Wednesday

Rigzone has a nice article on the shale oil revolution.

Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) pronounced that China has officially surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest net importer of crude oil. The prospect of this change has been widely anticipated given the dramatic rise in U.S. crude oil production over the past few years due to the success of the American shale and tight oil revolutions. Put into context against trends of global oil markets, the oil market change over the past five years has been nothing short of amazing. Between 2008 and now, global oil use has risen by five million barrels a day (b/d) from 87 million b/d to 92 million b/d. At the same time, OPEC’s output has fallen by two million b/d while Brent oil prices have tumbled by nearly 25% despite the current Middle East political tensions.

The reason world oil demand could climb without the primary providers of crude oil benefiting has been due to the dramatic rise in U.S., and to a lesser degree, Canadian production – both conventional and oil sands. From mid-July 2008 to a week ago, U.S. oil production increased from 5.0 million b/d to 7.6 million b/d, which is largely attributable to increased oil flows from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana and from the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin increases in Texas. Over the same period, West Texas Intermediate oil prices declined from $145 per barrel to a recent low of $102 per barrel. Canadian total oil output has increased by roughly half a million barrels a day, for about a 15% increase between mid-2008 and now. Expectations are that North American production gains will continue well into the future on the back of shale and tight oil gains in the U.S. and the shale and oil sands from Canada.

To be more precise:  which is largely attributable to increased oil flows from the Bakken shale formation in six counties in western North Dakota and from the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin increases in Texas.