America's fastest-growing source of energy has a power problem.
The Permian Basin, which produces almost 4 million barrels of oil a day, has expanded so quickly that suppliers of the electricity needed to keep wells running are struggling to keep up. The Delaware portion alone consumed the equivalent of 350 megawatts this summer, tripling the load from 2015. That's enough to power about 280,000 U.S. homes. And providers say the draw is likely to triple again by 2022.
While providers are rushing to build new power lines, it takes three to six years to get them up and working. In the meantime, drillers are bemoaning the reliability of the system and desperately seeking alternatives, exploring the use of solar and natural gas to fuel power-generating gear on-site.It looks like Boone Pickens was just too early with regard to his wind farms in west Texas. Of course, he was moving that electricity to the large cities in east Texas, not to the oil fields.
And more. Exactly what happened in the Bakken six years ago. Another story being carried by Yahoo!Finance:
The west Texas drillers that drove the shale revolution have overwhelmed the region's infrastructure with oil production -driving up costs, depressing regional oil prices and slowing the pace of growth.
The U.S. government continues to forecast the country's oil output rising to fresh record. But competition for limited resources in Texas is making it harder for shale producers to turn a profit and encouraging some to invest elsewhere.
Texas is home to the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oil field and the center of the country's shale industry. In the past three years, production from the Permian has risen a whopping 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to 3.43 million bpd.
All that oil means pipelines from the shale patch are full, so producers are paying more to transport oil on trucks and rail cars. Shortages of labor, water and even the fuel used in fracking are driving up production costs.
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