US All Liquid Oil Production is at 73% of OPEC Oil Production

17 thoughts on “US All Liquid Oil Production is at 73% of OPEC Oil Production”

1. If there is a big push towards adopting e-bikes (250-maybe 5000W) instead of e-cars (100-500 kW) then existing electrical systems could probably support a huge % of the population.

   Which is of course what we see in China. Millions of ebikes.

   People I know with ebikes absolutely love them. At least as much fun as a motorbike, for a fraction of the running cost. Quiet. Light enough to carry upstairs or onto a train. Even get some green points to allow you to smuggly cut dead someone who just bought a Toyota Pius.

   For this to be a market changing thing in the west (which now includes such “western” nations as Japan) would require government intervention.

   Or at least “intervention” such as the government NOT stepping in to suppress/regulate/tax a new technology as soon as they see people starting to use, enjoy and benefit from it.

   So that won’t happen. The powers that be are not mentally capable of keeping their grubby paws off anything that is popular enough to actually start to replace cars.

2. As EV climb the learning curve and as the quantity increases the price will diminish. ICE cars vary in price based on performance. Based on performance EV cars are well priced. And you do save a bunch of money that used to pay for gas. We drive about 1,000 miles a month. At 15 miles to the gallon and $3 to the gallon that’s about $200 a month which is $2,400 a year. Over ten years that’s $24,000. That premium price for an EV doesn’t seem so bad after all.

3. Recession does not mean life stops. GDP during the “Great Recession” fell less than 5%, life was little changed for many people.

   I picked up boat loads of bank stocks in Feb 2009, just dumb luck that was as close to the bottom as luck will get, most of which i still own. Not good times for all, but it could have actually been bad.

4. Aerosols

   Human activity — mostly as a by-product of fossil fuel combustion, partly by land use changes — increases the number of tiny particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere. These have a direct effect: they effectively increase the planetary albedo, thus cooling the planet by reducing the solar radiation reaching the surface; and an indirect effect: they affect the properties of clouds by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. In the early 1970s some speculated that this cooling effect might dominate over the warming effect of the CO2 release: see discussion of Rasool and Schneider (1971), below. As a result of observations and a switch to cleaner fuel burning, this no longer seems likely; current scientific work indicates that global warming is far more likely. Although the temperature drops foreseen by this mechanism have now been discarded in light of better theory and the observed warming, aerosols are thought to have contributed a cooling tendency (outweighed by increases in greenhouse gases) and also have contributed to “Global Dimming.”

   The cooling affects of aerosols wasn’t strong enough to overcome the warming affects of co2

5. By the 1970s, scientists were becoming increasingly aware that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945, as well as the possibility of large scale warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. In the scientific papers which considered climate trends of the 21st century, less than 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming. The general public had little awareness of carbon dioxide’s effects on climate, but Science News in May 1959 forecast a 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 150 years from 1850 to 2000, with a consequent warming trend. The actual increase in this period was 29%. Paul R. Ehrlich mentioned climate change from greenhouse gases in 1968. By the time the idea of global cooling reached the public press in the mid-1970s temperatures had stopped falling, and there was concern in the climatological community about carbon dioxide’s warming effects. In response to such reports, the World Meteorological Organization issued a warning in June 1976 that “a very significant warming of global climate” was probable.

   The cooling period is reproduced by current (1999 on) global climate models (GCMs) that include the physical effects of sulfate aerosols, and there is now general agreement that aerosol effects were the dominant cause of the mid-20th century cooling. At the time there were two physical mechanisms that were most frequently advanced to cause cooling: aerosols and orbital forcing.

6. The ice age fallacy

   A common argument used to dismiss the significance of human-caused climate change is to allege that scientists showed concerns about global cooling which did not materialize, and there is therefore no need to heed current scientific concerns about global warming. In a 1998 article promoting the Oregon Petition, Fred Singer argued that expert concerns about global warming should be dismissed on the basis that what he called “the same hysterical fears” had supposedly been expressed earlier about global cooling.

   Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect. The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth underwent global warming throughout the 20th century and continues to warm.

7. I don’t see a global recession coming. A downturn in Europe as China buys less stuff from suppliers and local demand is very weak anyway as real incomes haven’t risen that much. China slower growth as they need to adjust to over-production. US demand is still pretty ok as people have more pocket change (and you take out spending on healthcare and housing). Not super strong, but not recession-level. Cheap debt is what makes the economy run and that isn’t getting more expensive either.

   I don’t think oil use will collapse, but there is a long term decline as ICEs become more efficient and natgas is the king of electricity generation. Natgas will power EVs, just too bad there is nowhere near the power gen built to charge all those EVs people might buy.

8. re global trade. This topic is irrelevant, imho, to financing. As the US becomes a net hydrocarbon exporter (in USD), The buyers (e.g., Germany, Japan) simply replace their current supplier (e.g., Russia/Qatar) with the US, all in USD.

   The cost of trade financing is a function of interest rates, where, for USD (and EUR/JPN for that matter), trade has no influence. Rates are influenced by the financial assets market that overshadow commodities flows by a factor of 200x.

9. But they had a theory see, that global cooling was caused by pollution and the only way to keep the planet warm was to shut down industry and make people not drive cars so much.

   I wonder what ever happened to that theory?

10. Tech development continues even during global recessions.

    A lot of the “World War 2 technical developments” were actually made during the Great Depression. The just weren’t mass produced until the 1940s because, you know, Great Depression.

    Anyway, so it’s not ridiculous to propose:

    • Great recession
    • Collapse in oil use because less business/trade/travel
    • Tech development continues, which yes makes IC vehicles more efficient, maybe 10-20%? But also makes EV vehicles more practical and cheap. With the EV development being much bigger improvements because they are, currently, on a much steeper section of the learning curve.
    • When the economy finally picks up EVs recover much faster and ICVs have lost a chunk of market share.

    However we are left with the original question of: why should we believe there will be a global recession?

11. The figures need to be given in barrels of oil equivalent, not raw volume, for comparisons to be meaningful. Different fuels have different energy densities.

12. Let’s take your view. As oil collapses in price and the global recession kicks in, who is going to be propping up the EV market? Overpriced cars, not economically viable without subsidies. Look what happened prior to the oil spikes in ’08. Gas guzzlers wouldn’t sell and Prius picked up. As oil went down in price gas guzzler sales soared. As oil drops in price it will help, not hurt petrol vehicles. ICE vehicles are getting much more efficient while oil prices are going down in your scenario. People won’t buy EVs in this doom and gloom you forecast. EVs won’t put serious pressure on oil demand for at least 25 years. It’s an eventuality that the world get’s off ICE cars, but the coming global recession you predict will not be the driver you predict it will be.

13. Not going to happen. The on coming global recession will cause a collapse of both oil demand and production. And by the time the economy recover the EV revolution is going to put a severe stress on oil demand. The future for oil is dim.

14. This projection is really good news for those that, 40 years ago, were worrying about the next ice age, which wasn’t even expected until +20,000 years from now.

15. Now where is that graph to laugh at…

16. I think one thing that’s not being fully captured in the geopolitical and economic shift is the lack of investment in conventional oil fields abroad. Without continuous investment oil production declines and the ROW started to feel the effects of having to go “higher up the tree” to pick the fruit starting as early as 2005. U.S. shale really changed the game and that’s coming from someone who was a very verbal doubter of the industry for a very long time. Cost of production continues to fall and the apparent size of the resource continues to grow. “Legacy” debt and production should work its way through by ~2021 and the industry should be cash flow positive by then.

    The one thing nobody is talking about is the effect this will have on foreign trade. It seems the U.S. is in a very strong protectionist cycle with the 2020 election likely being between Warren and Trump (and Warren is even more of a Hawk than Trump). If the U.S. becomes an oil exporter that removes dollars from the rest of the global system which increases the cost of USD trade financing. Normally this would simply lead to substitution but the only other remotely viable candidate, the Euro, is a basket case.

17. Right on the money Brian.

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