US Domestic Oil Production Continues Steady Decline, High Prices Or No

[hatrack]

NEW YORK - "U.S. domestic oil production has dropped five percent since this year's peak in February and near-record oil prices are unlikely to inspire drillers to slow the country's deepening dependence on foreign oil, experts say.

"Why on earth would you drill here when we've been drilling here for 120 years and when there's vast untapped regions across the globe?" said Kyle Cooper, analyst at Citigroup Global Markets in Houston.
U.S. pumps pulled 5.43 million barrels per day of oil in early July compared to 5.70 million bpd in early February, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The United States uses all of its domestic crude production. It relies on imports of crude and oil products for the remainder of the approximately 20 million bpd of oil it burns daily.

As domestic output dropped this summer, crude imports averaged more than 10 million bpd for a record two months, the EIA said this week.
U.S. production often falls in the summer as workers repair Alaskan oil infrastructure during the thaw. But rarely has the summer production droop been so deep. Last year in early July, for example, domestic output was slightly above February production. By August, production had only slipped about two percent below February output.


EDIT

But the impact of outages is intensified by a long-term drop in U.S. oil output, said Mir Yousufuddin, who tracks oil production for the EIA in Dallas. U.S. oil output peaked during the Arab oil embargo of 1973 when production was 9.3 million bpd. U.S. production in 2003 fell 1.5 percent to about 5.7 million bpd, and the trend is on track to fall."

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26117/story.htm

[Dogmudgeon]

1. About those "vast untapped regions across the globe"

Kyle Cooper doesn't really believe that, does he?

As far as I know, there are fewer than a dozen small oil fields that remain untapped. (By "small", I mean less than 20% the size of the ANWR, which I consider a "medium" sized oil field.)

We've found just about all of it. We've tapped just about all of it. And at our current rate of increasing consumption, it won't be economical to use it for fuel at all within 25 years.

--bkl
Corrections to my numbers are welcomed, as always.

[phantom power]

2. These people hear what they want to hear

I think it's the "quack" effect. If you have 1000 experts that are giving you bad news, and one quack that tells you what you want to hear, there are people who will listen to the quack every time.

[hunter]

3. Oh come now, you are forgetting Antarctia...

There's coal there too!

:evilgrin: