Cartoon Of the Month
Since 2016 the U.S. has exported 10 billion barrels of light, tight oil to foreign counties, 96% of that oil came from the Permian Basin HZ play in West Texas and New Mexico.
With only 4% of the worlds proven producing oil reserves, America, the No. 1 oil CONSUMING COUNTRY the planet, is also the No. 1 largest oil producer, the 3rd largest oil exporter and the 7th largest flarer of associated gas. Nigeria and Libya flares less gas than the U.S.
Does any of that makse sense to you?
U.S. refineries have the ability to absorb and refine 1.5 billion barrels of LTO each year; it makes good gasoline and jet fuel. So what we have already exported to foreign countries would have supplied our own country for 6 1/2 years.
The men and women in charge of the shale "revolution" drilled the good stuff in the Permian, for exports; todays wells decline 73% in the first 12 months of production, up from 47% in 2019, make more associated gas, more water, cost more to drill and complete, tight oil debt is increasing again and EUR's, the only quality metric that matters, are falling from over drilling sweet spots.
This resource will all but be economically depleted in three to four more years, max., depending on the worldwide price of oil and how much more associated gas can be made into LNG, itself exported to foreign countries. It can last 4 more years if, and only if the sector in the Permian can find new places to stuff oceans of produced water.
Then what?
Do you think we'll all be driving EV's by then and won't need American oil?
Or is OPEC and Russia, with the permission of China, then going to supply nation's our oil needs?
The average American knows very little about oil and natural gas and are extremely gullible. They have been lied to about shale oil abundance for many, many years, with great malice of intent. There are people all over America wanting to drill baby, drill KNOWING that additional tight oil will also be exported and will NOT benefit the average American consumer more than a few pennies per gallon of gasoline.
True "energy security" lies in a country's resource wealth with careful management and conservation of those resources for the long term. For our children.
THAT's putting America first.
In an open rebuttal to my post above about U.S. tight oil exports, Daniel Yergin writes yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that America can't do without fracking. Just kidding, of course.
Of all the people in the world who might understand depletion, if nothing more than from a historical persepective, it would be Mr. Yergin. Alas, the Permian will never deplete its resource beds, apparently, and it must continue to buttress our allies around the world with Wolfcamp oil...until we can't anymore. We can't do without fracking.
We will have to someday very soon Mr. Yergin, like it or not. I hope you are sitting down, but the stuff does not grow on mesquite trees.