America’s oil bonanza

THE shale-gas revolution in America has been as sudden and startling as a supertanker performing a handbrake turn. A country that once fretted about its dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels is now on the verge of self-sufficiency in natural gas. And the news keeps getting better. This week the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that the United States would become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, outstripping Saudi Arabia and Russia (see article).

Read the entire story at The Economist.

Shale Boom to Turn U.S. Into World’s Largest Oil Producer

A shale oil boom means the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, a radical shift that could profoundly transform not just the world’s energy supplies, but also its geopolitics, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

In its closely watched annual World Energy Outlook, the IEA, which advises industrialized nations on their energy policies, said the global energy map “is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States.”

The assessment is in contrast with last year, when it envisioned Russia and Saudi Arabia vying for the top position.

“By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer” and overtake Saudi Arabia for a time, the agency said. “The result is a continued fall in U.S. oil imports (currently at 20% of its needs) to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030.”

Read the story in it’s entirety at WSJ.com.

USGS says Utica Shale development could require 127,500 wells

October 10, 2012

The drilling and oilfield services industry should be pleased with the first assessment of oil and gas reserves in the Utica Shale play by the US Geological Survey, which indicates that extraction of the reserves would take approximately 110,000 wells in the gas window and another 17,500 wells in the oil window.

To date, about 144 horizontal wells have been drilled in Ohio, which is where the richest reserves are located. By comparison, about 26,000 wells have been drilled so far in the overlying Marcellus Shale formation, which is generally considered to be about two to three years ahead of the Utica in terms of development.

The “sweet spot” of what the USGS refers to in oil assessment lies almost entirely in Ohio and covers about 2.1 million acres in the east-central part of that Midwestern state.

The Utica Shale contains about 38 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report. The Utica has a mean of 940 million barrels of unconventional oil resources and a mean of 208 million barrels of unconventional natural gas liquids.

Read the story in its entirety at The Oil and Gas Financial Journal.

Utica Shale play emerging as important US liquids-rich resource

According to a recent report from IHS (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of information and analytics, although it is still premature to conclude that the Utica/Point Pleasant Shale play in Ohio and western Pennsylvania will be as productive as the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas, the Utica is in many ways analogous to the Eagle Ford and early drilling results are encouraging. The similarities between the two plays include an extensive prospective area, vast resource potential, and three hydrocarbon-prone areas (oil, wet gas, and dry gas).

“To date, horizontal drilling results in the Utica have been very encouraging, with activity so far focused on targets within the wet gas window,” said Andrew Byrne, director of energy equity research at IHS, and author of the IHS Herold Utica/Pleasant Point Shale Regional Play Assessment. “Approximately two-thirds of the horizontal wells drilled on the play have reported 24-hour initial production (IP) rates of 1,000 barrels-of-oil-equivalent per day or more, which supports our opinion that early results are encouraging. However, the Utica is still in the very early stages of exploration—only in late 2010 did the industry start moving from drilling vertical exploratory wells in the play to permitting horizontal wells.”

Read the story in its entirety at IHS Report.

Shale Development: A Gateway to America’s Energy Security and Job Creation

Congressman Steve Stivers – 15th District of Ohio

The untapped resources in Ohio’s Utica Shale are bringing huge opportunities, including job creation for Ohioans, and helping us move forward towards energy security. We cannot continue to rely on other nations—who do not have our country’s best interests in mind—for our energy supply here at home. We must recognize that we need American energy to solve America’s energy problem. We need to take advantage of the abundant natural resources, like the shale reserves in Ohio and across the rest of the country, which will help us to reduce our dependency on foreign energy.

Shale development will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs—including in the state of Ohio. A report issued in September 2011 by Kleinhenz & Associates on Ohio’s oil and natural gas industry indicates that “More than 204,000 jobs could be created or supported by 2015 due to exploration, leasing, drilling and connector pipeline construction for the Utica Shale reserve.”  If we take advantage of our shale reserves we will make great progress towards achieving both goals. Using our own natural resources to supply our energy needs and putting our own American workers on the job to harvest those natural resources will set us on the right path towards both a more independent energy future, and a stronger economy.

The safest practices are best determined by sound science and numbers-based evidence. With so much at stake for job creation and energy security, it is critical we make reasoned, science-based decisions about how to manage the practices and processes involved in energy extraction, including hyrdaulic fracturing. They say there is safety in numbers, and in this case, I could not agree more.

Read the story in its entirety at EID Ohio.

Utica Shale to demand more than oilfield jobs

The economic push Ohio is expected to get from the Utica Shale, an underground rock layer packed with lucrative hydrocarbons, may extend beyond drilling companies and landowners to people not even directly involved.

Truckers will be needed to move equipment, welders will be called upon to help connect gathering pipelines and general laborers will be needed to do the grunt work.

Occupations that have application both in the oilfield and more traditional workplaces could see their wages bubble up because of a skills shortage exacerbated by the demands of a new industry.

Studies have speculated that development of the Utica Shale will lead to the creation of 20,000 to 200,000new jobs, the bulk of which won’t be directly involved in drilling but instead in support services and indirect jobs, such as retail and restaurants.

Read the rest of the story at Mansfield News Journal.

Want a Job? Look to the Energy Industry!

by Tim Mullaney, USA TODAY

Published: 10/01/2012

In 2009, Andrea Conaway was an X-ray technician whose career plan was showing a few fractures.

Hospitals were consolidating around Pittsburgh, so she went searching for oil, in a sense. She went back to school, got an associate’s degree in computer electronics, and in August, began a job as an associate systems analyst at EQT, a Pittsburgh-based natural gas driller.

“I figured this industry was the future,” says Conaway, who says she boosted her income to almost $50,000 a year from $38,000. “It’s growing like crazy around here. My friends were getting raises and great benefits, and I knew I wouldn’t be.”

 

Of all the places that America’s new jobs are, the emerging energy business, directly or indirectly, might be responsible for more of them than almost anything else.

Since 2002, the exploration of natural gas deposits embedded in shale, followed by oil drilling that began in earnest late in the decade, has created more than 1 million jobs, says Moody’s Analytics economist Chris Lafakis. That’s out of 2.7 million the whole country created.

“It’s really huge,” Lafakis says. “And the jobs pay very well.”

Jobs directly in the oil and gas extraction business pay an average of just under $150,000 a year, Lafakis says — almost exactly three times the national average.

Read the story in its entirety at USAToday.

Midstream Capital is Pouring Into Ohio

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — There’s talk of new companies relocating here. There’s talk of new jobs. And, there’s talk of new revenue streams for businesses that can supply and support an industry that stands to change the landscape of eastern Ohio.

What’s different this time is that for all the talk, there’s physical evidence that it’s happening – and happening very quickly.

“We’ve been working on grading the site, and that’s nearing completion,” says George Francisco, executive vice president at Houston-based M3 Midstream. M3 and its venture partners is beginning construction of a large natural gas processing plant in the tiny town of Kensington in Columbiana County. “The first phase will be finished and in service sometime in June.”

From the Mahoning Valley through southeastern Ohio, evidence of massive construction projects for major processing centers, new drilling sites, finished wells and pipeline infrastructure projects abound as big oil and gas companies map out their development strategies related to gas production in the Utica shale.

Read the rest of the story at http://businessjournaldaily.com/drilling-down/utica-midstream-development-much-more-talk-2012-9-18

 

U.S. oil production seen rising 74% by 2022

U.S. oil production is set to soar over then next decade with profound implications for domestic energy and global oil markets, Platt’s energy researchers say.

U.S. crude-oil production is expected to grow by 74%, or more than 4.9 million barrels per day to an average of 11.6 million barrels per day within 10 years, according to Platts’s energy data analytics unit Bentek Energy.

Analysts at Bentek attributed the projected rise in petroleum production mainly to shale oil activity at the Eagle Ford and Bakken shale plays in the mid-western U.S. and parts of Canada. They also said the production climb would be accompanied by lower U.S. and Canadian oil prices.

“Not only will the projected record growth in oil production affect North America, it will have dramatic implications for global crude-oil markets,” said Jodi Quinnell, Bentek oil analysis manager, in a statement Monday. “We foresee a massive displacement of traditional waterborne oil imports to the United States by 2022, taking them from 45% of U.S. total crude supply to no more than five percent.”

Read the story in its entirety at Marketwatch.com.

American Made Energy Policy

American Made Energy is our vision for the future. We can achieve this vision by unleashing the full benefit of developing U.S. oil and natural gas resources. But this will only happen if new policies are implemented to ensure effective regulation, if we proceed with vital infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, and improve and accelerate the leasing and permitting process.

The oil and natural gas industry is a bulwark for the U.S. economy even in uncertain economic times, but like a runner facing a strong headwind, the energy sector is challenged by policies that force the nation to settle for less at a time when we need more; more jobs;
more government revenues, and more energy security.

The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, and the measure of the current recovery is not robust by any means. The Energy
Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that real growth in the U.S. economy will average between 2.1 percent and 3.2 percent through 2035, with the unemployment rate not returning to its pre-recession average of 5.2 percent until 2022.

“The EIA projects the United States will need more than 10 percent additional energy by 2035 to sustain and grow our economy, and meet demand from the expanding population.”

Read this report in its entirety at American Energy Policy.