Reason #458 Why I Love To Blog: The London Telegraph Addresses The "Fracklog" -- February 22, 2016

If you have time to read just one article this week, read the linked article below. A huge thanks to a reader for sending it to me. This is for the archives; it will be interesting to look at this article five years from now.

Again, The [London] Telegraph does such a great job reporting, putting the US media to shame. Even Bloomberg doesn't report this well. The Telegraph is reporting (archived):

The current crash in oil prices is sowing the seeds of a powerful rebound and a potential supply crunch by the end of the decade, but the prize may go to the US shale industry rather Opec, the world's energy watchdog has predicted.

America's shale oil producers and Canada's oil sands will come roaring back from late 2017 onwards once the current brutal purge is over, a cycle it described as the "rise, fall and rise again" of the fracking industry.

"Anybody who believes the US revolution has stalled should think again. We have been very surprised at how resilient it is," said Neil Atkinson, head of oil markets at the International Energy Agency.

The IEA forecasts in its "medium-term" outlook for the next five years that US production will fall by 600,000 barrels per day (b/d) this year and 200,000 next year as the so-called "fracklog" of drilled wells is finally cleared and the global market works off a surplus of 1m b/d.

But shale will come back to life within six months - far more quickly than conventional mega-projects and offshore wells - once crude rebounds to $60. Shale output is expected to reach new highs of 5m b/d by 2021.

This will boost total US production of oil and liquids by 1.3m b/d to the once unthinkable level 14.4m b/d, widening the US lead over Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said this alone will not be enough to avert the risk of a strategic oil crisis later in the decade, given the exhaustion of existing wells and the dangerously low levels of spare capacity in the world.

"Even if there were zero growth in demand, we would have to produce 3m b/d just to stand still," he said, speaking at the IHS CERAWeek summit of energy leaders in Texas.

Mr Birol said investment in oil exploration and production across the world has been cut to the bone, falling 24pc last year and an estimated 17pc this year. This is a drop from $520bn to $320bn a year, far below the minimum levels needed to keep up with future demand. 

I'm not sure what to make of this caption at the linked article:  

Abdalla el-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, says his group and US shale producers may not be able to 'live together'.

That sounds like a desperate fight to the finish coming from a country whose very existence depends on $100 oil.

I do know what this means:   

Opec has failed to stop US shale revolution admits energy watchdog 'This cycle is very nasty. It sets the seed for a very high price in the future,' said Opec's secretary-general.

Much, much more at the link.

In 2025, we will be asking why "we" focused on global warming when "we" should have been preparing for a relative shortage of oil.

this is so cool, by the way. I would like to think that Lynn Helms would get the credit for coining the word "fracklog." Whoever it was, as far as I'm concerned, the word "fracklog" originated in the Bakken. Hoo-wah!