Weekly Review

“US dry gas production is projected to rise to an all-time high of 81.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in 2018, but US consumption is also expected to hit an all-time high of 78.2 bcfd in 2018. With exports rising to record highs as well, it does not leave a lot of extra gas to go into storage.”

Scott DiSavino, Reuters

“We feel the current [natural gas] market has become far too complacent and that prices are simply too low to account for demand growth and the amount of gas needed in storage for the next winter heating season.”

Martin King, director institutional research at GMP FirstEnergy in Calgary

“Since the beginning of the shale revolution a decade ago, the world has discovered 110 billion barrels of oil. Meanwhile, consumption has totaled 360 billion barrels. This 250-billion-barrel deficit between discoveries and consumption seems sure to grow in the years ahead, given recent oil discovery trends. It is understandable why people would be complacent about this scenario. After all, didn’t the world face similar risks a decade ago, only to have shale oil save the day? But it isn’t clear that there is another “shale oil miracle” that is ready to save the day. There are indeed more high-cost oil resources out there that can be developed, but these projects take a long time to complete. That’s why we can look out two to three years and see an impending supply crunch. The longer investments in the industry remain depressed, the more unavoidable this scenario becomes.”

Robert Rapier, oil industry writer/commentator (4/3)

[In Europe] “One in every three cars registered in February 2018 was an SUV. Small and mid-size SUVs led the growth for the segment in February, whilst compact SUVs also had a strong month.”

Green Car Congress

“Mark Papa, the former CEO of EOG Resources, and who has probably been presented more technical data pertaining to shale oil than anyone, believes that shale oil growth potential may be over-stated as the prime areas of the Eagle Ford and Bakken are already drilled up. The question is how far does the Permian have left. Probably a couple of years.”

Randy Evanchuk, P. Eng., retired from oil operations in 2015

“Now that I have retired, I have begun to look at the whole [nuclear] fusion enterprise more dispassionately, and I feel that a working, every-day, commercial fusion reactor would cause more problems than it would solve.”

Daniel Jassby, a research physicist who worked on nuclear fusion experiments for 25 years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab in New Jersey (3/19)

[In Venezuela] “Production is collapsing in a way rarely seen in the absence of a war. The country is also suffering the worst economic depression ever recorded in Latin America.”

Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American Energy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University (3/17)