often fail. There is no science of fracking. It is entirely an art. The retarded Anglo-Saxon banking con is not interested in technologies that require very expensive field experiments that have a high degree of uncertainty.

Therefore, fracking, like nuclear, will simply stop in the USA because refinement is too difficult and expensive. The USA is no longer interested in being an industrial power, the manufacturing capital of the world. The neoliberalism con is an extractive economy (eg. traders) that uses semiconductor derived technologies to basically rip everyone off with surtaxes.
Outcast_Searcher is a fraud.
StarvingLion
Permanently Banned
 
Posts: 2612
Joined: Sat 03 Aug 2013, 18:59:17

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sun 02 Aug 2015, 13:23:21

Could this be a moot point? I saw, per the following link, that SA wasn't going to continue this as aggressively after summer.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/saudi- ... 2015-07-29

Also, depending on market prices (which the current trend and lots of predictions say seems to be down) might do the job for them -- for awhile, anyway.

And, does it matter in the big picture? The oil will still be there, even if owned by stronger financial hands. When the price rises to a point that the demand is there and the risk is seen as acceptable, the oil will be recovered and burned.

Nothing is changing here except the timing of which oil gets burned.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
User avatar
Outcast_Searcher
COB
COB
 
Posts: 10142
Joined: Sat 27 Jun 2009, 21:26:42
Location: Central KY

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby C8 » Sun 02 Aug 2015, 13:47:37

I would think some of the tech that has made US oil production so productive and lower in costs will be used by the Saudis too to extend their fields.
User avatar
C8
Heavy Crude
Heavy Crude
 
Posts: 1074
Joined: Sun 14 Apr 2013, 09:02:48

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 02 Aug 2015, 15:05:55

My personal opinion? KSA will keep pumping as much as they can until about November 1, 2015. When the big banks do their re-evaluation of the fracking companies in October a lot of them will be crippled if not outright killed. KSA will see this as msiion accomplished and switch back to profit motive driving the prices back up to $75-$85/bbl. This will help themselves a great deal without doing much for their competitors like Iran.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 00:43:57

". The drill bit is not steered in real time to the sweet spots and constant refracs are required that often fail". And once again we have vivid proof of another "expert" how understands nothing about the technology being deployed. Folks pick up a smattering of tech info and think they understand everything. It's akin to giving a child a load pistol and the wondering what went wrong. LOL.
User avatar
ROCKMAN
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11397
Joined: Tue 27 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: TEXAS

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 01:11:53

Tanada wrote:My personal opinion? KSA will keep pumping as much as they can until about November 1, 2015. When the big banks do their re-evaluation of the fracking companies in October a lot of them will be crippled if not outright killed. KSA will see this as msiion accomplished and switch back to profit motive driving the prices back up to $75-$85/bbl. This will help themselves a great deal without doing much for their competitors like Iran.

Again, it's not like that LTO is going anywhere, even if the current owners are forced to sell to stronger hands. It WILL be recovered when oil prices get high enough to make that (realistically) profitable enough to be worth the risk of drilling. (Is $85 high enough? If so, the KSA might be shooting themselves in the foot with this "strategy".)

This is all short term maneuvering. Fun for short term oil speculators, perhaps. Certainly fun for the first world clowns waiting for ANY excuse to buy a gas guzzler. :roll:
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
User avatar
Outcast_Searcher
COB
COB
 
Posts: 10142
Joined: Sat 27 Jun 2009, 21:26:42
Location: Central KY

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby StarvingLion » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 02:04:03

Rockman is full of nonsense again. First an overview of realtime logging and steering from the book, "Fundamentals of Sustainable Drilling Engineering", @2015 Wiley,

"The steerable drilling systems are particularly valuable where changes in the direction of the borehole are difficult to achieve, where directional control is difficult to maintain in the tangent sections of the well (such as in formations with dipping beds) or where frequent changes may be required. The steerable systems are used in conjunction with measurement while drilling (MWD) tools, which contain petrophysical and directional sensors. These types of MWD tools are oft en called logging whilst drilling (LWD) tools. The petrophysical sensors are used to detect changes in the properties of the formations (lithology, resistivity or porosity) whilst drilling and therefore determine if a change in direction is required. Effectively the assembly is being used to track
desirable formation properties and place the wellbore in the most desirable location from a reservoir engineering perspective. The term “Geosteering” is often used when the steerable system is used to drill a directional well in this way."

In the chapter entitled "Horizontal and Directional Drilling"

"One of the greatest challenges in horizontal drilling is maintaining the drill bit within a thin reservoir or staying away from oil-water or oil-gas
contact."


"Since geologists and geophysicists cannot give the location of a reservoir (target) with 100% accuracy,...."

---------------------------------------------

There, I just destroyed the economic and environmental legitimacy of Hydraulic Fracturing in two sentences. Geosteering does not work reliably with unconventionals. The fact that the book contains the word, 'Sustainable', in its title is needed because Fracking and oil drilling in general is not economically nor environmentally sustainable. Its back to the deep seas because thats where the legitimate reservoirs are found. Here, the intense pressures and temperatures frys the electronics of making measurements ahead of the drill bit.
Outcast_Searcher is a fraud.
StarvingLion
Permanently Banned
 
Posts: 2612
Joined: Sat 03 Aug 2013, 18:59:17

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby davep » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 02:26:43

SL, I think Rockman was referring to fracking rather than conventional wells whereas your quote appears to be for conventional wells. My Dad was involved in horizontal drilling in the eighties. It's not exactly new.
What we think, we become.
User avatar
davep
Senior Moderator
Senior Moderator
 
Posts: 4578
Joined: Wed 21 Jun 2006, 03:00:00
Location: Europe

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Pops » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 14:01:16

Couple things,
KSA is getting into refining
Drilling continues to increase

Just a WAG but looks like i: oil aint quite as easy, ii: the old guard is gone, iii: they gave up on being a US protectorate
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Synapsid » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 16:15:38

Pops,

That KSA refining: Yanbu refinery JV came online in April, I believe, the second JV 400 000 barrels/day refinery in recent years. A third is due in 2017 giving 1.2 million barrels/day of refining capacity that wasn't there a few years ago. If the JV agreements are 50/50 then there'll be 600 000 barrels/day of spanking new capacity for Saudi Aramco.

Saudi Arabia should have begun doing this long ago, I think.

More surprising to me is that Saudi Aramco has been running recruiting ads in Rigzone specifying shale experience. They haven't learned from our experience, it seems.
Synapsid
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 21:21:50

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 18:28:36

Synapsid wrote:More surprising to me is that Saudi Aramco has been running recruiting ads in Rigzone specifying shale experience. They haven't learned from our experience, it seems.


Oh I dunno, if they have shale that is good candidate from fracking production they have probably already determined where the sweet spots are the same way Americans did with the Bakken in North Dakota. That means they can exploit the portions that will have a good financial return while still producing cheaper oil from conventional formations. I think the past decade has shown the only way they can expand their actual market share much is if they produce more, and they have not been able to do that with conventional fields.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Synapsid » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 19:30:55

Tanada,

I don't know either. I suspect they're starting from zero as far as knowledge of shale resources in the country, though. High-level voices pooh-poohed shale when it began to take off here.
Synapsid
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 21:21:50

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 19:56:43

Synapsid wrote:Tanada,

I don't know either. I suspect they're starting from zero as far as knowledge of shale resources in the country, though. High-level voices pooh-poohed shale when it began to take off here.


I thought that all the test drilling done since the 1930's would have narrowed down the types of rock strata all over the country?
II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Subjectivist
Volunteer
Volunteer
 
Posts: 4701
Joined: Sat 28 Aug 2010, 07:38:26
Location: Northwest Ohio

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Mon 03 Aug 2015, 23:18:37

Dave - No, I was referring to the kitty cat's statement:"The drill bit is not steered in real time to the sweet spots and constant refracs are required that often fail"." And the he responds with a great reference that explains why he's full of sh*t regarding his statement that geosteering is done in real time. So what: the steer the drill bit after the drill the well? I hope most folks caught the absurdity of that statement even if they know little about direction drilling. That claim is no different the saying the pilot of a landing plane doesn't control the plane in real time. Truly bizarre.
User avatar
ROCKMAN
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11397
Joined: Tue 27 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: TEXAS

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby Pops » Tue 04 Aug 2015, 08:29:35

KSA rig count is still increasing,

http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/upl ... -Count.jpg
EIA via POB

So if the Saudi's idea is that it's the US's turn to cut production and bring up the price, the fact remains, KSAs spare capacity, at least nameplate capacity, is relatively low by historical standards. Spare capacity is the amount that can be brought online in a month and be maintained for 3 months.

With no spare capacity, some weather or a jihad in Canada or somewhere could easily put a crimp in supply because frackers can't just turn a spigot, can they?
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: How long can Saudi Arabia hinder fracking?

Unread postby sjn » Tue 04 Aug 2015, 09:08:15

Isn't it a bit "tin-foil" to suggest the Saudis are conspiring to destroy US fracking? Isn't it more likely that oil prices are being suppressed for the same reason all other commodity prices are falling? Why should oil be special in this regard?

As to the underlying causation, that really isn't as simple as blaming it on the Saudi's or US frackers, they're both driven by the same dynamic. Whether or not you think there's any validity to shortonoil's ETP model, there can be little doubt now whether there has been a massive mis-allocation of capital in the insane financial bubbles that have been driving the global economy for the last few years. The result has been many non-economic or marginal activities have been financed that shouldn't have been, at a time when economic resource extraction is being hit hard by diminishing returns. Where cause ends and effect begins, isn't always determinable in a complex system with many feedbacks, the globalised financial economy is no exception. The Saudi's are just a cog in the machine.
User avatar
sjn
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 1332
Joined: Wed 09 Mar 2005, 04:00:00
Location: UK

Next

Return to Peak Oil Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 97 guests