shale oil – The Burning Platform

In Biggest Victory For Saudi Arabia, North Dakota’s Largest Oil Producer Suspends All Fracking

But, but, but Wall Street shysters, CNBC, and dozens of oil company cheerleaders all told me shale oil was still profitable at $30 a barrel. WTF??? Why would the biggest Bakken fracker stop fracking? Was someone telling fibs? Those Wall Street and MSM jokesters!!!

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/24/2016 21:48 -0500

Yesterday, during his speech at CERAWeek in Houston, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi made it explicitly clear that Saudi Arabia would not cut production, instead saying that it is high-cost producers that would need to either “lower costs, borrow cash or liquidate” adding that there is “no need for cuts as marginal barrel will get out of the market.” He was right.

Today his wish is slowly coming true after news that North Dakota’s largest producer, Whiting Petroleum, would suspend all fracking, and that Continental Resources has effectively done the same after reporting that it no longer has any fracking crews working in the Bakken shale.

As Reuters reports, Whiting said it would “suspend all fracking and spend 80 percent less this year, the biggest cutback to date by a major U.S. shale company reacting to the plunge in crude prices.”

It was also confirmation that the Saudi plan to put high-cost producers on ice is working, if only temporarily.

After sliding 5.6% to $3.72, Whiting stock jumped 8% to over $4 per share in after-hours trading as investors cheered the decision to preserve capital, even if it means generating far less revenue.

Whiting’s cut is one of the largest so far this year in an energy industry crippled by oil prices at 10-year lows. The cuts will have a big impact in North Dakota, where Whiting is the largest producer.The Denver-based company said it would stop fracking and completing wells as of April 1. Most of its $500 million budget will be spent to mothball drilling and fracking operations in the first half of the year. After June, Whiting said it plans to spend only $160 million, mostly on maintenance.

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Less Than 2 Percent of Permian Basin Is Commercial at $30 Oil

About that American oil independence narrative. Dead shale walking. The debt saturated shale oil companies are filing bankruptcy on a weekly basis and the trend will only accelerate from here as their hedges expire and oil prices continue to fall. You can stick a fork into the shale oil/gas miracle. I can’t remember who predicted this over a year ago.

Guest Post by Art Berman

Less than 2 percent of Permian basin tight oil wells are commercial at $30 per barrel oil prices.

Sorry about that. I know that many believe that U.S. shale and tight oil plays are commercial even at current low oil prices but data on the Permian basin and Bakken plays simply does not support that belief.

To make matters worse, Pioneer and EOG have made outrageous claims about Permian basin reserves in their 3rd quarter 2015 earnings reports that no sensible person should believe. Statements like these simply add to the mistaken idea that tight oil plays get a pass on the laws of physics and economics and that somehow the USA is going to beat Saudi Arabia as the low-cost “swing producer” of the world. I wish that were true but trust me–based on data, that’s not going to happen.

The Permian basin is one of the oldest producing areas in the United States. It has been thoroughly drilled and is in a hyper-mature phase of development. The Spraberry, Wolfcamp and Bone Springs plays that Pioneer and EOG are pursuing (Figure 1) are really secondary recovery projects in which horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have replaced water and CO2 injection methods used in the past. Few new reserves should be expected. Most of the claims that these companies make are really about higher recovery efficiency of existing reserves.

None of these plays are remotely commercial at present oil prices. In the most-likely per-well reserve case, these plays require break-even oil prices in the range of at least $50-$75 per barrel, and current wellhead prices in the basin are less than $30 per barrel.

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DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Janet Yellen will increase interest rates for the first time in nine years on Wednesday. She isn’t raising them because the economy is strengthening. The economy just happens to be weakening rapidly, as global recession takes hold. The stock market is 3% lower than it was in December 2014, and has basically done nothing since the end of QE3. Wall Street is throwing a hissy fit to try and stop Janet from boosting rates by an inconsequential .25%. Janet would prefer not to raise rates, but the credibility and reputation of her bubble blowing machine is at stake. The Fed has enriched their Wall Street benefactors over the last six years, while destroying the real economy and the middle class.

The quarter point increase will be reversed in short order as soon as we experience market collapse part two. It will be followed with negative interest rates and QE4, as these academics have only one play in their playbook – print money. They created the last financial crisis and have set the stage for the next – even bigger collapse. John Hussman explains how their zero interest rate policy has driven speculators into junk bonds as the only place to get any yield.

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Rig Count Increases by 19 As Oil Prices Plunge–What Are They Thinking?

Guest Post by Art Berman at The Petroleum Truth Report

The U.S. rig count increased by 19 this week as oil prices dropped below $48 per barrel–the latest sign that the E&P industry is out of touch with reality.

Getty Images from The New York Times (July 26, 2015)

The last time the rig count increased this much was the week ending August 8, 2014 when WTI was $98 and Brent was $103 per barrel.

What are they thinking?

In fairness, the contracts to add more rigs were probably signed in May and June when WTI prices were around $60 per barrel (Figure 1) and some felt that a bottom had been found, left behind in January through March, and that prices would continue to increase.

Figure 1. Daily WTI crude oil prices, January 2-July 24, 2015. Source: EIA and NYMEX futures prices (July 21-24).

Even then, however, the fundamentals of supply, demand and inventories pointed toward lower prices–and still, companies decided to add rigs.

Continue reading “Rig Count Increases by 19 As Oil Prices Plunge–What Are They Thinking?”

More Job Losses Coming To U.S. Shale

The debt ridden shale oil industry is in the midst of a slow motion train wreck. Wait until that Iranian oil enters the world markets. That should do wonders for oil prices.

Submitted by Gaurav Agnihotri via OilPrice.com,

With the recently concluded nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, oil prices have already started heading downward on sentiments that Iran’s crude oil supply would further contribute to the already rising global supply glut. The economic crisis in Greece, OPEC’s high production levels and China’s market turmoil have created more pressure on oil prices, making a price rebound look highly unlikely in the near future.

So, with the prices of both Brent and WTI moving towards $50 per barrel, the short to medium-term outlook for oil remains mostly bearish. This is bad news for the U.S. shale sector which is already dealing with rising debt and the ever-increasing risk of default.

A recent Bloomberg report stated that U.S. driller’s debts stood at $235 billion at the end of first quarter of 2015, which is quite worrying. Does this mean that the U.S. oil sector is likely to witness a lot more layoffs than we have seen so far? Surprisingly, a recent IHS study had revealed that the U.S. shale sector has been boosting job creation in addition to supporting around 1.7 million jobs in U.S.

All this as the overall unemployment rate in U.S. has been declining since previous years. But with rising negative sentiment pertaining to oil prices, is U.S. the shale sector prepared to face one of its biggest tests yet? Will the industry be able to sustain another long period of low oil prices or will it once again resort to trimming its workforce?

Low oil prices will most likely result in more job losses

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Saudi Arabia’s Oil-Price War Is With Stupid Money

Hat tip Indentured Servant

Guest Post by Art Berman

Saudi Arabia is not trying to crush U.S. shale plays. Its oil-price war is with the investment banks and the stupid money they directed to fund the plays. It is also with the zero-interest rate economic conditions that made this possible.

Saudi Arabia intends to keep oil prices low for as long as possible. Its oil production increased to 10.3 million barrels per day in March 2015. That is 700,000 barrels per day more than in December 2014 and the highest level since the Joint Organizations Data Initiative began compiling production data in 2002 (Figure 1 below). And Saudi Arabia’s rig count has never been higher.

Figure 1. Saudi Arabian crude oil production and Brent crude oil price in 2015 U.S. dollars. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Market share is an important part of the motive but Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali al-Naimi recently emphasized that “The challenge is to restore the supply-demand balance and reach price stability.” Saudi Arabia’s need for market share and long-term demand is best met with a growing global economy and lower oil prices.

That means ending the over-production from tight oil and other expensive plays (oil sands and ultra-deep water) and reviving global demand by keeping oil prices low for some extended period of time. Demand has been weak since the run-up in debt and oil prices that culminated in the Financial Collapse of 2008 (Figure 2 below).

Figure 2. World liquids demand (consumption) as a percent of supply (production) and WTI crude oil price adjusted using the consumer price index (CPI) to real February 2015 U.S. dollars, 2003-2015. Source: EIA, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.
(click to enlarge image)

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We Are Witnessing A Fundamental Change In The Oil Sector

Submitted by Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com,

The U.S. oil production decline has begun.

It is not because of decreased rig count. It is because cash flow at current oil prices is too low to complete most wells being drilled.

The implications are profound. Production will decline by several hundred thousand barrels per day before the effect of reduced rig count is fully seen. Unless oil prices rebound above $75 or $85 per barrel, the rig count won’t matter because there will not be enough money to complete more wells than are being completed today.

Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Permian basin plays declined approximately 111,000 barrels of oil per day in January. These declines are part of a systematic decrease in the number of new producing wells added since oil prices fell below $90 per barrel in October 2014 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Eagle Ford, Bakken and Permian basin new producing wells by month. Source: Drilling Info and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc

(Click image to enlarge)

Deferred completions (drilled uncompleted wells) are not discretionary for most companies. Producers entered into long-term rig contracts assuming at least $90 oil prices. Lower prices result in substantially reduced cash flows. Capital is only available to fulfill contractual drilling commitments, basic costs of doing business, and to complete the best wells that come closest to breaking even at present oil prices.

Much of the new capital from junk bonds and share offerings is being used to pay overhead and interest expense, and to pay down debt to avoid triggering loan covenant thresholds. Hedges help soften the blow of low oil prices for some companies but not enough to carry on business as usual when it comes to well completions.

The decrease in well completions provides additional evidence that the true break-even price for tight oil plays is between $75 and $85 per barrel. The Eagle Ford Shale is the most attractive play with a break-even price of about $75 per barrel. Well completions averaged 312 per month from January through September 2014 when WTI averaged $100 per barrel (Figure 2). When oil prices dropped below $90 per barrel in October, November well completions fell to 214. As prices fell further, 169 new producing wells were added in December and only 118 in January.

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HOW MANY SHALE OIL PLAYS MAKE MONEY AT $37 PER BARREL?

I’m tossing you a softball. Now think carefully. The choices are:

A. Zero

B. Zero

C. Zero

D. Zero

I know Americans are math challenged and need a calculator to subtract 10 from 20, but I think even a CNBC bimbo or Princeton economic professor could get this one right.

Last year there was much banter from the Wall Street shysters and Bakkan shale oil experts about the true breakeven price for shale oil not being $80 (which is the truth) but actually being as low as $58 a barrel. They were spreading this lie in order to keep idiot investors buying the stocks and bonds of these fly by night shale oil companies.

Well, we are now six months further down the line and Bakkan shale oil this morning is selling for $37 per barrel. Where are the babbling baboons of bullshit with storylines of shale oil breakeven prices of $30? I guess even corrupt lying scum can’t work up the gumption to try and convince the ignorant masses of that doozy.

Think about this for a minute. What business in their right mind would start a project that is guaranteed to lose $43 per barrel produced? How long will these small shale oil companies with gobs of junk bond debt last at these prices? The answer is easy. Not long. The bankruptcies have begun. The rig counts are collapsing at the fastest pace in history. And the number of layoffs is increasing exponentially. It’s like watching a devastating car crash in slow motion. And it has only just begun.

And as OilPrice.com’s Andrew Topf explains it’s going to get worse…

100,000 Layoffs And Counting: Is This The New Normal?

This time a year ago, the oil industry’s biggest problem was finding a way to deal with the “retirement tsunami” about to crash down on it as older oilfield workers hung up their cork boots to enjoy freedom-55. Now, with oil prices still in the doldrums, many of those same workers are lucky to be hanging onto their jobs, while others have been booted from the payroll as an ugly wave of layoffs takes hold.

One of the worst-affected areas is the Canadian oil sands, where a higher per-barrel cost of production than conventional sources has oil companies scrambling to cut capital expenditures and in several cases, put long-term projects on ice.

On Thursday one of the region’s big players, Husky Energy, announced that about 1,000 construction workers employed by a contractor at its Sunrise oilsands project, would be issued pink slips. The bad news for the workers came a day after Husky said that it had started to produce from the $3.2 billion, steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) Sunrise operation, which it co-owns with BP.

The layoffs by Husky followed Suncor’s decision in January to cut 1,000 employees and Royal Dutch’s Shell’s announcement that it will shed close to 10 percent of the workforce at its Albian sands project – around 300 workers.

The Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors, which closely tracks drilling activity, said in February that up to 23,000 jobs could be lost as the number of rigs fall. Since the price started dropping last September, about 13,000 positions in the Alberta natural resources sector, mostly oil and gas, have been eliminated, according to Statistics Canada.

The bloodletting among the oil majors and their vast web of ancillary services has of course extended to the United States – which appears to be taking far more casualties than Saudi Arabia in the battle for marketshare. In January oilfield services giant Baker Hughes said it will lay off 7,000 employees, about 11 percent of its workforce; that number was rivalled only by its competitor, Schlumberger, which let go 9,000 workers. Shell, Apache, Pemex and Halliburton are among major oil companies to issue recent pink slips to the growing army of unemployed oil workers. In the U.S., the worst pain is, not shockingly, expected to be felt in Houston. Assuming a one-third reduction in oil company capital expenditures this year and 5 percent in 2016, the hydrocarbon capital of the world could lose 75,000 jobs, in a city that has added 100,000 new positions every year since 2011, said a professor at the University of Houston.

The oil jobs nightmare is in fact spreading like a cancer. According to Swift Worldwide Resources, “the number of energy jobs cut globally has climbed well above 100,000 as once-bustling oil hubs in Scotland, Australia and Brazil, among other countries, empty out,” Bloomberg reported recently. Examples include foreign-trained engineers whose promise of employment at LNG plants in Australia have evaporated as projects get delayed; development projects halted in Brazil resulting in the closure of international schools and the relocation of workers; and 8,000 Mexican workers left without paycheques after Petroleos Mexicanos slashed contracts and purchases, Bloomberg said.

Of course, industry defenders say the oil and gas business is boom and bust by nature, and most veteran oilmen have gone through many a cyclical downturn and lived to fight another day. The question of whether or when the oil price will recover and all those laid-off workers are rehired is best left to the prognosticators. In the meantime, there is a danger in oil companies cutting too deep, according to oil and gas industry recruiters. They say firms that lay off too many workers will put pressure on older workers who may opt for early retirement. That could leave companies in the same situation as the 1980s, when an oil downturn meant few businesses hired and new graduates went into other more promising fields, leaving a serious talent gap.

“They will be very careful about reducing staff, because they’ve seen cycles like this before where commodity prices are weak for a certain period time, they lay off employees and they’re not well-positioned to get access to high-quality talent,” said Mike Rowe, vice president of exploration and production research at Tudor Pickering Holt, an energy investment and merchant bank, in a story run by CNBC on how the layoffs could come back to haunt the industry.

By the time this plays out, North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, and parts of Pennsylvania will be in smoldering ruins of unemployment and dramatically reduced tax revenues. These energy jobs were high paying. Maybe they can get themselves an Obama job – waiter, bartender, hotel room cleaner, social worker, or government drone.

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BRING SOME MARSHMALLOWS

This is video of the latest in a series of explosive train derailments over the last few years. A 109 car CSX train derailed earlier this week in West Virginia. It was carrying some of that good old North Dakota fracked oil. Well, at least we know it burns just as well as regular oil.

And these oil cars were the new super safe railcars that are supposed to resist rupture. I think CSX may have been sold a load of shit, because these railcars didn’t resist too much.

I wonder if the costs of these unfortunate accidents are factored into the shale oil miracle storyline. Obama and his environmental nazi minions do everything they can to block the Keystone pipeline and other rational pipeline extensions. With oil at $50 per barrel, these pipelines probably no longer make much sense economically. But from a safety and environmental standpoint how can they possibly argue that sending oil by rail across our horrible rail infrastructure is a safer and more environmentally friendly method.

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The Real Cause Of Low Oil Prices: Interview With Arthur Berman

No nonsense interview with a straight shooter. The breakeven for shale oil is unequivocally $80 or more. Bakken shale oil is now selling for less than $40 per barrel ($13 discount to WTI). North Dakota and Texas are in for a heap of pain. Their employment miracle and tax revenues are about to go into reverse. Reality bites.

Via Oilprice.com

By James Stafford

With all the conspiracy theories surrounding OPEC’s November decision not cut production, is it really not just a case of simple economics? The U.S. shale boom has seen huge hype but the numbers speak for themselves and such overflowing optimism may have been unwarranted. When discussing harsh truths in energy, no sector is in greater need of a reality check than renewable energy.

In a third exclusive interview with James Stafford of Oilprice.com, energy expert Arthur Berman explores:

• How the oil price situation came about and what was really behind OPEC’s decision
• What the future really holds in store for U.S. shale
• Why the U.S. oil exports debate is nonsensical for many reasons
• What lessons can be learnt from the U.S. shale boom
• Why technology doesn’t have as much of an influence on oil prices as you might think
• How the global energy mix is likely to change but not in the way many might have hoped

OP: The Current Oil Situation – What is your assessment?

Arthur Berman: The current situation with oil price is really very simple. Demand is down because of a high price for too long. Supply is up because of U.S. shale oil and the return of Libya’s production. Decreased demand and increased supply equals low price.

As far as Saudi Arabia and its motives, that is very simple also. The Saudis are good at money and arithmetic. Faced with the painful choice of losing money maintaining current production at $60/barrel or taking 2 million barrels per day off the market and losing much more money—it’s an easy choice: take the path that is less painful. If there are secondary reasons like hurting U.S. tight oil producers or hurting Iran and Russia, that’s great, but it’s really just about the money.

Saudi Arabia met with Russia before the November OPEC meeting and proposed that if Russia cut production, Saudi Arabia would also cut and get Kuwait and the Emirates at least to cut with it. Russia said, “No,” so Saudi Arabia said, “Fine, maybe you will change your mind in six months.” I think that Russia and maybe Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria and Angola will change their minds by the next OPEC meeting in June.

We’ve seen several announcements by U.S. companies that they will spend less money drilling tight oil in the Bakken and Eagle Ford Shale Plays and in the Permian Basin in 2015. That’s great but it will take a while before we see decreased production. In fact, it is more likely that production will increase before it decreases. That’s because it takes time to finish the drilling that’s started, do less drilling in 2015 and finally see a drop in production. Eventually though, U.S. tight oil production will decrease. About that time—perhaps near the end of 2015—world oil prices will recover somewhat due to OPEC and Russian cuts after June and increased demand because of lower oil price. Then, U.S. companies will drill more in 2016.

OP: How do you see the shale landscape changing in the U.S. given the current oil price slump?

Arthur Berman: We’ve read a lot of silly articles since oil prices started falling about how U.S. shale plays can break-even at whatever the latest, lowest price of oil happens to be. Doesn’t anyone realize that the investment banks that do the research behind these articles have a vested interest in making people believe that the companies they’ve put billions of dollars into won’t go broke because prices have fallen? This is total propaganda.

We’ve done real work to determine the EUR (estimated ultimate recovery) of all the wells in the core of the Bakken Shale play, for example. It’s about 450,000 barrels of oil equivalent per well counting gas. When we take the costs and realized oil and gas prices that the companies involved provide to the Securities and Exchange Commission in their 10-Qs, we get a break-even WTI price of $80-85/barrel. Bakken economics are at least as good or better than the Eagle Ford and Permian so this is a fairly representative price range for break-even oil prices.

But smart people don’t invest in things that break-even. I mean, why should I take a risk to make no money on an energy company when I can invest in a variable annuity or a REIT that has almost no risk that will pay me a reasonable margin?

Oil prices need to be around $90 to attract investment capital. So, are companies OK at current oil prices? Hell no! They are dying at these prices. That’s the truth based on real data. The crap that we read that companies are fine at $60/barrel is just that. They get to those prices by excluding important costs like everything except drilling and completion. Why does anyone believe this stuff?

If you somehow don’t believe or understand EURs and 10-Qs, just get on Google Finance and look at third quarter financial data for the companies that say they are doing fine at low oil prices.

Continental Resources is the biggest player in the Bakken. Their free cash flow—cash from operating activities minus capital expenditures—was -$1.1 billion in the third- quarter of 2014. That means that they spent more than $1 billion more than they made. Their debt was 120% of equity. That means that if they sold everything they own, they couldn’t pay off all their debt. That was at $93 oil prices.

And they say that they will be fine at $60 oil prices? Are you kidding? People need to wake up and click on Google Finance to see that I am right. Capital costs, by the way, don’t begin to reflect all of their costs like overhead, debt service, taxes, or operating costs so the true situation is really a lot worse.

So, how do I see the shale landscape changing in the U.S. given the current oil price slump? It was pretty awful before the price slump so it can only get worse. The real question is “when will people stop giving these companies money?” When the drilling slows down and production drops—which won’t happen until at least mid-2016—we will see the truth about the U.S. shale plays. They only work at high oil prices. Period.

OP: What, if any, effect will low oil prices have on the US oil exports debate?

Arthur Berman: The debate about U.S. oil exports is silly. We produce about 8.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. We import about 6.5 million barrels of crude oil per day although we have been importing less every year. That starts to change in 2015 and after 2018 our imports will start to rise again according to EIA. The same thing is true about domestic production. In 2014, we will see the greatest annual rate of increase in production. In 2015, the rate of increase starts to slow down and production will decline after 2019 again according to EIA.

Why would we want to export oil when we will probably never import less than 37 or 38 percent (5.8 million barrels per day) of our consumption? For money, of course!

Remember, all of the calls for export began when oil prices were high. WTI was around $100/barrel from February through mid-August of this year. Brent was $6 or $7 higher. WTI was lower than Brent because the shale players had over-produced oil, like they did earlier with gas, and lowered the domestic price.

U.S. refineries can’t handle the light oil and condensate from the shale plays so it has to be blended with heavier imported crudes and exported as refined products. Domestic producers could make more money faster if they could just export the light oil without going to all of the trouble to blend and refine it.

This, by the way, is the heart of the Keystone XL pipeline debate. We’re not planning to use the oil domestically but will blend that heavy oil with condensate from shale plays, refine it and export petroleum products. Keystone is about feedstock.

Would exporting unrefined light oil and condensate be good for the country? There may be some net economic benefit but it doesn’t seem smart for us to run through our domestic supply as fast as possible just so that some oil companies can make more money.

OP: In global terms, what do you think developing producer nations can learn from the US shale boom?

Arthur Berman: The biggest take-away about the U.S. shale boom for other countries is that prices have to be high and stay high for the plays to work. Another important message is that drilling can never stop once it begins because decline rates are high. Finally, no matter how big the play is, only about 10-15% of it—the core or sweet spot—has any chance of being commercial. If you don’t know how to identify the core early on, the play will probably fail.

Not all shale plays work. Only marine shales that are known oil source rocks seem to work based on empirical evidence from U.S. plays. Source rock quality and source maturity are the next big filter. Total organic carbon (TOC) has to be at least 2% by weight in a fairly thick sequence of shale. Vitrinite reflectance (Ro) needs to be 1.1 or higher.

If your shale doesn’t meet these threshold criteria, it probably won’t be commercial. Even if it does meet them, it may not work. There is a lot more uncertainty about shale plays than most people think.

OP: Given technological advances in both the onshore and offshore sectors which greatly increase production, how likely is it that oil will stay below $80 for years to come?

Arthur Berman: First of all, I’m not sure that the premise of the question is correct. Who said that technology is responsible for increasing production? Higher price has led to drilling more wells. That has increased production. It’s true that many of these wells were drilled using advances in technology like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing but these weren’t free. Has the unit cost of a barrel of oil gas gone down in recent years? No, it has gone up. That’s why the price of oil is such a big deal right now.

Domestic oil prices were below about $30/barrel until 2004 and companies made enough money to stay in business. WTI averaged about $97/barrel from 2011 until August of 2014. That’s when we saw the tight oil boom. I would say that technology followed price and that price was the driver. Now that prices are low, all the technology in the world won’t stop falling production.

Many people think that the resurgence of U.S. oil production shows that Peak Oil was wrong. Peak oil doesn’t mean that we are running out of oil. It simply means that once conventional oil production begins to decline, future supply will have to come from more difficult sources that will be more expensive or of lower quality or both. This means production from deep water, shale and heavy oil. It seems to me that Peak Oil predictions are right on track.

Technology will not reduce the break-even price of oil. The cost of technology requires high oil prices. The companies involved in these plays never stop singing the praises of their increasing efficiency through technology—this has been a constant litany since about 2007—but we never see those improvements reflected in their financial statements. I don’t doubt that the companies learn and get better at things like drilling time but other costs must be increasing to explain the continued negative cash flow and high debt of most of these companies.

The price of oil will recover. Opinions that it will remain low for a long time do not take into account that all producers need about $100/barrel. The big exporting nations need this price to balance their fiscal budgets. The deep-water, shale and heavy oil producers need $100 oil to make a small profit on their expensive projects. If oil price stays at $80 or lower, only conventional producers will be able to stay in business by ignoring the cost of social overhead to support their regimes. If this happens, global supply will fall and the price will increase above $80/barrel. Only a global economic collapse would permit low oil prices to persist for very long.

OP: How do you see the global energy mix changing in the coming decades? Have renewables made enough advances to properly compete with fossil fuels or is that still a long way off?

Arthur Berman: The global energy mix will move increasingly to natural gas and more slowly to renewable energy. Global conventional oil production peaked in 2005-2008. U.S. shale gas production will peak in the next 5 to 7 years but Russia, Iran, Qatar and Turkmenistan have sufficient conventional gas reserves to supply Europe and Asia for several decades. Huge discoveries have been made in the greater Indian Ocean region—Madagascar, offshore India, the Northwest Shelf of Australia and Papua New Guinea. These will provide the world with natural gas for several more decades. Other large finds have been made in the eastern Mediterranean.

There will be challenges as we move from an era of oil- to an era of gas-dominated energy supply. The most serious will be in the transport sector where we are thoroughly reliant on liquid fuels today —mostly gasoline and diesel. Part of the transformation will be electric transport using natural gas to generate the power. Increasingly, LNG will be a factor especially in regions that lack indigenous gas supply or where that supply will be depleted in the medium term and no alternative pipeline supply is available like in North America.

Of course, natural gas and renewable energy go hand-in-hand. Since renewable energy—primarily solar and wind—are intermittent, natural gas backup or base-load is necessary. I think that extreme views on either side of the renewable energy issue will have to moderate. On the one hand, renewable advocates are unrealistic about how quickly and easily the world can get off of fossil fuels. On the other hand, fossil fuel advocates ignore the fact that government is already on board with renewables and that, despite the economic issues that they raise, renewables are going to move forward albeit at considerable cost.

Time is rarely considered adequately. Renewable energy accounts for a little more than 2% of U.S. total energy consumption. No matter how much people want to replace fossil fuel with renewable energy, we cannot go from 2% to 20% or 30% in less than a decade no matter how aggressively we support or even mandate its use. In order to get to 50% or more of primary energy supply from renewable sources it will take decades.

I appreciate the urgency felt by those concerned with climate change. I think, however, that those who advocate a more-or-less immediate abandonment of fossil fuels fail to understand how a rapid transition might affect the quality of life and the global economy. Much of the climate change debate has centered on who is to blame for the problem. Little attention has been given to what comes next namely, how will we make that change without extreme economic and social dislocation?

I am not a climate scientist and, therefore, do not get involved in the technical debate. I suggest, however, that those who advocate decisive action in the near term think seriously about how natural gas and nuclear power can make the change they seek more palatable.

The great opportunity for renewable energy lies in electricity storage technology. At present, we are stuck with intermittent power and little effort has gone into figuring out ways to store the energy that wind and solar sources produce when conditions are right. If we put enough capital into storage capability, that can change everything.

By James Stafford of Oilprice.com