Zeetrade News

Oklahoma's growing oil fields gained national recognition this week when the U.S. Energy Information Administration added the Anadarko Basin to its weekly Drilling Productivity Report. The weekly snapshot of industry activity highlights the country's most active drilling areas. The Anadarko Basin — which includes the STACK and SCOOP fields — is the third most active in the country "The Anadarko Basin has a long history of hydrocarbon production and, in recent years, has seen an increase in activity mainly from two areas commonly known as the STACK and SCOOP plays," EIA said in a statement this week. The productivity report also includes information on the Permian Basin in west Texas and southeast New Mexico, the Eagle Ford in south Texas, the Haynesville in east Texas and northwest Louisiana, the Niobrara in Colorado and Wyoming and the North Dakota Bakken. Also this week, the EIA combined its reports on the Marcellus in Pennsylvania area and the Ohio-area Ut...

Tanker  trucks are a common sight on U.S. 81 in Kingfisher, as companies are busy in the area producing oil and natural gas. [The Oklahoma Archives] The recovering oil and natural gas industry is helping to fuel growth throughout the state economy, but the industry's longer-term future is still unclear, state economists said this week. "I'm very optimistic about the price of energy," said Robert Dauffenbach, director of the University of Oklahoma's Center for Economic and Management Research. "We broke through $55 a barrel on WTI (domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate) crude. We've had a couple of bad days, but maybe that will be the new underlying support." Speaking Wednesday at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber's State of the Economy presentation, Dauffenbach said U.S. oil and refined product exports both are increasing rapidly. "We're looking at a very positive trend," he said. "You can look f...

Barrel traders recently pushed the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil above $US 55; the first time in over two years. Scarcity doesn’t really justify the upward price movement. There isn’t a shortage of oil in the world. But there could be, in the worst case, if missiles start flying between two of the world’s largest oil players: Saudi Arabia and Iran. Maybe it won’t happen. But maybe it will. And that’s what the “geopolitical risk premium” is all about. It’s an anxiety surcharge that’s tacked onto every barrel of oil, in fear of supply disruption on a moment’s notice. And the fear is back. After three years of naivety we’re back to acknowledging the known unknowns of the Middle East, the uncertainties that strap a 10-to-20 percent premium on the price of a barrel. Paying a risk premium for oil is nothing new. It’s been around for decades and has gone up and down with the hostility thermometer of the Middle East. Unusually, the pricing of risk dropped to  zero ...

By Chris Baraniuk Technology reporter 13 July 2017 Russian engineer Alex Barak has been coaxing oil out of the ground for a long time.   Seventeen years ago, he was responsible for work at a particularly troublesome oil field in Kazakhstan. "That oil field, Karazhanbas, was a real dog," he recalls, explaining that the oil there was very viscous, making it difficult to extract. "Nobody wanted it." But Mr Barak and his colleagues persevered, drilling hundreds of wells. The field was later sold in 2005 for around $2bn (£1.5bn), he says. Now, Mr Barak has turned his attention to the Wardlaw oil field in Edwards County, Texas. It lies in the southern corner of the Permian basin, a huge sedimentary basin in Texas and New Mexico that is associated with a high number of oil deposits. But while there are an estimated 168 million barrels at Wardlaw, only around 120,000 have ever been extracted. That's what Mr Barak and his colleague Anatoly Bazhal...

International energy markets are set for "major upheaval" as the US cements its status as the world's largest oil and gas producer, while China overtakes it as the biggest oil consumer.   The predictions come from the International Energy Agency's annual energy forecast . It believes that global energy demand will rise 30% by 2040, driven by higher consumption in India. At the same time, the renewable energy sources will become more important. The IEA, which tracks the energy for 29 countries, said the US - once reliant on imports - is becoming the "undisputed global oil and gas leader". It expects the US to account for 80% of the increase in global oil supply to 2025, driven by increases in shale. Future energy: The technology allowing more oil extraction That will keep prices down and help make the US a net exporter of oil - in addition to gas - by the late 2020s. The US Energy Information Administration estimated that the US became th...