Keystone Pipeline leaks 383,000 gallons of oil into wetlands in second big spill over two years

A leak in the Keystone Pipeline has released an estimated 383,000 gallons of oil – about the size of an Olympic swimming pool – into the North Dakota wetlands. The leak is the second leak in two years in the 2,600 mile long pipeline, which carries oil from Alberta, Canada, all the way down to […]

North Slope oil production declined in September and October, cutting into state petroleum earnings

The trend of gradually declining output is expected to continue until several new projects now in development come on line. Fiord West, a satellite within the Alpine field, is expected to begin production in late 2020 with peak output estimated at 20,000 barrels per day, ConocoPhillips’ Lowman said. However, substantial new production is seen in […]

Shale Oil Pioneers Say the Boom is Ending

The days of relentless production growth from U.S. shale oil fields are ending, potentially aiding OPEC’s years-long effort to drain a worldwide supply glut, according to industry pioneers Scott Sheffield and Mark Papa. Investor calls for shale producers to shut down rigs and stop burning through cash are being heeded, Pioneer Natural Resources Co. Chief Executive Officer […]

U.K. Halts Fracking in England, Citing Quake Concerns

Prime Minister Boris Johnson once hailed fracking as “glorious news for humanity,” and said the British government should “leave no stone unturned, or unfracked.” But in a major U-turn, Mr. Johnson’s government announced on Saturday that it would temporarily halt fracking in the only active site in Britain, in northwestern England. The move came after a […]

Texas Hit Hard By Shale Slowdown

Texas’ economy is perhaps the most vulnerable to oil price swings given its leading role in the country’s oil industry. Recently, as prices have remained low, talk has begun about the outlook for the state’s economy. According to a recent Reuters report, for example, smaller independent oil and gas producers in the Lone Star State […]

Will OPEC+ Extend the Cuts?

OPEC+ will, at the very least, extend production curbs beyond the March 2020 deadline. That’s according to Stephen Brennock, an oil analyst at PVM Oil Associates, who said failure to do so would send oil prices “plunging into the abyss” and is not in line with the group’s “long-held commitment to stabilize the oil market”. Fitch […]

World ‘Awash’ in Oil as U.S. Sees Its Shale Boom Barreling Ahead

Global markets are “awash” in crude thanks to the surge in U.S. oil output, and the boom looks set to continue, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a Bloomberg TV interview. U.S. shale production has turned the world “on its head,” and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is “off a bit” in a report last […]

Report From Iran: The Country Moves Onward

  Above, Ugo Bardi giving a talk at the University of Tehran, October 2019 Iran is a country that maintains something of the fascination it had in ancient times, when it was both fabulous and remote. In our times, it remained somewhat remote, but also something that couldn’t be ignored as it went through a […]

Blowout: Rachel Maddow

Charismatic frackers. Poisoned pets and people. Creating earthquakes in Oklahoma. Sleeper Russian agents living in sleepy American neighborhoods. An unflappable oil executive and future secretary of state. Russian thugs. Deepwater Horizon. More Russians. A corrupt dictator’s son who loves spending his oil “earnings” on everything but especially Michael Jackson memorabilia. Rachel Maddow takes on the […]

Peak Shale: How US oil output went from explosive to sluggish

  Photo: James Durbin Jerry Moore, driller onboard Robinson Drilling rig #4, stands outside the control room of the rig Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, in Midland County. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram America’s shale boom got the world accustomed to soaring production. Now growth has slowed, and a cloud has formed over the industry. Hydraulic fracturing pushed the […]

Major Blaze At Iran Oil Refinery Raises Suspicions Of Saudi Revenge Attack

A section of Iran’s sprawling Abadan oil refinery in the southwest of the country went up in flames Saturday, and state media sources reported the emergency was under control as of Sunday morning. State media is describing it as “a fire in a canal carrying waste from Iran’s Abadan oil refinery,” with Iranian official broadcaster IRIB saying, “The […]

Russia Ready To Seize Control Of The World’s Largest Oil Reserves

The Venezuelan government is readying to hand over control over state oil company PDVSA to Russia’s Rosneft, a local newspaper has reported, citing sources from the industry. Russian TASS reports, quoting El Nacional, that the radical move is being discussed as a way of erasing Caracas’ debt to Moscow. The debt is sizeable: at the end […]

The Attacks on Abqaiq and Peak Oil in Ghawar

Fig 1: The attackers hit at Fajr prayer time Fig 2: Matt Simmons’ book When the late Houston based investment banker Matt Simmons wrote his 2005 book “Twilight in the desert, the coming Saudi oil shock and the World economy” he could not have imagined that Saudi Arabia would be threatened by a pre-dawn drone […]

Trump Hasn’t Solved the Pipeline Crisis

A protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Dec. 4, 2016. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images America has a severe plumbing problem. When it comes to crude oil and natural gas, the country can’t seem to replace its aging pipes or put in new lines to meet market demand on a timely and cost-efficient basis. […]

Saudi Arabia’s economic realities after oil attacks

The attacks on Saudi oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq last month revealed devastating weaknesses of domestic defense and leadership on the Saudi side, fissures within the Saudi-US relationship and an abdication of the US security umbrella. An act of war and an attack on global energy infrastructure has been met with a muted response from […]

Aramco: We’ll Fully Recover From Attacks By End-November

Aramco will have its oil production capacity fully restored happen by the end of next month, chief executive and chairman Amin Nasser said at an industry event in London as quoted by CNBC. A report by Reuters from late September had quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying the Saudi major had restored its […]

OPEC September 2019 Oil Production

Data for the OPEC charts below were taken from the October OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report OPEC 14 crude oil production was down1,318,000 barrels per day in September. Most of that decline was due to the Iranian attack on the Saudi oil complex at Abqaiq. Algeria is in slow decline. Angola is also in slow […]

Russia dumps U.S. dollar: Country’s top oil producer chooses euro for all future deals

One of the world’s top oil producers and exporters, Russia’s Rosneft, is ditching the U.S. dollar for euros when it comes to all future deals. The change in the default currency for all new exports of crude oil and refined products is clearly visible in September’s tender documents published on Rosneft’s website. The switch to […]

Are Russia and Saudi Arabia Still Pumping Too Much Oil?

This year, the oil market has faced some of the worst supply disruptions in recent times and yet prices remain stuck in the $60s. OPEC’s oil production tumbled the most in 16 years last month after the worst-ever attack on Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure temporarily halved its output. Earlier in the summer, Russia’s Druzhba contamination […]

Why Vladimir Putin Suddenly Believes in Global Warming

President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt. Even I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s sudden ratification […]

Aramco Reveals Damage to Giant Oil Field

Saudi Aramco revealed the significant damage caused by aerial strikes on its Khurais oil field and Abqaiq crude-processing plant last weekend, and insisted that the sites will be back to pre-attack output levels by the end of the month. Aramco took reporters for a first look inside the facilities, where equipment was scorched and ruptured […]

Saudi Arabia Partially Restores Oil Output

Oil has fallen from earlier highs after Saudi Aramco’s Abqiaq plant restored some production and is now processing just under half the output that was lost in Sunday’s drone attack. Bloomberg’s James Thornhill reports on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia.” (Source: Bloomberg)

The Concept of Peak Oil has Shifted

A particularly fascinating development in this current decade is that the concept of what ‘peak oil’ means has shifted, Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, OPEC Secretary General, said at the Fifth Iraq Energy Forum in Baghdad, Iraq, Trend reports. “At the beginning of the 2010s, reports of peak supply were almost omnipresent; however, we are about to […]

No, Shale’s Not Dying, It’s Just Maturing

Recent headlines heralding the death of the U.S. shale boom are greatly exaggerated. But the fever pitch pace of shale development and U.S. production growth is slowing and it’s difficult to envision the sector returning to the same heights reached over the past two years. A slowdown was inevitable. Annual production growth of 1.5 million to 2 […]

Flaring, or Why So Much Gas Is Going Up in Flames

If you take a drive along the well-worn highways of West Texas, orange flames will punctuate your journey. Those are gas flares, and they’re lighting up the skies above West Texas oilfields like never before as drillers produce crude faster than pipes can be laid to haul the attendant natural gas away. Oil drillers say […]

USA Oil Production

The Real Reason Why US Oil Production Has Peaked Raymond James recently estimated that over the last three years the U.S. decline rate for oil has doubled from 1.6 to 3.2 million barrels per day. The drilled but uncompleted well inventory (“DUC”) is back to normal, so the number of wells being drilled and the […]

Permian Basin Scenarios

Seems we don’t know what future completion rates will be in the Permian basin or anywhere.  There are many different opinions on whether the completion rate might increase, decrease or stay the same.  In my view, the conservative assumption is to assume they will not go up or down, but that the completion rate will […]

US To “Drown The World” In Oil

The U.S. could “drown the world in oil” over the next decade, which, according to Global Witness, would “spell disaster” for the world’s attempts to address climate change. The U.S. is set to account for 61 percent of all new oil and gas production over the next decade. A recent report from this organization says […]

OPEC July Production Data

All data below, unless otherwise specified are from the latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. All data is through July and is thousand barrels per day. OPEC crude oil production was down 246,000 barrels per day in July’ There is often a difference between what secondary sources say OPEC produces and what the countries themselves […]

The Gas Field Next Door

More Americans than previously estimated live within a city block of aged, underground natural gas storage wells, some more than a century old and most of them lacking modern designs to prevent major leaks, according to researchers from Harvard University. Using satellite imaging, researchers estimate that 20,000 homes and about 53,000 people across six states […]

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