On November 15th, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) assessed that Texas\u2019s Wolfcamp shale contains an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.\u00a0 These figures elevate Wolfcamp to being the largest assessment of continuous oil discovered in US history\u2014serving as yet another reminder that even areas that have already yielded billions of barrels of oil and gas are still capable of producing billions more.\u00a0 That said, the questions on everyone\u2019s minds are \u201cwill discoveries like this continue to occur?\u201d and \u201cwhat does this mean for jobs and the economy?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to point out that even the already-discovered and tapped O&G deposits tend to only give up 50-60% of the oil and gas that\u2019s buried in earth.\u00a0 These low percentages are due primarily to technological limitations, so as time goes on, not only will our discovery and assessment practices improve, so too will our recovery ability increase to more effectively exhaust these deposits.<\/p>\n
\u201cChanges in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable,\u201d said Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program. \u201cThat\u2019s why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s good to know we are growing more technically capable of both assessing and producing oil and gas from on and off-shore locations, the current economics simply fail to motivate most O&G companies from presently taking advantage of new discoveries like Wolfcamp.\u00a0 With the current price per barrel hovering around $46 USD\/bbl, it\u2019s just not fiscally attractive enough to pursue at this time.<\/p>\n
The bottom line for hopeful US job seekers is that foreign entities are still putting a strain on domestic companies\u2019 ability to expand.\u00a0 Like we saw from January of 2013 through July 2014, participating countries in OPEC failed to reach an agreement on production limits [to cap production and thereby protect unit price], and their insatiable quest for profits led to an ever-increasing rig count and production\u2014an unchecked expansion vis-\u00e0-vis market demand.\u00a0 The result: $97 down to $45 USD\/bbl.<\/p>\n
The US rig count has been slowly trending upward (though last week, the count decreased by 1), but the price per barrel needs to rebound to Q2 2015 numbers before worker-demand increases.\u00a0 Morris Burns, a former president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association noted, \u201cWe are picking up a few rigs every now and then but we won\u2019t see it really take off until we [get] that price in the $60 to $65 range.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have more oil, and no motivation to go get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On November 15th, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) assessed that Texas\u2019s Wolfcamp shale contains an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.\u00a0 These figures elevate Wolfcamp to being the largest assessment of continuous oil discovered in US history\u2014serving as yet another reminder that even areas that have… Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impcorporation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}