Back in the early 2000s, the outlook for energy security in the U.S. was bleak. Domestic oil production had been on a steady decline since 1985 and gas production was also well off its apex in the 1970s. M. King Hubbert’s concept of peak oil ignited fears of eventual energy scarcity. Given fossil fuels’ ubiquity underlying our entire Western economic and industrial structure, it’s no wonder that folks were concerned. But then the Shale Revolution changed everything. It’s often been said that necessity is the mother of invention and, after many trials and with considerable ingenuity, U.S. producers learned to wring massive volumes of previously trapped hydrocarbons from shale and gave the U.S. energy industry a new lease on life. But there are still limits on how much crude oil, natural gas and NGLs can be economically produced — and concerns lately that the best of the U.S.’s shale resources may have already been exploited. In today’s RBN blog, we examine crude oil and gas reserves: how they are estimated and what they tell us about the longevity of U.S. production.
Join us at our historic 20th School of Energy!
School of Energy: Foundations is a two day, in person conference designed to help energy professionals better understand the forces shaping crude oil, natural gas, NGLs, refined products, and petrochemicals.
Attendees will learn from RBN experts, work with Excel based analytical models, participate in Q&As, and network with industry peers.
Build the foundation to better navigate volatile energy markets.
One of the most pressing questions in the energy space lately is how long the major producing regions in the U.S. onshore will hold out. A lot of producers have talked in their recent investor presentations about the fact that the opportunities for prolific new wells are dwindling in some regions — what’s commonly known as acreage degradation. That should be concerning to everybody, from consumers to policy-makers. Upstream investors want to be sure that producers have adequate acreage inventory to maintain production while midstreamers and downstream companies want to know that their assets won't be starved of supply.
One way to assess acreage longevity is to calculate a producer’s reserve life in terms of years remaining. And we can make the same calculation at the basin level. In Figure 1 below, we show, for major basins, reported proved crude and condensate reserves (blue bars and left axis in left graph) and gas reserves (blue bars and left axis in right graph) from the EIA’s U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves report, published in December 2022. If we divide those numbers by 2021 production (orange bars), we see that crude and condensate reserves for the selected basins are generally around 10x production (green dots and right axis in left graph), implying about 10 years of remaining reserves, while gas reserves are implied to be between 10x and 17x — that is, 10 to 17 years of remaining reserves, depending on the basin (green dots and right axis in right graph).
Join Backstage Pass to Read Full Article
About the song
“Say You’ll Be There” was written by Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Gerri Halliwell, Emma Bunton, Eliot Kennedy, and Jonathan Buck. It appears as the second song on Spice Girls’ debut album, Spice. Released as the second single from the LP in September 1996, it went to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The video for the song, directed by Vaughn Arnell, featured the Spice Girls as a band of techno-warriors cruising around the historic Muroc dry lakes bed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in a blue 1969 Dodge Daytona. Personnel on the record were: Spice Girls (vocals), Absolute (Paul Wilson and Andy Watkins; programming, sequencing, sampling, synthesizers, instruments, and production).
Spice was recorded between 1995-96 at Olympic and Strongroom in London with Absolute, Matt Rowe, and Richard Stannard producing. Released in September 1996, the album went to #1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and has been certified 7x Platinum by the RIAA. To date, the album has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling album in history by a girl group. Four #1 hit singles were released from the LP.
Spice Girls are an English pop girl group put together in London by the management team of Bob and Chris Herbert, along with financier Chic Martin under the name Heart Management. The three put an ad in the London trade paper, The Stage, looking for girl talent to put together a group to compete with the boy bands that were dominating the charts. After putting the group together and getting a positive response at an industry showcase, the group departed Heart Management and never signed legally binding contracts with them. The group then partnered with producer-songwriter Eliot Kennedy and new manager Simon Fuller and signed a recording contract with Virgin Records in 1995. They have released three studio albums, one compilation album and 11 singles. Gerri Halliwell left the group in May 1998 and all of the Spice Girls began to pursue solo careers in 1999. In 2000 they released their third and final album, Forever. In 2007 they reunited for the Return of the Spice Girls world tour. They released a greatest hits album and single during this time. The two-year tour reportedly grossed $200 million. The group has made appearances over the years since and reissued recordings, unreleased demos, and remixes. The Spice Girls have never officially broken up despite of years of inactivity. There are no future plans for them at this time.
Comments
Natural gas reserves and resources are very large. Subject to a competative tax and royalty structure, where is the current break even cost for synthetic gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naptha from nat gas, and how much longer does this extend the liquid hydrobarbon fuels runway?