Saudi America

Eli,

The graph below and the title of this post comes from Mark Perry at AEI

Another energy milestone: ‘Saudi America’ was the world’s largest petroleum producer in June for the 20th straight month

Not only is the United States producing more oil than Saudi Arabia, it is producing more by a very wide, and increasing, margin. Thank you hydraulic fracturing.

A few key areas have been responsible for this increase including the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, the Bakken in North Dakota and a handful of plays in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. This graph is from an EIA presentation, "U.S. Energy Outlook," by Adam Sieminski, EIA Administrator.

What is amazing about the Eagle Ford, and the other plays I suspect, is productivity is increasing; that is, the technology is improving and the initial production from wells drilled this year is greater than the wells drilled a year ago which is greater than the wells drilled the prior year, and so on.

The EIA graph below shows the productivity of newly drilled Eagle Ford wells for the past five years:

It is a remarkable accomplishment. Wells drilled this year are twice as productive as wells drilled a mere three years ago.

In other news: New York state bans hydrualic fracturing despite sitting on a treasure of shale. Meanwhile Governor Cuomo is giving millions of dollars to Elon Musk to install solar panels.

Bill