Author: ASPO-USA

Quebec environmental groups are calling on the government to publish the results of 2015 drilling for shale gas on Anticosti Island and to hold an environmental review. (Radio-Canada) The Quebec government is not being straightforward about the data it has on shale-gas exploration on Anticosti Island, a coalition of environmental and citizens’ groups said Friday. The coalition is asking the Liberal government to order environmental review hearings through its provincial assessment agency, known as the BAPE, and to publish the results of its drilling activities on Anticosti. The director of Nature-Québec, Christian Simard, said there are eleven sites where drilling has been completed over the past two years. Simard said in 2014, the findings were published on the government’s website, however, this year’s findings have yet to be made public. "It is time to have an assessment, and to make it public — to open a debate," he said. […]

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Art Berman is out with a new deck: “ The North American Unconventional Revolution & The 2014-2015 Oil Price Collapse ” (pdf) and it’s a great review of US shale, Saudi/OPEC response, and the great price fall over the past year. As always, Art is out to tell you some facts you don’t often see in the headlines: The story of the price collapse is pretty simple: It’s Chinese demand fall + US oil production growth + response of Saudi oil production growth. That’s pretty much it. Lower demand and production gains leading to surplus and lower prices. The heroic tales of rig productivity and drilling efficiency gains are what oil companies have to tell investors to show a brave face. Dig a little deeper to realize – what should be obvious to everyone – that companies are getting killed at these low prices. But future higher oil prices […]

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The latest catch phrase to enter the lexicon of the oilpatch is “lower for longer.” One assumes it simply means oil prices are down and will stay that way for a long time. The difference between a catch phrase and an essay is the detail for purposes of definition. “Lower” must be oil prices below what they used be, although in fact they are not lower than they have ever been. “Longer” refers to an extended period of time, clearly undefined. “Longer” after the oil price collapse of 1985 was over 15 years. Oil is often treated as something a bit more special than a typical commodity because it is so essential to modern life. But let’s take a simple definition for “commodity”, such as, “any useful or valuable thing…something that is bought and sold”, and when the price of this thing falls to the point that it is […]

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The Texas RRC Oil & Gas Production numbers are out. They came out on a weekend this month. All RRC data is through July. The EIA data is through June. Keep in mind that the RRC data is incomplete, that is why the chart lines droop on the end. However the EIA data is from the EIA’s Petroleum Supply Monthly , the data of which the EIA says now comes directly from the states, and reflects the complete best estimate of oil production. (Click to enlarge) According to the EIA data, Texas crude + condensate peaked, so far, in March and declined in April, May and June. However the incomplete data from the RRC shows production likely dropping sharply in April, up in May then flat for June and July. (Click to enlarge) Dr. Dean Fantazzini has an algorithm that uses past and present RRC data and predicts what […]

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The Origins of Peak Oil Awareness The scientific study of peak oil began in the 1950′s, when Shell geophysicist M. King Hubbert reported on the evolution of production rates in oil and gas fields. In a 1956 paper Hubbert suggested that oil production in a particular region would approximate a bell curve, increasing exponentially during the early stages of production before eventually slowing, reaching a peak when approximately half of a field had been extracted, and then going into terminal production decline. Hubbert applied his methodology to oil production for the Lower 48 US states and offshore areas. He estimated that the ultimate potential reserve of the Lower 48 US states and offshore areas was 150 billion barrels of oil. Based on that reserve estimate, the 6.6 million barrels per day (bpd) extraction rate in 1955, and the 52.5 billion barrels of oil that had been previously produced in […]

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Fig 1: Refugees walking on Hungarian motorway towards Austria in Sep 2015. [Image via Wikipedia, Creative .20 license.] In May 2013 the Guardian had an article “Peak oil, climate change and pipeline geopolitics driving Syrian conflict” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/13/1 In March 2015, a group of researchers led by climatologist Colin Kelley (University of California) published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with the title “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought” “Between 2006 and 2009, the people of Syria suffered during the most severe drought that country has experienced since the beginning of its instrumental record. As water became scarce, crops failed and cattle died on a huge scale. As many as 1.5 million Syrians, out of a population of just over 20 million, moved from the countryside to the outskirts of already overflowing cities” In this article we analyse […]

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Oil production in June matched its record peak from last year. Oil production in June rose to its highest levels since its record peak late last year, North Dakota regulators said Friday, adding that the current level of production could be maintained for about two years. Preliminary June numbers from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources had production at 1,211,178 barrels per day. This was an increase of more than 8,500 daily barrels from the final May tally of 1,202,615 barrels per day. The active rig count in the state was at 74 on Friday. Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources, said production has maintained due to operators primarily drilling in the most productive parts of the oil patch and increasing efficiencies with staff and equipment. Well completions by hydraulic fracturing increased from a final May count of 116 to a preliminary total of 149 […]

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