{"id":48811,"date":"2019-10-04T10:58:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T15:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48811"},"modified":"2019-10-04T10:58:46","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T15:58:46","slug":"will-the-fracking-revolution-peak-before-ever-making-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48811","title":{"rendered":"Will the Fracking Revolution Peak Before Ever Making Money?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/10\/03\/fracking-revolution-peak-without-profits\">Will the Fracking Revolution Peak Before Ever Making Money?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/pawnee-colorado-fracking-sites-sky_credit-Bryce-Bradford_creative-commons.jpg?itok=d8LfPz6q\" alt=\"Fracking sites at night in Colorado\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This week,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/shale-boom-is-slowing-just-when-the-world-needs-oil-most-11569795047\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the Wall Street Journal highlighted<\/a>&nbsp;that the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;oil and gas shale&nbsp;industry, already struggling financially,&nbsp;is now facing \u201ccore operational issues.\u201d That should be a truly frightening prospect for investors in American fracking operations, but one which DeSmog has long been warning&nbsp;of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This one line from the Journal&nbsp;sums up the problems:&nbsp;\u201cUnlike several years ago, when shale production fell due to a global price collapse, the slowdown this year is driven partly by core operational issues, including wells producing less than expected after being drilled too close to one another, and sweet spots running out sooner than&nbsp;anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/finances-fracking-shale-industry-drills-more-debt-profit\">we have reported at DeSmog<\/a>&nbsp;over the last year and a half, the shale oil and gas industry, which has driven the recent boom in American oil and gas production, has been on a more than decade-long&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/wall-streets-fracking-frenzy-runs-dry-as-profits-fail-to-materialize-1512577420\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">money-losing streak,&nbsp;<\/a>with estimated losses of approximately a quarter trillion dollars. Those losses have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/08\/08\/bleak-financial-outlook-us-fracking-industry\">continued in&nbsp;2019.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This failure to generate profits led to the Financial Times recently reporting that shale investors are having a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/71655bca-c8c2-11e9-a1f4-3669401ba76f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">crisis of faith<\/a>\u201d&nbsp;and turning away from&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;oil and gas investments. That&#8217;s been bad news for frackers because the entire so-called&nbsp;\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/simonlack\/2018\/06\/04\/americas-path-to-energy-independence-the-shale-revolution\/#4b99c5227554\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shale revolution<\/a>\u201d was fueled by massive borrowing, and these companies are increasingly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oilandgas360.com\/energy-bankruptcies-back-on-the-rise-in-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">declaring bankruptcy<\/a>, unable to pay back what they borrowed because they&nbsp;haven&#8217;t been turning a&nbsp;profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott Forbes, a vice president with leading energy industry research firm Wood Mackenzie, also has noted the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eenews.net\/stories\/1061136849\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">structural problems in the finances of the fracking industry<\/a>, referring to the current business model as&nbsp;\u201cunsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will the Fracking Revolution Peak Before Ever Making Money? This week,&nbsp;the Wall Street Journal highlighted&nbsp;that the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;oil and gas shale&nbsp;industry, already struggling financially,&nbsp;is now facing \u201ccore operational issues.\u201d That should be a truly frightening prospect for investors in American fracking operations, but one which DeSmog has long been warning&nbsp;of. This one line from the Journal&nbsp;sums up [&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":[2,3],"tags":[5317,1466,11782,861],"class_list":["post-48811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fracking-industry","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48811","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=48811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48812,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48811\/revisions\/48812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}