The American Petroleum Institute reports that the United States produced more crude oil in October than it has ever produced in a single month, “peak oil” or not.But, I thought all our wells were going to play out in the '90's!
The New York Times observed: “Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.” Further still: “Another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia.”and
With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s natural gas production – up from 2 per cent in 1990.The natural gas one really was a surprise to me; I thought we got most of ours from Canada.
They sum up with
Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world’s biggest supplier – and exporter – of reasonably cheap energy.But read it all and get some learnin'.
PS: However, we'll probably also be the world's biggest supplier of stupidly expensive energy too with all our windmills and solar panels, so we probably won't see a benefit in our checkbooks.
This is an interesting article. I will try to have something more to say about it later.
ReplyDelete"This reversal of trend helps explain why U.S. domestic production for the year will be 140,000 barrels a day higher than last year (which was 410,000 barrels a day higher than 2008). Although the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says U.S. production will decline next year, who knows?"
Doesn't this all hinge on America being allowed to extract these energy reserves in the form of oil? The article doesn't say anything about oil, only natural gas.
I know that President Obama just reinstated the Gulf Coast oil drilling ban. Mexico is going to allow private companies to extract oil in the gulf region, before only the state oil company could do that.
I heard that America will be selling its energy reserves to China and others to pay off America's huge debt owed to them. This also has something to do with the Federal government buying up a bunch of public land, a land grab. I now China recently swooped up an energy source in Canada out from under America's nose.
All of the energy reserves being put to good use by America depends on the government.