{"id":40239,"date":"2018-11-07T10:36:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40239"},"modified":"2018-11-07T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:36:15","slug":"peak-shale-is-the-us-fracking-industry-already-in-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40239","title":{"rendered":"Peak Shale: Is the US Fracking Industry Already in Decline?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/10\/30\/peak-shale-us-fracking-industry-permian-decline\">Peak Shale: Is the US Fracking Industry Already in Decline?<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-13266 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/fracking%20well%20sites.jpg?itok=s-ukHGq2\" alt=\"Fracking well sites from the air, in Jonah, Wyoming\" width=\"826\" height=\"597\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-social-bar clearfix\">\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-share-wrapper new-horizontal-fb-wrapper clearfix\">In 2016, lower oil prices led to an overall drop in production for shale companies, which\u00a0use horizontal drilling and fracking to extract oil and gas from shale formations such as the Marcellus and Permian. This was one of the few relatively positive financial periods for an industry plagued by high costs and low returns (although it still lost money in\u00a02016).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>But the industry shouldn&#8217;t get\u00a0complacent, warned Robert Clarke of energy industry research and consulting group <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodmac.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wood Mackenzie<\/a>. Cracks already are starting to emerge in\u00a0the optimistic forecasts of how much these shale formations can produce, which is a bad sign for turning around the industry&#8217;s struggling\u00a0finances.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>It was only the best rigs, with the most experienced crews, drilling the best rock at the lowest service costs,\u201d which were doing well in 2016, said Clarke at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/conference\/2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2018 Energy Information Administration (<span class=\"caps\">EIA<\/span>) annual conference<\/a>\u00a0in June. \u201cIf you are a producer, it\u2019s very dangerous to think that that is the new\u00a0norm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But producers seemed to think it was the new normal and plowed ahead, going all in on fracking in the Permain Basin, currently seen as the best shale play in the\u00a0country.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, the results have been impressive from a production standpoint. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/todayinenergy\/detail.php?id=36936\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The <span class=\"caps\">EIA<\/span> <\/a>expects \u201cPermian regional production to average 3.3 million [barrels per day]\u00a0in 2018 and 3.9 million [barrels per day] in 2019.\u201d\u00a0 Those numbers may reach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2018\/06\/13\/permian-will-soon-pump-enough-oil-to-be-opecs-2nd-biggest-producer.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">5.4 million barrels a day <\/a>by 2023, according to oil industry consultants\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">IHS<\/span>\u00a0Markit.<\/p>\n<p>While the Permian&#8217;s oil production has been prolific, it hasn\u2019t translated into profits. <a href=\"https:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Crude-Oil\/Why-Arent-Permian-Oil-Producers-Profitable.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cWhy Aren\u2019t Permian Oil Producers Profitable?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0asked a headline on industry publication\u00a0Oilprice.com this past\u00a0May.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peak Shale: Is the US Fracking Industry Already in Decline? In 2016, lower oil prices led to an overall drop in production for shale companies, which\u00a0use horizontal drilling and fracking to extract oil and gas from shale formations such as the Marcellus and Permian. This was one of the few relatively positive financial periods for [&hellip;]<\/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":[5317,251,267,331,11782,15553,22839,723,13720],"class_list":["post-40239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-desmog-blog","tag-eia","tag-energy-information-administration","tag-fracking","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-peak-shale","tag-robert-clarke","tag-shale-oil","tag-wood-mackenzie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40239","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=40239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40240,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40239\/revisions\/40240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}