8 ms·

U.S. is now the world’s biggest oil and gas producer

85 points by ck2 13y ago

triplesec 13y ago
Great. So now the US'll just run out relatively sooner than they would have done compared with those guys. WTG short-term thinking with finite resources. Humans are idiots.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  WTG short-term thinking with finite resources. Humans are idiots. Shale and gas is added to the thinking probably, enviro issues and all. Finite but it lasts 100+ years...
  - astrodust 13y ago
    A hundred years might seem like a long time, but in terms of civilization it's the blink of an eye. Even on a human scale it's not that long. There are people alive today who are one or two degrees away from significant historical events. "Human wormholes" (http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/07/146534518/rasputin-was-my-neighbor-and-other-true-tales-of-time-travel http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/07/146534518/raspu...) if you will. There were some US civil war widows still alive in the 21st century. Think about that next time you think a 100 year supply is a lot.
    - atlanticus 13y ago
      A hundred years is an eternity in terms of current technological advancement. We only learned the universe is accelerating its expansion in 1997. Think about that next time you think a 100 year supply is tiny.
      - astrodust 13y ago
        They say Americans should learn that 100 years is not a long time just as Europeans should learn that 100 miles it not a long distance. What if we were in year 95 of the 100 year supply? How would you feel then?
        atlanticus 13y ago
        Even in five years their will be amazing technological advances, but the question was 100 years. Goal post moving aside, I would be highly surprised if in 100 years energy is not mostly a solved problem. But doom is more dramatic and sells more advertising.
        astrodust 13y ago
        Optimism is great, but we need to plan for the worst, too. The environmental costs for fracking could be unbelievably bad. Fresh water's one of those resources that's going to become dangerously scarce if we don't manage it properly, and fracking, like oil sands, uses staggeringly large amounts of it. Maybe there's 100 years worth of gas down there, but can we pump water loaded with who knows what chemicals (proprietary mixture, of course) down there for a hundred years to get it out? Plus, what's a 100 year supply at today's consumption rate could quickly become a 50 year supply if consumption doubles, or 25 years if consumption quadruples. Why would consumption jump so much? What if cars started running on liquified natural gas instead of gasoline? What if power plants switched from nuclear to gas? What if the population grows another 20-30% in the next 25 years? It's never actually a 100 year supply. Exponential growth will shrink it faster than you think.
        comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
        It does not work that way. The finite Easy Oil is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The price point just trends upwards after the relatively easy material is successfully mined/drilled -- there is plenty more, it is just harder and harder to get to. There is a small amount of oil that can be pumped at less than $10 per barrel. There is a moderate amount of oil that can be pumped at $20 per barrel, and that will disappear in the foreseeable future. At $50 per barrel, there is a lot of fossil fuel material. At $100 per barrel, there is vastly more. At $200 per barrel, we do not know because no one will care until the 23rd century, but the problem will probably be the environmental damage, not the availability.
- seiji 13y ago
  The problem isn't running out of oil. The problem is increased production incentivizing increased usage which drives us over the edge of an irreversible climate catastrofuck. All the oil is getting extracted out of the ground and (at utilization time) getting pumped into the air. It's the exact opposite of what we need to be doing now.
  - throwaway9848 13y ago
    They are both problems...
  - hrjet 13y ago
    Exactly. I would have loved to see an overlay of consumption over production in the article.
  - triplesec 13y ago
    Agreed. slower use f these things and encouraging alternative energies earlier (while understanding population control) would have kept this less of a clusterfkc. However, humans != long-term political planning.
devx 13y ago
Can we end oil subsidies yet? Or have the oil companies not made enough trillions of dollars in profit since they started receiving subsidies a century ago? I'm all for subsidies to accelerate an emerging market or technology, especially if it's "the future", but for 5-10 years at most, until it becomes mature enough to handle itself. Subsidizing highly profitable companies for a century is beyond stupid, because it also means those companies can be a lot more wasteful, knowing the taxpayers will cover the difference. I'd ask for an end to Middle East oil-wars, too, but that seems even less likely to happen, so I'll happily take the ending of subsidies for now.
- ihsw 13y ago
  Oil subsidies are the only reason the US is an energy production leader, not unlike how corn subsidies are the only reason corn-based ethanol is competitive. Ending subsidies cannot be done -- it needs to be accomplished as a side-effect of ending political interference. The oil lobby and corn lobby are very powerful.
  - hrishirc 13y ago
    what's the point of being a production leader? Shouldn't it be left to the free market? The Oil bias is in a sense, hampering innovation in efficiency in oil-consuming machines, notwithstanding effects on other energy sources. Remember, the great efficiency drive in automobiles started after the Middle East Oil crisis in 1979, if I'm not wrong...
    - ihsw 13y ago
      The point is control -- look no further than the Carter Doctrine to understand the basis of America's foreign policy in the Middle East. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_doctrine It's the reason the US Marines have their own air force -- they don't want someone else second-guessing their decisions.
      - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
ck2 13y ago
What I want to know, since we only consume a fraction of it, where is all that money going? All that profit doesn't seem to be staying inside the US.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  What do you mean by a fraction of it? The U.S. is a net importer of both oil and natural gas: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_w.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_... http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_ist_a2dcu_nus_a.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_ist_a2dcu_nus_a.htm
  - ck2 13y ago
    Those numbers are hard to follow but I do not understand why if we produce so much why we don't consume our own content? For example if the keystone pipeline was approved the majority of it would be for export, not domestic use.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Are you sure the majority of it would be for export? A big driver of exports is simply the fact that lots of places don't have refinery capacity. People in such places are willing to pay more than people in the U.S., with its relative abundance of refineries. The rest of the 'not consuming our own content' is just a logistics thing, the cheapest oil is generally used, not the oil that crosses the least borders.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        Also, what's cheaper than using a currency which you have control over (read: ability to inflate; if one is in the camp that the conglomerate of national/international banks that own shares in the Federal Reserve act in unitarity with the USG) compared to most other countries, to import natural resources? One could call it free (if one doesn't factor the human beings on the other side of the equation...) Sure it can't last forever... but individuals don't last forever either.
e13tra 13y ago
Looks like the new arms race is about digging your own environmental grave.
- ck2 13y ago
  I think the country that is going to win will be biggest exporter of clean water in about two decades. Meanwhile China makes more solar panels than anyone in the world yet has the most filthy air.
  - e13tra 13y ago
    I don't think this is something that can be won, really, other than in a politics and power influence sense. Not to take analogies to where they oversimplify things, but this is similar to M.A.D.; we share the damage we do, locally, then globally. For us, the shortcut to energy production is in the industry already in place (with its centuries-old history and political power). Until that shifts, we'll keep going the same direction and worry about long term when we have to. Solar energy production is still in its infancy when you compare it to fossil fuels production, in China or anywhere else. I suspect the high output of actual solar panels are more (or just as much) a symptom of market than environmental concerns.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    If things are that bad, big movements on water and energy markets will influence each other (because you can use energy to purify or desalinate water).
  - dominotw 13y ago
    India too http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/indias-incoming-solar-plant-will-be-bigger-than-the-uss-ten-biggest-combined http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/indias-incoming-solar-plant...
  - njharman 13y ago
    Check out Canada's share of the world's fresh water sometime...
  - 13y ago
joshuahedlund 13y ago
Commenters bemoaning US running out of resources sooner or ruining the environment by increasing usage should note that US oil demand has essentially peaked[1] and will likely drop in the coming years due to a variety of factors including demographics and the increasing viability of alternative energy sources (solar power + Tesla et. al.) In this context, the US gas/oil energy boom is a wonderful thing, a last hurrah of cheap energy to supply the economy before the alternatives are finally ready to compete. Furthermore, it's not even bad for the environment in the short term; thanks largely to the natural gas boom replacing the even dirtier coal, US CO2 emissions are at their lowest in 20 years[2] I admit I'm probably a little too optimistic (Edit: fracking may be less than "wonderful"), but even correcting for my bias I strongly suspect it's not nearly as bad as many seem to think. [1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WRPUPUS2&f=W http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WR... [2] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/08/in-a-surprise-co2-emissions-hit-20-year-low/1 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...
- llamataboot 13y ago
  Nearly every prominent climate scientist disagrees strongly with you, and sees the current move towards fracking as climate suicide.
  - silverlight 13y ago
    I'm sure you have them, but since the parent commenter was nice enough to supply sources for his claims, perhaps you could as well?
    - coherentpony 13y ago
      http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/#.UknaKlN7WMc http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/#.UknaKlN7WMc
      - jadc 13y ago
        That's a very useful report but where does it support the claim of "the current move towards fracking as climate suicide"?
coldcode 13y ago
But it costs more to produce here. Most oil wells in Texas for example are now fairly low volume and require a lot of expense to pump. The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil. Gas is a different story but currently the price is pretty low compared to oil.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil. This has long been the comforting conventional wisdom, but there have been contrarians. One wrote a book-length argument: http://www.amazon.com/dp/047173876X http://www.amazon.com/dp/047173876X The argument is more-or-less that the Saudis have in fact been struggling just to keep output more-or-less flat. Their ability to open the taps to control prices is a thing of the past. They've made massive capital investments in the field operations, yet despite very high prices and an opportunity to make staggering profits, their output has only changed modestly and has never hit the peaks they've promised in the past (12 million bbl/day, I believe was what they claimed they could do; 7-8 million bbl/day is about all they've ever done lately).
- mseebach 13y ago
  Surely if you count the value of not having to pander to the Saudi regime anymore, it can't be that bad.
alphydan 13y ago
So the US produces 11 mbpd (million barrels per day) of liquids (oil, gas2liquids, ethanol, biodiesel). However it consumes about 19 mpbd [0]. Unfortunately this is just a bleep because more expensive prices have made fracking (a 30 - 20 year old technology) economical, but the typical decline rates of these fields are extremely high (produces loads the first year, dies out very very quickly thereafter) [1]. In the longer view (5 - 10 yrs) it's a bump in a long,unstoppable and ever more expensive decline [2]. [0] http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/us_oil.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/us_oil.cfm [1] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9506 http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9506 [2] http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/02/our-oil-problems-are-not-over/ http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/02/our-oil-problems-are-no...
known 13y ago
Will US stop importing oil and gas?
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  The US is on track to become a net exporter of natural gas. Is that what you are asking?
guyzero 13y ago
This should really be "US now produces more oil and gas than Russia OR Saudi Arabia" as the US does not produce more than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined.
chiph 13y ago
I'm wondering if this was a strategy on the part of Nixon, Ford & Carter -- make US oil more expensive so that we leave it in the ground and use everyone else's oil, and when that's gone we still have our reserves to draw on.

85 points by ck2 13y ago

Great. So now the US'll just run out relatively sooner than they would have done compared with those guys. WTG short-term thinking with finite resources. Humans are idiots.

bsullivan01 13y ago
WTG short-term thinking with finite resources. Humans are idiots. Shale and gas is added to the thinking probably, enviro issues and all. Finite but it lasts 100+ years...
- astrodust 13y ago
  A hundred years might seem like a long time, but in terms of civilization it's the blink of an eye. Even on a human scale it's not that long. There are people alive today who are one or two degrees away from significant historical events. "Human wormholes" (http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/07/146534518/rasputin-was-my-neighbor-and-other-true-tales-of-time-travel http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/07/146534518/raspu...) if you will. There were some US civil war widows still alive in the 21st century. Think about that next time you think a 100 year supply is a lot.
  - atlanticus 13y ago
    A hundred years is an eternity in terms of current technological advancement. We only learned the universe is accelerating its expansion in 1997. Think about that next time you think a 100 year supply is tiny.
    - astrodust 13y ago
      They say Americans should learn that 100 years is not a long time just as Europeans should learn that 100 miles it not a long distance. What if we were in year 95 of the 100 year supply? How would you feel then?
      - atlanticus 13y ago
        Even in five years their will be amazing technological advances, but the question was 100 years. Goal post moving aside, I would be highly surprised if in 100 years energy is not mostly a solved problem. But doom is more dramatic and sells more advertising.
        astrodust 13y ago
        Optimism is great, but we need to plan for the worst, too. The environmental costs for fracking could be unbelievably bad. Fresh water's one of those resources that's going to become dangerously scarce if we don't manage it properly, and fracking, like oil sands, uses staggeringly large amounts of it. Maybe there's 100 years worth of gas down there, but can we pump water loaded with who knows what chemicals (proprietary mixture, of course) down there for a hundred years to get it out? Plus, what's a 100 year supply at today's consumption rate could quickly become a 50 year supply if consumption doubles, or 25 years if consumption quadruples. Why would consumption jump so much? What if cars started running on liquified natural gas instead of gasoline? What if power plants switched from nuclear to gas? What if the population grows another 20-30% in the next 25 years? It's never actually a 100 year supply. Exponential growth will shrink it faster than you think.
      - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
        It does not work that way. The finite Easy Oil is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The price point just trends upwards after the relatively easy material is successfully mined/drilled -- there is plenty more, it is just harder and harder to get to. There is a small amount of oil that can be pumped at less than $10 per barrel. There is a moderate amount of oil that can be pumped at $20 per barrel, and that will disappear in the foreseeable future. At $50 per barrel, there is a lot of fossil fuel material. At $100 per barrel, there is vastly more. At $200 per barrel, we do not know because no one will care until the 23rd century, but the problem will probably be the environmental damage, not the availability.
seiji 13y ago
The problem isn't running out of oil. The problem is increased production incentivizing increased usage which drives us over the edge of an irreversible climate catastrofuck. All the oil is getting extracted out of the ground and (at utilization time) getting pumped into the air. It's the exact opposite of what we need to be doing now.
- throwaway9848 13y ago
  They are both problems...
- hrjet 13y ago
  Exactly. I would have loved to see an overlay of consumption over production in the article.
- triplesec 13y ago
  Agreed. slower use f these things and encouraging alternative energies earlier (while understanding population control) would have kept this less of a clusterfkc. However, humans != long-term political planning.

devx 13y ago

Can we end oil subsidies yet? Or have the oil companies not made enough trillions of dollars in profit since they started receiving subsidies a century ago? I'm all for subsidies to accelerate an emerging market or technology, especially if it's "the future", but for 5-10 years at most, until it becomes mature enough to handle itself. Subsidizing highly profitable companies for a century is beyond stupid, because it also means those companies can be a lot more wasteful, knowing the taxpayers will cover the difference. I'd ask for an end to Middle East oil-wars, too, but that seems even less likely to happen, so I'll happily take the ending of subsidies for now.

ihsw 13y ago
Oil subsidies are the only reason the US is an energy production leader, not unlike how corn subsidies are the only reason corn-based ethanol is competitive. Ending subsidies cannot be done -- it needs to be accomplished as a side-effect of ending political interference. The oil lobby and corn lobby are very powerful.
- hrishirc 13y ago
  what's the point of being a production leader? Shouldn't it be left to the free market? The Oil bias is in a sense, hampering innovation in efficiency in oil-consuming machines, notwithstanding effects on other energy sources. Remember, the great efficiency drive in automobiles started after the Middle East Oil crisis in 1979, if I'm not wrong...
  - ihsw 13y ago
    The point is control -- look no further than the Carter Doctrine to understand the basis of America's foreign policy in the Middle East. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_doctrine It's the reason the US Marines have their own air force -- they don't want someone else second-guessing their decisions.
    - nazgulnarsil 13y ago

ck2 13y ago

What I want to know, since we only consume a fraction of it, where is all that money going? All that profit doesn't seem to be staying inside the US.

maxerickson 13y ago
What do you mean by a fraction of it? The U.S. is a net importer of both oil and natural gas: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_w.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_... http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_ist_a2dcu_nus_a.htm http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_ist_a2dcu_nus_a.htm
- ck2 13y ago
  Those numbers are hard to follow but I do not understand why if we produce so much why we don't consume our own content? For example if the keystone pipeline was approved the majority of it would be for export, not domestic use.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Are you sure the majority of it would be for export? A big driver of exports is simply the fact that lots of places don't have refinery capacity. People in such places are willing to pay more than people in the U.S., with its relative abundance of refineries. The rest of the 'not consuming our own content' is just a logistics thing, the cheapest oil is generally used, not the oil that crosses the least borders.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Also, what's cheaper than using a currency which you have control over (read: ability to inflate; if one is in the camp that the conglomerate of national/international banks that own shares in the Federal Reserve act in unitarity with the USG) compared to most other countries, to import natural resources? One could call it free (if one doesn't factor the human beings on the other side of the equation...) Sure it can't last forever... but individuals don't last forever either.

e13tra 13y ago

Looks like the new arms race is about digging your own environmental grave.

ck2 13y ago
I think the country that is going to win will be biggest exporter of clean water in about two decades. Meanwhile China makes more solar panels than anyone in the world yet has the most filthy air.
- e13tra 13y ago
  I don't think this is something that can be won, really, other than in a politics and power influence sense. Not to take analogies to where they oversimplify things, but this is similar to M.A.D.; we share the damage we do, locally, then globally. For us, the shortcut to energy production is in the industry already in place (with its centuries-old history and political power). Until that shifts, we'll keep going the same direction and worry about long term when we have to. Solar energy production is still in its infancy when you compare it to fossil fuels production, in China or anywhere else. I suspect the high output of actual solar panels are more (or just as much) a symptom of market than environmental concerns.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  If things are that bad, big movements on water and energy markets will influence each other (because you can use energy to purify or desalinate water).
- dominotw 13y ago
  India too http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/indias-incoming-solar-plant-will-be-bigger-than-the-uss-ten-biggest-combined http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/indias-incoming-solar-plant...
- njharman 13y ago
  Check out Canada's share of the world's fresh water sometime...
- 13y ago

joshuahedlund 13y ago

Commenters bemoaning US running out of resources sooner or ruining the environment by increasing usage should note that US oil demand has essentially peaked[1] and will likely drop in the coming years due to a variety of factors including demographics and the increasing viability of alternative energy sources (solar power + Tesla et. al.) In this context, the US gas/oil energy boom is a wonderful thing, a last hurrah of cheap energy to supply the economy before the alternatives are finally ready to compete. Furthermore, it's not even bad for the environment in the short term; thanks largely to the natural gas boom replacing the even dirtier coal, US CO2 emissions are at their lowest in 20 years[2] I admit I'm probably a little too optimistic (Edit: fracking may be less than "wonderful"), but even correcting for my bias I strongly suspect it's not nearly as bad as many seem to think. [1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WRPUPUS2&f=W http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WR... [2] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/08/in-a-surprise-co2-emissions-hit-20-year-low/1 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...

llamataboot 13y ago
Nearly every prominent climate scientist disagrees strongly with you, and sees the current move towards fracking as climate suicide.
- silverlight 13y ago
  I'm sure you have them, but since the parent commenter was nice enough to supply sources for his claims, perhaps you could as well?
  - coherentpony 13y ago
    http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/#.UknaKlN7WMc http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/#.UknaKlN7WMc
    - jadc 13y ago
      That's a very useful report but where does it support the claim of "the current move towards fracking as climate suicide"?

coldcode 13y ago

But it costs more to produce here. Most oil wells in Texas for example are now fairly low volume and require a lot of expense to pump. The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil. Gas is a different story but currently the price is pretty low compared to oil.

Lagged2Death 13y ago
The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil. This has long been the comforting conventional wisdom, but there have been contrarians. One wrote a book-length argument: http://www.amazon.com/dp/047173876X http://www.amazon.com/dp/047173876X The argument is more-or-less that the Saudis have in fact been struggling just to keep output more-or-less flat. Their ability to open the taps to control prices is a thing of the past. They've made massive capital investments in the field operations, yet despite very high prices and an opportunity to make staggering profits, their output has only changed modestly and has never hit the peaks they've promised in the past (12 million bbl/day, I believe was what they claimed they could do; 7-8 million bbl/day is about all they've ever done lately).
mseebach 13y ago
Surely if you count the value of not having to pander to the Saudi regime anymore, it can't be that bad.

alphydan 13y ago

So the US produces 11 mbpd (million barrels per day) of liquids (oil, gas2liquids, ethanol, biodiesel). However it consumes about 19 mpbd [0]. Unfortunately this is just a bleep because more expensive prices have made fracking (a 30 - 20 year old technology) economical, but the typical decline rates of these fields are extremely high (produces loads the first year, dies out very very quickly thereafter) [1]. In the longer view (5 - 10 yrs) it's a bump in a long,unstoppable and ever more expensive decline [2]. [0] http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/us_oil.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/us_oil.cfm [1] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9506 http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9506 [2] http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/02/our-oil-problems-are-not-over/ http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/02/our-oil-problems-are-no...

known 13y ago

Will US stop importing oil and gas?

ChuckMcM 13y ago
The US is on track to become a net exporter of natural gas. Is that what you are asking?

guyzero 13y ago

This should really be "US now produces more oil and gas than Russia OR Saudi Arabia" as the US does not produce more than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined.

chiph 13y ago

I'm wondering if this was a strategy on the part of Nixon, Ford & Carter -- make US oil more expensive so that we leave it in the ground and use everyone else's oil, and when that's gone we still have our reserves to draw on.