Shale: U.S. Surpasses Saudi Arabia as Largest Oil Producer in the World
July 4th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. will remain the world’s biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said.
U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids.
“The U.S. increase in supply is a very meaningful chunk of oil,” Francisco Blanch, the bank’s head of commodities research, said by phone from New York. “The shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.”
Oil extraction is soaring at shale formations in Texas and North Dakota as companies split rocks using high-pressure liquid, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The surge in supply combined with restrictions on exporting crude is curbing the price of West Texas Intermediate, America’s oil benchmark. The U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, still imported an average of 7.5 million barrels a day of crude in April, according to the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.
Humans are really stupid organisms. For all we know and don’t know about oil and natural gas extraction (other than its polluting the pure water left in the world) its what we don’t know that really worries me. I imagine that these fluids that all these drillers might be extracting from the planet Earth are its vital fluids, surrounding it’s organs and yo, you can’t get blood from a turnip, as the saying goes. There were protests in Ohio this weekend re a new injection shit-storm dump well. Yes, we’ve had those documented earthquakes from the prior injection wells. I hope somebody in the permit process figures out that the wheels have already fallen off of the bus and that this injection stuff is like the video above. NO GOOD.