Bank of America is now predicting that Brent crude oil, which drives gas prices, will zoom to $120 a barrel by June 2022.

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False- Oil companies have plenty of land they haven't tapped yet without lifting any federal land drilling bans.
Yes I get your point, however the vast majority of that land has no known oil reserves. And yes, it's been seismically studied.
Never believe the nonsense that they need more federal land to drill
The do need land with oil.
even if the Keystone XL had gone forward it wouldn't be able to help with the current price situation at all.
Not correct. Oil is purchased on futures. Had the pipeline continued, we'd be about a year from completion. That factors strongly into futures pricing. The bottom line is that any significant oil industry investment has a tendency to stabilize the market.

Conversely, the act of actively and permanently capping unused oil wells along with strong discouragement of oil exploration and production drives oil futures prices to the moon.
 
The pipeline canceled really wasn't for US consumption.

The way I understand it, based on this podcast I heard yesterday: https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/07/why-do-we-import-russian-oil-when-theres-lot-u-s/

US refineries made a bet a generation ago to configure for heavy, sour crude. Much of this domestic production is light sweet crude.

It ends up getting exported.

The KXL was going to add a more direct path to an existing pipeline and a branch to the ports in Houston so the oil can more easily be exported.

It didn't really move the needle as far as domestic finished products go.
The Houston area has a BUTT LOAD of oil refineries. There isn’t any reason to export any type of crude from there if we have a need for product here. There is a pipeline working now bringing oil from Canada to Houston. The unfinished “XL“ section just increases capacity.
From the Houston Valero website:
”The Valero Houston Refinery is located on the Houston Ship Channel. It processes sweet crude and intermediate oils into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.”
 
The Houston area has a BUTT LOAD of oil refineries. There isn’t any reason to export any type of crude from there if we have a need for product here. There is a pipeline working now bringing oil from Canada to Houston. The unfinished “XL“ section just increases capacity.
From the Houston Valero website:
”The Valero Houston Refinery is located on the Houston Ship Channel. It processes sweet crude and intermediate oils into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.”
But that's a decision the refineries have to make.

As I said, a generation ago they bet on Heavy Sour crude. Nothing has stopped them from switching to Light Sweet other than their own objectives. Heavy Sour crude is cheaper than light sweet. Meaning the refiners want the less expensive feed stock and will export the more expensive light sweet, making money on that as well.
 
Here is what most folks miss. Most hydrocarbon exports from the USA is refined products with a smaller amount of crude oil, mostly light crude from the Permian basin. In 2022 the USA was a net exporter and was about to become and net importer again. If the USA was feeling a squeeze one of the things to do would be to stop exporting. Richard Nixon imposed a crude oil export ban when Prudoe bay start producing in the late 70’s. One thing for sure. You will see increasing imports by rail from Canada and we are more than willing to supply that. It’s good to know who your friends are. We have your back.

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Canada presently ships most crude oil by pipeline but we also have rail capacity. During the low demand of the last few years, exports by rail dwindled to as low as 39,000 bbls /day because rail is much more expensive than pipelines, however back in Jan 2020 we were shipping over 400,000 bbls a day by rail and can do it again. All you have to do is let market forces operate.



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We are going to have to learn to love Nuclear Power, the only "alternative" in existence. That, or the future will be a dark one, literally. Portable forms of energy need to be reserved for specific tasks. Clearly, wind and solar can't do the job.
Thankfully views on nuclear power are starting to come around among both sides. People are finally starting to understand that even if it's not perfect it's still better than burning fossil fuels, more consistent, doesn't require massive battery banks or pumped storage as backup. I'm really hoping the SMR companies like Nuscale do well. Right now the biggest problem with new nuclear is simply the fact that it's expensive to build. It shouldn't be, but it is, at least in the US.

Reasons for that? I think the biggest one is that nobody currently working in construction has built a new large scale power reactor, ever. Everything is custom and new, and that adds time, labor and causes delays. If SMRs can be reliably produced in a factory cheaply as a unit and then installed in containment, hooked up to turbines and water and go, we could see a real change. Also they are ideal for remote places that need reliable power but shipping in fuel is expensive (ie Antarctica).
 
You bet, it's "Natural Gas". Interestingly, the working theory was that hydrocarbons such as natural gas, can with time, heat and pressure, be converted into all manner of hydrocarbons. At least, that's what the engineers would claim.

There is no question that deepwater oil recovery is very expensive. The Macondo Well (deepwater horizon) was something like 35,000 feet below the ocean floor. And maybe of interest, the Bertha Rogers well is about 31,000 feet deep where they encountered 28,000 PSI and liquid sulfur. Way below where any life ever existed..

But it's good to keep in mind that not all offshore rigs are "deepwater" and uber-expensive rigs. Many are in shallow water.
Umm, Mr. Cujet, you might want to check the Macondo well depth. :)
 
It's difficult, if not impossible to fully discuss this topic without being able to interject the "P" word, as it has a lot to do with our current prices...
 
I have heard that Alaska is "awash with oil." Texas probably too, and I saw something about drilling starting, ... if that's what I saw.. but. Is that true?

I, also, have heard that referenced land is not oil-bearing land, referenced permits were for exploratory purposes not drilling much less refining, and that these companies were actively being fought in Court, leases not being renewed, and drilling maybe verboten. Not sure the part about what being fought in Court about but, .. treading carefully...

I too have heard that the oil we make is "not for us" and I am interested in this discussion of Heavy Sour vs Light Sweet and Brent crude, I figure if there is anyone that knows how we got to where we are with oil production, and its impact on prices and perhaps timing of such, it is the members here, I think about these things every morning I listen to select radio shows.
 
Crude oil has dropped 40 dollars in past seven days yet gasoline hasn't been lowered one penny in chicagoland
 
.Conversely, the act of actively and permanently capping unused oil wells along with strong discouragement of oil exploration and production drives oil futures prices to the moon.
Speaking of "capped and unused oil wells", does anyone know how many there are on US soil, and why they are not being uncapped and used given this situation we are all in.

Let me guess, the oil companies don't want to decrease their profits by spending more money pumping and moving oil to make oil prices (and fuel prices) go down. Money grab is their game, always has been.
 
Speaking of "capped and unused oil wells", does anyone know how many there are on US soil, and why they are not being uncapped and used given this situation we are all in.

Let me guess, the oil companies don't want to decrease their profits by spending more money pumping and moving oil to make oil prices (and fuel prices) go down. Money grab is their game, always has been.
You are saying supply is being kept artificially low, here domestically, by the oil companies?

I too would like to know how much oil we are all sitting on. And if it can be tapped .
 
You are saying supply is being kept artificially low, here domestically, by the oil companies?

I too would like to know how much oil we are all sitting on. And if it can be tapped .
There are a lot of already drilled but uncomplete wells (not yet setup to actively pump/produce), but the number of active wells are slowly going up (new + firing up old wells?). There were 805 active wells in Dec 2019 right before the pandemic, then went way down to 251 in Jul 2020 (demand went way down), then have been slowly increasing to 605 in Feb 2022. The oil companies seem to have way more capacity to produce with what they basically have, and need to get more existing drilled wells on-line, but seem slow to be doing so.


 
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We're not hearing anything about shale oil from US fields right now. When fuel prices peaked in 2008, there was a lot of work going on in that field, but after the price of oil crashed, most of that work stopped. Has it remained stopped?
 

... political rhetoric about quickly ramping up U.S. crude output is at odds with the industry’s reality: There’s not enough workers to rapidly expand, scant money to invest in drilling and wariness that today’s high prices won’t last, according to industry representatives, analysts and state officials...

...A near-term crude boost would have to come from onshore oil resources already developed, such as the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas and the Bakken of North Dakota and Montana, said Andy McConn with Enverus, an energy analytics company whose data is used by industry and government agencies.

Even in those areas, there’s no way to simply crank open the spigot immediately. The most easily accessible reserves already have been drilled, McConn said....

...the mood this time around is different. “It’s not a ‘drill baby drill’ type of mentality like there was before,” said Stephen M. Robertson with the Permian Basin Petroleum Association.

Multiple factors are tempering a production boom, he said, including volatile prices, labor issues and longer wait times for parts to be fabricated and supplies shipped. Even the custom cowboy boots favored by some workers have been hard to come by.

“It’s not just one factor that is telling the industry out here what it should do. It’s not just high prices,” Robertson said...

...Larry Scott, an engineer who has worked in the oil business for decades and now represents a portion of the Permian Basin as a Republican in the New Mexico Legislature, said oil and gas companies still have to conquer the labor challenge.

“You can’t ramp up if you can’t find qualified people to do it,” he said...
 
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