Salient to Investors:
IEA said 15 European refineries have closed in the past 5 years and a 16th is due to close in 2014 as the US went from depending on fuel from Europe to being a major exporter to the region.
Nigeria, which once sent 12 supertankers worth of crude a month to the US, now ships fewer than 3.
Cheap oil from the Rocky Mountains will soon allow West Coast companies to cut back on imports of pricier grades from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela that they process for customers in Asia, the world’s fastest-growing market.
Steve Sawyer at FACTS Global Energy said the US shale boom happened much faster than people thought and no one saw this coming.
US production is up 39 percent since 2011, the steepest rise in history, and the US is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2015.
China, the world’s largest importer, will rely increasingly on crude from the Middle East and refined fuels from the US to meet growing consumer demand.
Philip Verleger at PKVerleger said an increase in US cargoes to Asia might force Saudi Arabia to cut its output to head off a worldwide glut, and 10 or 20 years from now, historians are going to look at a very different US as everything has changed.
Andy Lipow at Lipow Oil Associates said the West Coast is behind the rest of America as far as getting crude by rail. It will increase supply and help the consumer.”
Drillinginfo said drilling a horizontal shale well in the Bakken can cost 10 to 20 times what a vertical well might cost, and production from shale wells declines by 60 percent to 70 percent in the first year, while output from traditional wells declines by as much as 55 percent in two 2 years before flattening out.
Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/unforseen-u-s-oil-boom-upends-world-markets-as-drilling-spreads.html
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