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You do realize one major line is coming online soon to the gulf. Cactus line. So figure that into your equation. 2 more lines by end of 2020. They aren't going to be carrying water. So as soon as we can get lines run, production will increase 4 fold. This is the only reason we haven't seen a bigger explosion in barrels per day.

Thank you. I agree with you 100% regarding the offshore industry. The American shale oil phenomena, in its current feeding frenzy, is temporary. Money is being poured into it hand over fist, regardless of profitability, but eventually Mother Nature will have Her say, as she always does, and productivity will go way down, become way more expensive to extract and even less profitable. I think that will begin to occur, and D. Coyne suggests, by 2025 or so. The short investment cycle nature of shale oil has fundamentally changed the world oil order and investment in exploration, offshore and on, around the world has been severely set back. I believe the US shale phenomena is the root cause of that. As iron rusts away, and qualified personal leave the worldwide industry because of job instability and retirement, that will have bad, long term ramifications. When US shale oil fizzles out the world is going to be woefully unprepared and prices will spike, likely, causing bad economic problems. "New" folks to the industry (mostly thru the internet) are fixated on American shale. In the US shale oil only represents 53% of our total C+C production; it declines at the rate of 36+% every year and 75% of the wells now being drilled are needed simply to replace annualized decline rates from the year before.* Conventional production, including from the GOM, has annual decline rates of about 3.2%. Elsewhere throughout the world there have been few new discoveries, production is declining, reserves are not being replaced, and the world, to which America is part of, is headed for problems. For all the good the shale oil phenomena has done America, short term, it is proving problematic for the rest of the world. Its gross mismanagement will prove to be a problem, in the long run, for the United States also. Stupid nationalistic pride has lent itself to the belief that America can become hydrocarbon independent, and stay that way, and that we no longer need OPEC, or Russian oil, that we can isolate ourselves from the world.* That is very dumb stuff...before it's all over the largest consuming nation in the world is going to need every drop of oil the world has to offer.

In all candor, Ron, hard for me to decipher. I remain mindful that generalizations are just that - generalizations. One cannot account for individuals out of that. I only had one Afghan colleague, a young man who emigrated with his family to the USA. He set up an interesting business, buying up Mercedes sedans used, loading into containers (stacked by crushing the roof pillars), then shipping to Hamburg, where the containers sere loaded onto truck chassis, then driven across Europe and through Turkey to Iran, through Iran, and into Kabul. There, the cars were repaired, the roofs fixed, and re-sold to Afghans at a great mark-up. Those Afghans in turn got their wealth by being contractors to the US Army, doing work such as fixing roads. One such contract was written up by the US Army with wages estimated at USA dollar levels; the contractor simply hired locals at a hundred dollars a month and pocketed the huge difference. Guys like that became my man's customers. My colleague had his business raided by the Feds, the confiscated his auto inventory and his bank accounts, and he fled and went underground. It was not clear to me what the Feds' beef with him was, other than he was making money (quite a bit, incidentally, not a bad gig for a poor boy). I conclude the Feds were individually irritated that he was doing well and they were not, so they abused some Regulation and took it out on him. You get that kind of abuse from officials inside the USA, happens all day long especially to the native blacks. Capitalism is not as widely admired inside the USA as you might think. In many respects, the USA is a gigantic bureaucratic State, akin to India. As to the societal problems inside Afghanistan, I suspect, but cannot determine, that they flow from a combination of historical confluence of Islam with a certain savagery, a barbarism especially towards women generally and members of other tribes specifically. It is essentially a sort of medieval State, caught in some time warp. It has become a murderous society, with the tools of murder imported from Russia and Western arms dealers and militaries. I really do not see any hope for Afghanistan. I think the problems there will continue until they are all dead. Obviously, when everyone is dead, you have no more conflict. The USA is not particularly good at nation-building. It tries to take artificial borders established by old Colonial Powers and craft those into modern Nation-States, complete with a Democracy and a Parliament. I see no place where that has grafted onto a local culture. It failed in Liberia, originally created and carved out of the African coast as a place where freed American slaves could be encouraged to be self-deported to in the 1800's. Liberia became a two-caste society, with a vast amount of brutality and murder. It failed in Central America, including in Panama and Guatemala, where the US Army came and stayed for over 30 years. It failed in the Philippines, although some stability seems to have taken root, disrupted irregularly by dictators such as Marcos. It failed in Okinawa, which remains a bizarre outsider State, which the US agreed to kick out of the UN. The only real success was the conquest of Europe, but that was in conjunction with other nations, specifically Britain and Canada. And it has failed spectacularly in Iraq. Hard to imagine that the dismal conditions in Afghanistan are going to produce some spectacular success. Original Islam is a religion of peace. it has been subverted, perverted, and twisted into this instrumentality of oppression by these local cultures. Now you have these crazy Mullahs torturing Islam into some religion of sadism and revenge, going back to limb amputation, beheading, death by fire, and stoning. And you have this unreal sexual brutality. It has become a descent into the pits of Hell itself. The world society will likely have to intern,segregated, large numbers of these Afghan Taliban males until the gene pool is extinguished. Stopping internal reproduction might be the only plausible successful strategy. And that is why I think Europe will end up with internal internment camps,basically a Gulag Archipelago, the way Stalin did it with the Kulaks. All in all, a very sad state of affairs.

Thank you. I do not respond to questions or comment here trying to pick fights. I live and breathe oil and natural gas economics and finances every day; I am trying to help. The shale oil phenomena is no threat to me personally, nor am I ignorant because at this point in my long career choose to be completely out of debt and wish to stay mentally and physically busy operating and drilling new "stripper" wells. Shale oil is important; nobody wants it "go away," whatever that means. Lots of people in America, however, believe for it to be sustainable and something our kids can count on, it needs to become profitable, get and stay out of debt. Shale oil is basically all we have left in N. America; we need to take care of it, nurture the nasty stuff, not piss it all off to make a quick buck. Reserve estimates and predicting remaining oil reserves in America, by the way, is as old as the industry itself. Its vitally important, right, wrong, "crappy, or not. The end of the oil era is upon us and being ready for that end is far better than just assuming its BAU.

Just for the Record: 1. You are assuredly not an asshole. If I want to find assholes, I head over to Wall Street. Lots around over there. 2. You are most definitely not a communist. I would be hard pressed to come up with a more Capitalist guy. 3. You are assuredly not "ignorant." You know whereof you speak. ------I read your posts with great care. Personally, I find I learn quite a bit from them. Cheers.

Agreed. "The Prize" is an exceptional book about the history of oil. Highly recommended. A bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner, it really is an amazing non-fiction book.

Donald doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to his economics, at one point he wants cheap gas at the pump and supports US Shale or US Oil in general, then his next breath he tweets a tweet that puts WTI into free fall, does this guy have an agenda on US oil or does he just want to please everyone by talking BS constantly?

There are some really strong opinions on this subject, but being in a shale gas basin, I will let you decide if there are any parallels. We've been doing this here since about 2007, and "Permania" did not really take off until 2014. Most of the stocks of the large operators here have lost 85-90% of their value since 2007. Antero, Range and Southwest Energy are all setting new 52-week lows as we speak (7/17/2019). Steve Schlotterbeck, the former CEO of EQT said “The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for the buy/hold investor,” Racing to increase production in an already over-supplied market is a bad idea, period. Selling at steep discount to Brent is not a viable long-term business model. Name-calling and personal attacks are much of the reason I avoid this platform, and the admin should sanction those who are guilty. I find it petty, and adds nothing to what could be interesting dialogue. My name is Paul Jackson, and I'm in the book, as is Mike Shellman. We have nothing to hide.

Agree. But I think bottlenecks have also driven costs high. This will change. 10 years is really not a lot to build out a supplychain. This will delay geology overtaking operational improvements. I know. But the majors are multinational. They have done projects all over the world. They just lack systemic knowledge about shale.

Mike, I too, read your posts with great interest. And you are probably right in most of your observations. However, coming from offshore I see a structural change happening in the oil market driven in part by shale. I think the structural loser will be offshore much more than shale. I agree that many things should be done differently (well to the benefit of the shale oil industry and the US), but to me that is a different discussion. I think the key point is - as you stated - is the the oil era is in its sunset; granted it is a long sunset, but still. In that context I can understand the investor attraction to short cycle barrels.

Yeah, they're kicking ass alrighty. Quick ! (and no researching on the internet before you answer), lets say you want to learn something about the well you've just written a check for, which end of the rig do you go to find out...to the right or to the left. No cheating now...

I'm new here and don't pretend to know a lot about geology or wind shear forces, but this whole string seems to have a lot of scientific posturing almost more than it has good info. For starters, the first poster (Meredith) objected to a 77% renewables mix of energy (spending) through 2050, remarking that it will be 100% by 2050. Well it may or may not, who really knows, but the poster seemed to be objecting to the 77% number, which I don't get. It seems to me the 77% number is an average over the period to 2050, not a number AT 2050. So every argument back and forth after that seemed off to me, missing the point and starting a tangent discussion. Then another self-appointed expert (Wastral) is telling us coal doesn't come from organic materials, even though the great majority of experts otherwise seem to believe it does. His explanation: Too few fossils embedded in coal. His answer: No one knows how coal is formed, but surely from ocean-bottom continental subduction processes. Again, I'm no rocket scientist, but in todays organic recycling processes, there don't seem to be a lot of fossils left over from the degradation/conversion of grass clippings and banana peels and dead squirrels into dirt. Nor do there seem to be a lot of fossils in peat or lignite or ... Not that there couldn't be fossil formation, but nice clean fossil formation probably happens under unique conditions not normally associated with high-organic-content, high-initial-water, long-time, high-pressure, anaerobic coal formation. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. Furthermore, there are a heck of a lot of processes that have gone into the formation of this planet of ours over the millenia, including plenty of volcanoes, lava runs, geysers and hot springs, asteroid and particle hits, underwater activity - both shallow and deep, sinkhole and fissures, earthquake-induced surface cracking and shaking, deeper subduction activity, solar flares, floods, aerobic and anaerobic conditions, dry and arid conditions, gas and fume activity, etc. Entire cities in man's time have been buried without any sign of subduction or volcanic causes - what the heck, major duststorms? Floods? I personally have no trouble believing conventional theory that coal is formed from organic materials. It seems perfectly reasonable given the geological transition from peat through to anthracite. As long as it carries the tagline "theory" - as many things in science warrant - I'm ok with it. Again, I'm no expert, but I do object to people sounding like they are stating facts when they are only stating opinion. Please be a tiny bit humble and helpful to the rest of us by differentiating clearly between opinion, conjecture and fact. And please, don't be an ass by trying to make others feel small because they aren't all knowing like you may be.

You haven't a clue what my "league" of operations entails. Over 50 years I've drilled HZ wells, done large frac's, deep, shallow, and drill new wells every year; there is nothing about the money that I make that is 'free,' nor requires 'further investment.' That's stupid. As was your buddy's comments; they are idiots. They don't risk their own money, they use other people's money and almost all of them are deeply in debt, can't keep their credit cards in their purse and are set to drive the price down, again, into the 40's with fiscally irresponsible over production. I am stunned how dumb people are about cheerleading for this stinking shale stuff; none, I repeat none, of the hoopla said about it can be substantiated with facts. 99% of those guys are still, after a decade, losing money hand over fist. Some of you cheerleaders seem to thing the shale industry can lie to the Securities and Exchange Commission like they lie to investors. Realized production data filed with regulatory agencies clearly, clearly shows that <10% of shale oil wells currently being drilled pay out D,C & L costs in less than 3 years. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Shale-Investors-Fear-Bloodbath-As-Earnings-Season-Kicks-Off.html Dissolvable frac balls were used in vertical stage frac'ing 50 years ago in Luling Field and Pine Island Field in north LA. Like dissolvable frac plugs, sliding sleeves and other tinker toys, none of that stuff has helped the American shale industry become more profitable. https://www.oilystuffblog.com/single-post/2019/07/15/Cartoon-Of-the-Week

stupid jorno gives out right there cui bono... Had a good chuckle at that. If that's an answer to Trump's administration attack on big tech subverting politics - that's a lame one. You can do better, Jeff! Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" is a good read on history of oil - not the attempt to re-write it as the shameless WaPo tries to do.

Easy. Future oil prices will be the price that people are comfortable paying. The Law of Supply and Demand trumps everything (except bullets.) If the price goes above the comfort level, people will conserve, switch, and develop new alternatives. If prices go below the comfort level, people will find more applications for oil.

I lived in Ft. Stockton, Tx and worked on rigs there, then situation moved me to Lovington, NM. Circa (1978-1986). I didn't work on horizontal rigs as none were avail. I was mostly on deep hole rigs 15k feet plus. Pricing of WTI will range term (10) year 55bbl. In 10 years renewables will keep taking a steady chunk but not too significant. There will be ups and downs as there has been all these last 80+yrs. The more oil discovered in the world and getting to market will keep prices suppressed. This is just my opinion. Oil will be here and around for the foreseeable future. It just doesn't power truck,cars, planes etc. Of course, if Bernie, or Eliz Warren get in all bets are off.

I've heard as California goes so goes the nation, but I don't think that applies anymore. These people have lost their minds, as have their like-minded political apperatchiks such as antifa, the squad and well quite frankly the rest of the Democrat Party.

It will be a new approach, definitely: "Von der Leyen fixed climate protection as her no. 1 priority as she set out her plans to lawmakers in the EU Parliament ahead of a confirmation vote and signaled she’s prepared to get tough with trading partners like the U.S. and China if they don’t match up"

So, we could say "German Empire finally gets a German leader in the EU"?

Old Ruffneck, I agree that output will increase in the Permian Basin, currently output is roughly 4 MMb/d, so you expect a quadrupling to 16 MMb/d by 2020? Not happening. There is not that much pipeline capacity expansion planned and the planned pipelines may be more than is needed and may prove to be poor investments unless they can be converted to natural gas or NGL, it is unlikely that Permian output will increase to more than 8 Mb/d (roughly double today's output) and it won't reach that level until 2027 or so. Output is likely to increase quickly over the next few years at an average annual rate of increase of about 750 kb/d over the next 4 years, reaching about 6.1 MMb/d in Permian basin by May 2022, the rate of increase will gradually slow down as the peak is approached at the end of 2027 at about 8 MMb/d

I agree that what is defined as "christian cultural heritage" today generally have influenced Western society in positive way, but that is because our interpretation of Bible have changed. From the little I have read of the Qoran it is my impression that the issue here also is interpretation - i.e. as @John Foote put it : What man does with the message of God says more about man than scripture. For example - nobody blames the bible for the sexual crimes committed by catholic priests...

1973 horse in a car that size and weight, with full torque available from the 'get go'! Impressive and scary (but fun!). I'm still a diehard petrolhead, but you've got to give credit where credit is due. The new electric Harley Davidson also looks interesting, but with a range of 145 miles before charging (1 hour for a full charge) it is still a 'city bike'. But, if that is where you predominately ride...not an issue!

Hmmm....Not sure that there ever was a period called the Gusher Age and his concept of 'wildcatting' needs some work. Typical journalism in this day and age.

Okay mate, obviously you have a very high 'cull factor'.... Well done!👍🏻

Perhaps you should look up 'arrogant' as well...

It is strange that no one here considers that nations all over the world (especially China) will want to use all of the latest technology for oil exploration and drilling. I am sure they will surprise us eventually. I look to natural gas as the long term answer but wind and solar will play a role also.

Natrual gas is better in that it is cleaner, far more abundant, and at least a third cheaper than oil. There are already five times as many natural gas vehicles as there are electric cars in the world. The current fleet can be converted to natural gas. Oil will not be missed when it actually gets too expensive. That is a long way off though. Gasoline can also be made out of natural gas and coal so there are a lot of other possibilities. If electric vehicles become affordable natural gas will , most likely, be the fuel making most of the electricity.

As opposed to the 'hit pieces' here against Muslims, immigrants, 'liberals', etc.

I have. Its performance in the Bakken is abysmal. It has worldwide operations including a portion of new discoveries in Guyana and has been dumping assets elsewhere. Perhaps that is what is confusing to you. Hess is actually No.1 on the negative cash flow hit parade. As to the comparison to Amazon.com, I don't understand your logic at all; it is not in the oil business, it is in the retail sales business. Profit almost always dictates the success or failure of business in America. Profit, or the lack thereof, is working in this case as well, be it slowly because of low interest monetary stimulus, and most of the shale oil industry is failing, sadly. Equally stupid. Shale oil is no threat to me and I can likely buy and sell you on credit, pardnor. Some small independent operators that sold participation in Wolfcamp, or Bone Springs deals in the Delaware to industry partners, and stayed out of debt, with low land acquisition costs and very low G&A costs, might be eeking out decent returns on CAPEX. They do not not represent the shale oil industry as a whole and that, I believe, is the debate...how sustainable is the American shale oil industry, not how much free royalty you make. You keep calling me names, to whom shall I address that? What is your name, or must you insult me anonymously ?

I can confirm, water fracs were practiced in 60th by Dowell. 7-8M lb fracs were done in vertical wells in 80th. Not much of a revolutionary new tech in shales; as a matter of fact it’s hardly possible to sell NT to shale operators. Mostly copying what’s popular. Still, incremental improvements do change things and credit should be given for that. On economics, come across George Carlin video: “they don’t have negative cash flow problem - they are f..ng broke!” https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY

You traders and your fanciful numbers and rationale is a big part of the problem the rest of the oilfield now finds itself. Tell me OB1, how are lower prices going to contribute to the Shale Oil Miracle when they are unprofitable at the present price? Money is already getting tight for the shale players so I can't see lower prices giving them any hope. This shale oil fiasco will only last until they either go 'tits up' due to finances or it is no longer a viable political tool.

First, can you explain to me what 'dissolving balls' are? If this is proppent you sure as heck do not want them to dissolve - it is there to hold the fracture open. Look up Massive Hydraulic Fracturing, this was being done decades ago in Texas. The core fracking technology was available long before the Shale Miracle arrived on the scene. Drilling 'miles' down (two miles is less than 11,000 feet!) then turning the well horizontal was being perfected at least as far back as 1984. I was designing fishbone horizontal laterals in Denmark 20 years ago. Needless to say, you wouldn't drill them if you couldn't log and evaluate them. Absolutely none of this 'new' shale technology is new! It has likely been 'tweeked' to fit their specific requirement, but they definitely didn't pioneer or perfect it! I have never made a comment regarding the economics of fracking, I leave that to guys like Mike who actually deal with the financial side of things on a daily basis. What I am is a 60 year old drilling engineer/drilling superintendent/drilling manager who has spent the past 35 years drilling internationally. You can speak to any scientist you want to, they have their place in the scheme of things. But it is the drilling team on location and the engineers and drilling management team in the office which have to make any scientific design work and get it in the ground. Believe me when I tell you that this 'new' technology was in play long before the shale oil industry was spawned. I hope all that free money with no further investment covers the eventual 'plug & abandonment' of the thousands of LTO wells, or else, once again, the American taxpayer will be on the hook for billions to sort it out.

I believe it's fair to say fracking today, with "dissolving balls" and multi stage frack jobs utilizing thousands of horsepower and billions of gallons of water and proppant has little to do with 50 years ago. It's also fair to say that drilling miles down, then drilling laterals miles out from the same well bore couldn't even pass the laugh test 50 years ago, let alone logging while drilling to stay in a target zone less than 15 feet thick. All routine today. So yes, fracking, thanks primarily to George Mitchell, is nothing whatsoever like it was 50 years ago, and has made billions of bbls show up as economically recoverable that weren't even on the radar 50 years ago. It is a whole new paradigm. I've spoken at some length with the chief scientist of a major player in this domain. I've pointedly asked him about many of the arguments you and others have made about the non economics of fracking. His response? "We're not idiots". The depletion curve is steep, but the first year almost always pays off both the well AND the bank (time value of money) and every bbl after that is gravy. I'd assumed they'd abandon wells after they got to "stripper" levels, but they don't and once they get down into the teens, they stay there for years, not declining nearly as precipitously as the first year. At that point, they're in the @Mike Shellman league of operation, making (some) essentially free money with no further investment.

Having visited both countries, having worked for Aramco with tons of Americans and being married to an Iranian woman I know where my preferences would be!

There was an "enlightenment phase that came with the Renaissance" but it's really two different eras- the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The Renaissance was the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman learning which began as early as the 1100s in Italy but is given as about 1450 in other places. The Enlightenment was after 1650. One way to look at it is ancient Greek and Roman methods of thinking (aside from the polytheism and idol worship) getting refined, improved and deeply applied in the West. It does NOT necessitate an end to religion. Ever since 1650, a scientist can view his or herself as trying to understand God's creation. 95% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, and we don't know what it is. The real problem in what you are saying is that the institutionalized values of human rights come directly from what Jesus said and did. Just ask yourself, what would Jesus have done when it comes to any subject of human rights? You have a good approximation of actual human rights law. Now ask yourself, what would Muhamed have done in any given situation? And you do NOT have human rights law. Then you write that in any religion, "the extremes are not pretty." Extreme Christianity is turning the other cheek if attacked, sharing food, living ascetically and so on. That is a Christian fundamentalist- taking the bible literally. Not what the media defines it as, but that is what it is. Extreme Judaism is the "black hatters" who spend their lives in prayer, only hold jobs because they need to have enough food and shelter to read and understand the holy books and raise a family. People that the media labels as extremist Jews are something else that I will not digress to discuss unless asked. Here is one of the many lists of Jihadist verses. [https://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html] When does the "out of context" become so numerous that it is actually the context? Probably more than a few of the claimed jihad verses are not actually that. I run each claim through a website that gives multiple alternative translations of each verse. Start with [http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp or https://www.quranbrowser.org/] but there may be another, better site. Please show me the New Testament and Old Testament verses that say to do this stuff now, today, to every "non-believer" (which the Koran says to do). The problem is that if only .1% of Muslims take the Koran literally, you have a BIG problem. Given the 1.2 billion Muslims, it is 1.2 million people. It is too many for the intelligence agencies of the free societies to track I do believe ISIS are psychopaths. The problem is that the Koran, The Hadith, and the life of Muhamed tell them they are doing the right thing, and those books and teachings make some % of other Muslims silent supporters. This is mostly a ridiculous article by a journalist who has good credentials. They stamped her "passport" with the B.A. from elite Williams College and the fellowship at Yale Law School. Result: she's a useful idiot. [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124494788] If you wish to discuss it, I'm game.

Since my question was short-to mid term. Thoughts on this coming from IEA.......... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-12/oil-surplus-makes-surprise-return-despite-opec-cuts-iea-says

I'll make this simple for you: 1) Oil production is ongoing and costs money. 2) Discovery of new reserves is ongoing and costs money. 3) The people discovering new reserves won't want to invest in discovery if they already have decades of reserves. The future is unpredictable that far out. Thus, they'll set a target for how much reserve they need. If reserves fall short, they'll increase discovery activities. If reserves get too large, they'll pare back discovery activities. Thus, it's inaccurate to say the US only has X years of oil. We don't know that. What we do know is that we've discovered quite a bit, it's probable we'll discover more, and no one can say exactly how much that is. Predictions of doom are unnecessary.

Disagree. Oil is simply carbon in a usable form. In your 100 year time frame we will be able to simply pick the weeds in our garden and power anything we want. The "Flux Capacitor" of Back To The Future will be a reality. Both oil and banana peels are higher energy forms of carbon, courtesy of the sun.and chlorophyll. Hmmmm, in 100 years we should have the chlorophyll gene in bacteria with giant farms converting sunlight into sugars which are then used for power. Gotta love enzymes, God's gift to man, millions of times more efficient than normal chemical reactions. Funny - by then we will be talking of a CO2 defficiency in the atmosphere.

Why do I find it incredibly shady when US oil reserves get upward revisions? It seem like it’s been happening a lot since the beginning of 2017, could it be part of the bigger Ponzi scheme?

That is the 90 dollar question, but I would surmise the 5 largest banks and the trickle down effect meaning if you invest, have a 401k is paying for all this. Even the poor guy just filling his tank is contributing. Curious to know now that rig count dropping and production rising, is the DUC wells in the thousands getting completed??

Those reserves you have mentioned, as you know, Daniel, or technically recoverable, as yet "undiscovered" and subject to much higher oil prices in order for them to be eventually, "economically" recoverable. Given the current debt and financial status of the shale oil industry I can make a very good argument that the 10.8 billion barrels of oil that has been recovered the past decade....has not been profitable, even at an average WTI price during that period of nearly $74. People not familiar with reserve classifications struggle with this; and well costs, and well economics, because they don't have any experience in it. Most people writing checks to own working interest in shale oil and shale gas wells have an entirely different belief system, I can assure you. Granted America is now essentially working on the premise of non-profit capitalism, and lots the those lofty USGS reserves might be recovered, regardless of profitability, but 100 billion barrels of oil, 50 years, energy independence and "putting OPEC in its place" is all really stupid stuff to be saying publically. I rather believe that if people saying that stuff would use their own name when making those sort of claims, we could hold their feet to the fire down the road and they would be a little more careful about what they say. As it is now days, on social media, you can pretty much say whatever bullshit you want.

It's a bit ironic that the media latched onto consumer electric vehicles because those are the second worst EV application. If consumer EVs succeed, the only thing left for ICEs will be long-haul applications - and those will face pressure from natural gas & hydrogen. Some additional information to consider: 1) There's a strong argument for converting aircraft to hydrogen or methane: they have higher specific energy, and weight dominates aerospace applications. The industry is already working on electrifying short-range aircraft. Aerospace electrification will expand as batteries improve. 2) Marine applications are already moving towards natural gas to meet emissions regulations. 3) Few - if any - fuel oil furnaces are installed in homes & businesses. Those that remain will continue to be replaced. 4) Batteries+renewables will replace diesel & fuel oil for electricity production. This is one of the few applications where renewables truly make sense. 7) Facilities to break petrochemical products back into crude are opening. We'll be able to reuse 75+% of petrochemical products, which means we'll need <25% as much crude oil for them. 8 ) Some petrochemical applications, such as lubricants, will continue to migrate towards synthetic products. The performance benefits in those applications far outweigh the additional cost. Oil will be here for decades, but the peak is imminent. After the peak, oil will experience a steady decline to economic irrelevance. It will become an afterthought.

As I suggested, this is simply a guess of future oil prices, the other "low scenario" has a different guess with oil prices no higher than $70/b in 2017$. My crystal ball is on the shop, so not sure what future oil prices will be. No doubt there of lots of different opinions on future output, my opinion is based on well profiles today, rate of development in the past, well costs and operating costs based on what oil pros have revealed, mean estimates of resources by the USGS and different guesses of future oil prices. Perhaps your insight from living in Texas (or perhaps New Mexico) gives you a better feel for future oil prices. Tell me what future oil prices will be and I will tell you what future output might be.

The long-term upper limit on oil prices is the price of manufacturing it, which is approximately $100/bbl. By the time the US runs out of crude, that could easily have fallen to $50/bbl. We've been through this before: every time oil prices spike, the world miraculously destroys demand and finds alternatives. It would be a mistake to conflate short-term spikes with long-term set points.

Old Ruffneck, Perhaps you believe that technically recoverable resources (TRR) will be equal to the URR, this is rarely the case in practice. The USGS makes no estimate of future oil prices, it looks at what is technically possible to produce without considering profits. For the Permian Basin I use the mean USGS estimate of all basins assessed so far which has a TRR of 75 Gb, Nothe Dakota Bakken/Three Forks and Eagle ford estimate is about 11 Gb each for a total of 97 Gb and I estimate about 10 Gb for the TRR of the rest of US tight oil (not including Eagle Ford or ND Bakken/TF). So for US tight oil the mean TRR is about 107 Gb, but actual URR under the AEO 2018 reference oil price scenario is more like 85 Gb. Chart below has AEO 2018 reference oil price scenario for Brent Crude. If we assume this oil price scenario is correct the economically recoverable oil for US tight oil from 2010 to 2050 is about 86 Gb, so the ERR/TRR ratio is about 80%. Oil pros often will tell me that I do not know future oil prices, and of course they are right. Note that the AEO reference oil price case has much higher oil prices than many of the people here believe will be the case, a lower oil price scenario ($70/b maximum oil price in 2017$) reduces US tight oil URR from 85 Gb to 59 Gb and the peak to 8 Mb/d in 2021, see chart below.

In 2016 USGS put whole Permian at 20bbl. Just 2 years later they re-estimated it :The Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring rock formations in the Delaware hold an estimated 46.3 billion barrels, the scientists said in their first assessment of the area. In addition, it holds about 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 18 times the amount in the Midland Basin, which is more heavily drilled and better known.The Midland and Delaware estimates are the USGS’s “largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released,” Dr. Jim Reilly, the organization’s director, said in a statement. The amount consists of “undiscovered, technically recoverable resources,” the USGS said. The study only looked at the two rock formations, which are both well known to operators including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, EOG Resources Inc. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. Industry experts say there are as many as a dozen so-called ‘pay zones’ in the area. The Yates field in 100 years produced 1bb, re-estimated in 2018 to give up 1bbl more than thought. So when so called experts keep getting their numbers wrong, I tend to believe that several hundred billion invested in wells, billions in pipelines, someone aint telling the truth. You don't run 3 pipelines to the gulf for oil to last just 4 years. Doesn't make economic sense. The Delaware basin alone could yield more than 50bb, and that is just one piece of the Permian pie. Get calculate out and guess with it, at 200mb monthly how long to suck it dry. Trying to put a timeline of 4-5 years curve is incorrect imho.

It's performance will exceed land-based fiber optics in most cases, so how much market share it captures depends entirely on the cost. There are plenty of commercial customers who pay top dollar for ultra-fast internet connections. These could be the first customers. There are also remote, commercial customers who rely on slow, expensive satellite/microwave connections. These might also be first customers. Finally, there are military's around the world, who would love to have such a capability. Then there are all the customers who already have cable/fiber delivered to their homes/businesses. If the Starlink receiver costs $5000 and the service itself costs $100/mo, customers are unlikely to switch. However, if you're a rancher out in Texas who currently pays $100/mo for a slow phone connection, you might invest in Starlink. Maybe. Or if you're a wealthy retiree puttering around your million-dollar home in Nowhere Wyoming, you might drop $5000 for Starlink. Of course, if the service is stellar at $50/mo and the receiver costs $100, it'll spread quickly. I know US citizens would leap at the chance to free themselves of cable companies and carry their service with them wherever they go.

you wear clothes, have a house with shingles, drive a car(ev or not) with tires on it, shampoo, use toothpaste, plastic tupperware, own electronic devices?? that is just some of the daily essential by-products from fossil fuels, fyi...does your "best science" have a replacement to make ALL those products right now ready to go??? so to be frank sir, what do you do for a living?? do you go home every night to your family sit on your big leather couch with your feet up and have family time?? well, i do not...I work 3 months 7 days a week 15-16 hrs a day straight seeing nothing but dust and oil sites for miles.....and I love every minute of it, cause it is what I have chosen to do to provide for my family I see 28 days out of a year....so when you and the like think these stupid ideas to transform from an industry I live for and bleed for with strangers I call brothers(you won't know about that bond) i take great offense and gladly end in kind with shove your "best science".....

Spot on. https://community.oilprice.com/topic/6751-predatory-green-capitalism-is-monetizing-the-air-and-its-going-to-cost-you/ ... If we measure the full lifecycle costs and environmental burdens of the Good Things (all electric vehicles, etc.), we find that replacing all the existing stuff on the planet will actually increase CO2 immensely--the reduction is trivial while the CO2 emitted in the extraction, processing, manufacture, transport and maintenance of the replacement stuff (i.e. "Growth") will vastly increase CO2, as will all the green capitalists' private jets.

I feel like looking at this through an idealistic lens: When a nation adopts dangerous ideas, it's safer for the world to destroy that nation than to let the infection spread. Thus, nations aren't being destabilized to prop up the price of oil. They're being destabilized to prevent violent ideas (Iran) and economically unsound ideas (Venezuela) from infecting other nations. This works partly because it strips dangerous nations of the resources they need to spread their ideas and partly because it makes an example of them. Most of the Middle East is an obvious example of dangerous ideas. They export violence, oppression of women, etc. That's not acceptable. Venezuela is a more subtle case. Their sin was socialism: stripping resources from the producers of society to give it to unproductive people. This is dangerous because, in the long run, it destroys the economy, plunging everyone into destitution. Unfortunately, citizens of developed nations looked at Venezuela's short-term success and thought, "I want free stuff too!" The dangerous idea was spreading. Thus, the safest course of action is to accelerate Venezuela's inevitable demise. If Venezuela doesn't appear successful, then there's no reason to mimic their behavior. There's also the issue of OPEC, which intentionally manipulates markets. If the problem is that governments are manipulating markets, then the solution is to replace those governments. If The People don't like the resulting death, disease, and destruction, then they shouldn't have supported market manipulation. Better to have a few suffer today than to have everyone suffer later. Conveniently, many dangerous nations rely on oil revenues. Increasing oil prices has the short-term effect of enriching these nations, but the long-term effect of destroying them. As they become dependent on oil revenues, high prices allowed unconventional oil producers to invest in R&D, which drove down the cost of unconventional oil, which allows unconventional oil to replace conventional oil from dangerous nations, which eliminates those nations' revenue streams. These dangerous nations are now wholly dependent on oil revenue even as they're being stripped of that revenue. Problem solved. On a more abstract level, the problem is that some people can't manage resources. They consume everything they're given, fall into destitution, and then complain bitterly that it was Someone Else's fault. These people destroy everything they touch. They are dangerous and cannot be allowed to infect others. Thus, they must be made into examples.