For the past two years, U. Alberta geophysicist Mirko Van der Baan and his team have been poring over 30 to 50 years of earthquake rates from six of the top hydrocarbon-producing states in the United States and the top three provinces by output in Canada: North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.
With only one exception, the scientists found no province- or state-wide correlation between increased hydrocarbon production and seismicity. They also discovered that human-induced seismicity is less likely in areas that have fewer natural earthquakes.
Norway on Wednesday proposed to open up a record number of blocks in the Barents Sea to oil exploration despite protests from environmentalists and others fearing possible damage to the Arctic region.
The Norwegian oil and energy ministry offered oil companies 93 blocks in the Barents Sea and nine others in the Norwegian Sea, all located beyond the Arctic Circle.
Petroleum, natural gas, coal, renewable energy, and nuclear electric power are primary energy sources. Electricity is a secondary energy source that is generated from primary energy sources.
The speed and scale at which U.S. shale production has bounced back from the slump in 2015/16 has confounded OPEC and all the other major forecasters.
The oil market is on an unsustainable course with output from U.S. shale and other non-OPEC sources 010increasing rapidly, while OPEC and its allies trim production to reduce inventories and prop up prices.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects non-OPEC output will increase by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018 (“Oil Market Report”, IEA, June 2017).
If that proves correct, non-OPEC suppliers will capture all the increase in demand next year, because the IEA predicts consumption will increase by only 1.4 million bpd.
Dès 1742, dans la région de Pechelbronn en Alsace, des tarières (outils permettant de percer le sol) étaient destinées à localiser les filons de sable bitumineux. L’huile était séparée du sable par lessivage à l’eau bouillante, puis distillée pour obtenir des produits pharmaceutiques, de l’huile pour lampe, de la graisse et de la poix.
C’est en 1778 que Peter Pond a localisé les premières sources de bitume dans la région d’Athabasca, mais c’est Robert Fitzsimmons, un entrepreneur, qui est le premier à avoir séparé le bitume du sable et qui l’a utilisé pour recouvrir les routes et les toitures. Si les Amérindiens ont depuis des siècles utilisé ce bitume pour calfater des embarcations, les sables bitumineux n’ont vraiment attiré l’attention de l’industrie pétrolière qu’après les chocs pétroliers.
Les États-Unis sont restés les premiers producteurs mondiaux de gaz naturel et d’hydrocarbures liquides en 2016 selon un article publié hier par l’EIA américaine. État des lieux.
La reprise de la hausse de production américaine d’hydrocarbures liquides est, selon IFP Énergies nouvelles, due pour moitié au pétrole de schiste mais aussi à une augmentation de la production des liquides de gaz naturel et de celle de pétrole issu de gisements offshore (fruit des investissements décidés entre 2010 et 2014 lorsque les cours du pétrole étaient au plus haut).
Some wars are fought on the sidelines. They too are full of ideas, intrigue and bravado. Some backfire thoroughly. The Saudis took a brunt of it in their war with shale.
In the US, after the peak oil production of early seventies, the oil industry went into a limbo. It even looked like the US would be an importer of oil forever. Yet, thing did change.
by Collin Eaton, May 27, 2017 in Houston Chronicle
Drillers have mastered feat of pumping more at less cost
On a drilling rig towering above quiet cattle farms in Southeast Texas, Eric Williams perched inside the cabin of the 16-story machine, twisting a pair of joysticks to guide a gigantic wrench roaring into action, drowning out every sound as it reached for a 1,500-pound pipe emerging from the earth – pipe that soon will feed oil into a second shale boom.
U.S. oil production continues to rise relentlessly, frustrating efforts by OPEC and non-OPEC oil exporters to rebalance the global market and secure an increase in the price of crude.
After a devastating slump in 2015 and 2016, the U.S. oil industry has returned to strong growth, with drilling and output rising rapidly
Russian energy major Rosneft and the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq have signed a number of oil exploration and production agreements. It is the biggest deal made by a Russian company so far at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2017).
In the western United States 160,000 abandoned mines contaminate soils in the region. Researchers hope to solve this problem with biochar, a charcoal-like substance that can reduce the toxic consequences of mining for metals.
If you’re in the energy business, here is a new manual for you that lays out the essentials of what energy is and how it shapes geopolitics today. Professor and long-time European Commission official Samuele Furfari has condensed his 39 years of experience in the energy sector into a two-volume tome of more than 1,250 pages that goes right from the fundamentals of physics through Britain’s rule of the Middle East to modern day realities such as “Rosatom, the undisputed nuclear leader”, “Biofuels, a subsidised reality”, smart cities and the latest gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Energy Post spoke with the author about his new book.
The fuel-hungry country has been pursuing the energy source, located at the bottom of oceans and in polar regions, for nearly two decades. China’s minister of land and resources, Jiang Daming, said Thursday that the successful collection of the frozen fuel was “a major breakthrough that may lead to a global energy revolution,” according to state media.
Experts agree that flammable ice could be a game changer for the energy industry, similar to the U.S. shale boom. But they caution that big barriers — both technological and environmental — need to be cleared to build an industry around the frozen fuel, which is also known as gas hydrate.
The United States has a broader array of energy options than China does. However, China is innovating and investing heavily in what it has, and some of the transformations it is achieving already are truly impressive.
China’s leaders have made a strategic choice about the direction of the country: They are aiming to shift from an economy based on heavy, polluting industries to one driven by technology and innovation. The political will for this upgrade has roots in both international geostrategic ambitions and domestic popular grievances about lagging standards of living—and it is beginning to bear fruit. In the process, however, vested interests and technical stumbling blocks have wasted resources and acted as a ballast against Chinese progress. China has the potential to do much more, and the international community should push it to achieve that potential.
OPEC said that one producer in particular is to blame: The U.S., where shale producers have continued to ramp up their drilling despite lower crude prices.
by Olivier Appert, Président du Conseil Français de l’Energie
in Connaissance des Energies, 10 mai 2017
Depuis la découverte du colonel Drake en 1859, le pétrole a joué de façon continue un rôle majeur dans la politique économique américaine et sur le plan international, il a été un outil clé du leadership américain. Au fil du temps, cette politique a dû composer avec une modification des rapports de force sur le marché pétrolier. La révolution récente des hydrocarbures non conventionnels a été un game changer majeur.Au fond, la politique pétrolière du nouveau président américain n’est qu’un retour aux sources.
Anyone with doubts about China’s demand for energy including for thermal coal needed to sustain its gigantic economy should cast their eyes over the latest statistics for power generation from Beijing’s National Statistics Bureau.
These data are a treasure trove in terms of revealing trends in China’s energy production and appetite for thermal coal sourced from both inside China and from imports shipped from countries including, Australia, Indonesia and Russia.
L’ Agence internationale de l’énergie (AIE) a fait part hier de son inquiétude sur le niveau historiquement bas des découvertes de nouvelles réserves de pétrole « conventionnel ». Le schiste américain pourra-t-il à lui seul compenser le déséquilibre résultant de la baisse des investissements sur le marché ?
The Department of Energy gave a Texas-based energy company permission Tuesday to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries with which the U.S. does not have free trade agreements.
While low U.S. natural gas prices are currently a drag on production and reserve growth, they also provide an advantage to domestic gas producers. U.S. natural gas is extremely competitive in the global market.
The Bossier and Haynesville Formations of the onshore and State waters portion of the U.S. Gulf Coast contain estimated means of 4.0 billion barrels of oil, 304.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to updated assessments by the U.S. Geological Survey. These estimates, the largest continuous natural gas assessment USGS has yet conducted, include petroleum in both conventional and continuous accumulations, and consist of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.
L’ Agence Internationale de l’Énergie (AIE) a élaboré plusieurs scénarios de l’évolution prévisible du mix énergétique d’ici 2035. Le scénario moyen (« New policies scenario ») met en évidence l’augmentation de la demande en énergie primaire, qui passe de 13 000 Mtep en 2011 à 17 400 en 2035. La part des énergies fossiles (pétrole, gaz, charbon) restera largement dominante : elle passerait de 81 % en 2011 à 76 % en 2035. Les énergies renouvelables (y compris hydraulique et biomasse) seront en croissance : de 13 % en 2011 à 18 % en 2035
The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill did $17.2 billion in damage to the natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico, a team of scientists recently found after a six-year study of the impact of the largest oil spill in US history.
This is the first comprehensive appraisal of the financial value of the natural resources damaged by the 134-million-gallon spill.
A l’origine de la révolution industrielle, le charbon demeure au XXIe siècle une énergie privilégiée dans le monde. Il permet d’assurer les besoins énergétiques de l’équivalent de presque un homme sur trois (le charbon satisfait 29% de la consommation d’énergie finale en 2012 selon l’AIE). Il est la première source d’énergie utilisée pour produire de l’électricité (environ 40% de l’électricité mondiale est produite à partir de charbon).
China’s natural gas production surged to a record last month and coal output rebounded as economic growth accelerated power use in the world’s largest energy user.
Natural gas production in March rose 8.2 percent from the average of the first two months of the year to a record 13.6 billion cubic meters, according to data Monday from the National Bureau of Statistics. Coal output rose almost 13 percent over the same period to average 9.67 million tons a day, the highest daily level since December, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the data.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
