re: US oil producers face new growth challenges in top oilfield (Permian)

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Breakevens to drill a new well in the Permian averaged $65 a barrel in 2024, up $4 on the year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Less desirable acreage breakevens can hit $96, per Novi Labs, some $26 above where a barrel of crude is trading.

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Those thinking we'll get $2 gasoline at the pump are clueless. We only got that during Covid when most wells were losing money and refineries all but shutdown and losing lots of money, some refineries never returned to production.

Price per barrel depends on chemical assay for the crude oil. Some wells never got above $40 per barrel because even though very light and actually condensate in the 56-60 API gravity range, full of wax. Much of that produced is good for blending and not or primary feedstock for refining.

Back when all the talk was Eagle Ford, that mostly very light crude was being shipped from Corpus to LOOP then pipelined up to Canada via Capline to be blended with very heavy crude to pipeline down to the US. Canada has since tapped its own condensate and Capline has been reversed to bring crude oil down to the Gulf Coast from Canada and Bakken.

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We are always near “peak production”

Then we find more or get better at getting what is known.

We will not run out of oil before finding a better alternative.

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It's about price per barrel. The big play now is Vaca Muerta in Argentina, as offshore Guyana and Surinam is where offshore is betting on

Canada could drastically increase production of heavy crude.

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An oft times partner spoke with the engineer riding herd on this project. It's not the lithium being targeted. About 40 MW of power being generated to power it. He initially asked for thermal screws for drying the cake then went on to ask about other equipment. Afterall, I sold monel forced circulation evaporators to Cargill to handle their salt water from salted cattle hide production at Amarillo in the late 1980's. These came from Ethyl (Albemarle) Chlor Alkali plant at Baton Rouge.

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Reading this I think I misunderstood your original post. You’re talking about using the natural gas as a power source for a processing plant, not as an agent for cleaning the water, and that they are also trying to sell some of the recovered salts. I read it as two separate projects, no was just commenting on the work that many researchers are currently doing to extract Li from the produced water. Having no knowledge of the specifics of the project you were referring to sure they can go after any number of chemical species present in that stuff.

Fwiw
Produced water is pretty undesirable.. it tends to be high in minerals that make it undesirable.. first it is saltwater as the organism that produced the hydrocarbon tend to be microorganism.. algae etc that are on the bottom of the seafloor.. plant become coal.. ( I have oversimplified)…

Your wells will start producing more water as you deplete the hydrocarbon and allow the water to encroach from edges.. below.. and within the pore spaces..

Your water cut will go from low to zero and eventually can get to 90 percent..
it becomes economics as is everything …
You make less hydrocarbon thus reducing the marketable product.. you also produce more water.. we have to pay to dispose the water.. it is more expensive than you would think.. there comes a point when your would have to pay more to dispose the bad product than the value of the good product..been there.. shut it down:(

There are situations to re inject the water after treatment back into the original reservoir to maintain pressure and / or sweep the formation again trying to squeeze out more hydrocarbon.. or use the water for fracking elsewhere if able to treat it well enough..

A fun fact.. the disposal reservoir of course will be deep and well below any freshwater aquifers.. the mineral owner get money for the oil.. the land owner is the person that gets money for water injection into a disposal aquifer below his surface owned land.. it is consider damages to his property .. and you do have to set up some operations on his land .

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it's likely that the U.S. will see peak production

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Famous last words which have been echoed for 2 decades

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Longer than that, try like the last 5 decades.

Hopefully some of this record production is being used to re-fill the SOR that Sleepy pulled down just to say he lowered gas prices.

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Hopefully some of this record production is being used to re-fill the SOR

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Well to that end…

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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright estimates it would take $20 billion and years to accomplish President Donald Trump's goal of refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its maximum capacity, the Energy Department said on Friday.

President Donald Trump said on his first day in office he wants to fill the reserve up to the top as part of a policy to support oil and gas.

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LINK

Now…I’m sure someone here can answer this question for me:

Can the SPR be filled with light WTI Crude, or does it need to be heavier grade?

I’ve seen them laid out underground. That’s not fit for the general public to see.

Reuters



Seems like only yesterday, okay maybe 2015, that the experts were saying the Delaware had more oil than the rest of the world combined.

Did we already drill it all or is OP full of shite and just begging for clicks again?