{"id":28856,"date":"2017-12-14T20:09:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28856"},"modified":"2017-12-14T20:09:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:09:25","slug":"the-unknown-unknowns-that-threaten-u-s-shale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28856","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Unknown Unknowns\u2019 That Threaten U.S. Shale"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u2018Unknown Unknowns\u2019 That Threaten U.S. Shale<\/a><\/h3>\n\"Bakken\"<\/picture>\n
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Three years after the oil price crash, the U.S. shale patch is on its second growth phase and is expected to continue to increase its production, at least through the next five years.<\/p>\n

The global oil markets have become increasingly dependent on U.S. tight oil supply\u2014and the oil industry is still coming to grips with this new reality, Simon Flowers, Chairman and Chief Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, wrote in a recent article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Current projections put the Permian on the forefront of the United States\u2019 ability to deliver increased tight oil supply to the global markets. However, forecasts for the shale patch are as dynamic as production and drilling rates are. And some \u2018known unknowns\u2019 have been surfacing such as higher gas-to-oil ratios in some wells, and the parent\/child wells issue, Flowers says.<\/p>\n

Wood Mackenzie said last month that signs had started to show that intensified drilling in the Permian doesn\u2019t deliver<\/a> commensurate volumes of oil. Although WoodMac thinks that such setbacks could just be growing pains and Permian drillers could indeed \u2018change the laws of physics\u2019, it had warned three months ago that drillers might soon start to test the region\u2019s geological limits<\/a>. If exploration and production companies can\u2019t overcome the geological constraints with tech breakthroughs, Permian production could peak in 2021, putting more than 1.5 million bpd of future production in question and potentially significantly influencing oil prices, WoodMac said in September.<\/p>\n

In his December article, WoodMac\u2019s Flowers included this observation in the Permian\u2019s \u2018known unknowns\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowth might also be constrained by shareholders demanding that independents rein back from volume-driven targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those \u2018known unknowns\u2019 serve as a warning: the oil market can\u2019t be complacent and just assume that the Permian boom will deliver as expected, according to Flowers.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u2018Unknown Unknowns\u2019 That Threaten U.S. Shale Three years after the oil price crash, the U.S. shale patch is on its second growth phase and is expected to continue to increase its production, at least through the next five years. The global oil markets have become increasingly dependent on U.S. tight oil supply\u2014and the oil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5332,723,14603,827,1358],"class_list":["post-28856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-oilprice-com","tag-shale-oil","tag-tsvetana-paraskova","tag-united-states","tag-us-shale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28857,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28856\/revisions\/28857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}