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The U.S.has always been in the top three, thus has always been a "big oil-producing country." It's just that since the 1960s we've consumed far more oil than we produce, thus we've had to import the balance. These days we import a little less than half our total consumption.
And just to be clear, those numbers are "all-liquids," which count natural gas liquids, ethanol, and refinery gains. Unfortunately, those additions are less energy dense than oil, so the numbers are even more misleading. In pure crude oil, the U.S. at 5.7 mpbd is well below Russia (9.8 mbpd in 2011) and Saudi Arabia (9.5 mbpd). See What the EIA's World Oil Production Data for 2011 tells us about 2012
As for taking the number one spot, that's no big deal except from a chest-thumping perspective. Russian production has been erratic over the past several years, but it appears to be trending downward (again) after peaking in 2010. The Saudis are pumping like mad because they not only need export income, they also are now consuming a quarter of their production for domestic needs. See Jeffrey Brown's Export Land Model for where this is leading. The oil available for export globally has actually decreased recently, and it is only because of reduced import demand from the U.S. and the softening of the Chinese economy that the reduction hasn't had an effect on prices.
The U.S.has always been in the top three, thus has always been a "big oil-producing country." It's just that since the 1960s we've consumed far more oil than we produce, thus we've had to import the balance. These days we import a little less than half our total consumption. .........
Thanks Coaster for setting folks straight here. I probably don't have to tell you how this latest EIA report is being completely misinterpreted by many to create the idea that the US' oil and energy woes are now behind it.
As I am sure you already know, that is very far from the truth.
By the way, I recently saw a story on Maine's energy use and how people are switching to wood pellets and propane as well as insulating more. IIRC (please ignore the head slap. I am posting from my phone and cannot seem to edit it out) annual heating oil use fell from around 450 million gallons in 2004 to 210 million gallons either last year or in 2010. That is a bit more than a 50 percent cut and pretty impressive at that. Here in Aroostook all three of my closest neighbors - all heating oil users, have put in pellet stoves or boilers in the past year, though that surprises me a bit too because all three have significant wood lots as do I, but none of us have a pellet mill. In any case, I haven't seen many oil trucks on my rural farm road at all this season. Nobody around here it seems is falling for the new oil propaganda that's come out lately.
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Thank goodness. That's more money Maine and Aroostook get to keep home.
One major heating oil dealer in The County (DOC) has recently set themselves up for bulk pellet delivery as well as added propane. Given that Irving is both in the oil business and forest operations and products, I wonder what they are doing or plan to do with pellets?
Thanks Coaster for setting folks straight here. I probably don't have to tell you how this latest EIA report is being completely misinterpreted by many to create the idea that the US' oil and energy woes are now behind it.
As I am sure you already know, that is very far from the truth.
Absolutely! The rah-rah coming from some quarters is wildly misleading and really does a disservice to the population at large. If I see one more story about how the U.S. is becoming energy self-sufficient I might rip my clothes off and run for the street screaming -- and that's not a pretty sight, believe me!
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By the way, I recently saw a story on Maine's energy use and how people are switching to wood pellets and propane as well as insulating more. IIRC (please ignore the head slap. I am posting from my phone and cannot seem to edit it out) annual heating oil use fell from around 450 million gallons in 2004 to 210 million gallons either last year or in 2010. That is a bit more than a 50 percent cut and pretty impressive at that. Here in Aroostook all three of my closest neighbors - all heating oil users, have put in pellet stoves or boilers in the past year, though that surprises me a bit too because all three have significant wood lots as do I, but none of us have a pellet mill. In any case, I haven't seen many oil trucks on my rural farm road at all this season. Nobody around here it seems is falling for the new oil propaganda that's come out lately.
.
Thank goodness. That's more money Maine and Aroostook get to keep home.
One major heating oil dealer in The County (DOC) has recently set themselves up for bulk pellet delivery as well as added propane. Given that Irving is both in the oil business and forest operations and products, I wonder what they are doing or plan to do with pellets?
Yep, I think I may have posted here earlier that we were considering replacing our wood stove with a pellet stove, although I was hesitant because it depends on electricity to operate. I've heard that wood pellet boilers are still suffering from growing pains, with problems of jamming and the fire going out. Perhaps that's oil dealer propaganda, though? What has been the experience of your neighbors who have them? It irks me no end to pay for heating oil knowing that money is (mostly) going out of Maine when a pellet or wood stove would keep dollars circulating in Maine.
There was a story in the Kennebec Journal in September -- aha, found it -- that said, "The total amount of heating oil burned in Maine households was cut nearly in half from 2005 to 2010, to about 189 million gallons." That's about 1984 levels, according to the article.
We have a very elderly person (my MIL) with dementia living with us now, so I've been really hesitant to use the wood stove. She has never been around one in the past, and I worry that she'll try to be "helpful" and put material in it when we're not looking. So we've been relying on the oil furnace for heat. I wish we could get natural gas service.
If the USA companies, and remember that unlike OPEC where the governments sell the OIL, would decide to stop selling the oil in the Dakotas and the natural gas up and down the east coast to China and the world, then we wouldn't have to buy very much from sources outside the USA. Cars can run on Natural gas if fitted to do so.
The U.S. exports a minuscule amount of oil -- between 32,000 and 77,000 barrels a day this year -- that IIRC go to a refinery just across the border in Mexico with the refined product shipped back to us, along with some experimental rail shipments of Bakken and Canadian tar sands oil to the Irving refinery in St. John, NB. (Not sure how the latter is counted, if it's Canadian oil just crossing U.S. soil to go to another Canadian destination.) The figures are available here. The Irving refinery sells its product in Canada and the Northeastern U.S., including Maine. None of the oil produced in the U.S. goes to China, to the best of my knowledge. Canada, I think, ships some of its production to China.
The U.S. exports considerably more finished products, especially gasoline and jet fuel, because demand has dropped significantly in the U.S. and the refineries are desperate to find markets elsewhere. I don't know what the destinations of those products are currently, although early this year most of it was going to South America from Gulf Coast refineries. (Oddly enough, gasoline is not always the primary goal of oil refining. In the late 1800s it was dumped as a waste product until the automobile came along. Thus the strange situation of the U.S. still importing huge amounts of crude oil even as its gasoline demand drops.)
Natural gas exports go largely to Canada and Mexico. (Another strange situation -- the Canadian natural gas network does not link western and eastern Canada, although there are projects afoot to correct that.) We began exporting a small amount of LNG to China in 2011 for the first time. In all, the U.S. exported 1.5 million mcf (million cubic feet) natgas in 2011 compared to 23 million mcf produced in 2011.
Sly, I think you're right, that we'll see more cars and trucks equipped to run on natural gas in the future. The Portland municipal bus system and at least a couple of school systems in southern Maine run buses fueled by natgas already. Honda makes a natgas-fueled sedan, but it's not available in the U.S. yet. I've heard that Union 76 is installing natgas fueling stations in some of its truck stops to accommodate tractor-trailer trucks burning natgas. The Maine Townsman had an article about natgas vehicles in March that fits what you're saying. Some good info there, I think.
Coaster, my neighbors all just put their pellet stoves in this season, so I don't know how they have worked out so far.
On the subject of the US keeping its oil production at home, yes, that sounds good, but from what I have read it can make for some pretty tricky logistics as Coaster indicated. The mix of particular refined products coming out of a particular crude oil stream doesn't always jibe with regional and or national demand. For example, the US' car fleet is mainly run on gasoline/petrol while Europe's is more diesel. As well, to hold oil back in the US would kind of imply lower oil prices here than abroad, but how long would that last as US oil consumers stopped conserving relative to the rest of the world? I think we would see our surplus US oil production eaten up pretty quickly.
Then too, having the rest of the world suffer high oil prices would hurt us too because who would make our cheap, consumer product junk if China no longer had the cheap oil to use to do it? Some factory production would come back to the US and that's nice, but then our surplus oil gets eaten up all that faster once again.
Oil and oil products are quite the complicated market, probably more so than any of us non-oil people can probably imagine.
Canada does have a large nat gas line to eastern Canada (Montreal) and also gas from eastern Canada(the maritimes) is from Sable Island to Boston, Canadaland people are seriously thinking of a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat B.C. on the west coast and a new refinery to ship finished oil products to China, Everyone (on both sides of the border) seems to be against a new line to the U.S. Gas is so cheap now in Calgary where it can get cold heating bills in the coldest months are @ $30/month. Seems there is far too much natural gas they are almost giving it away. Much talk in Canada about shipping crude oil of the country instead of refined products.
Canada does have a large nat gas line to eastern Canada (Montreal) and also gas from eastern Canada(the maritimes) is from Sable Island to Boston, Canadaland people are seriously thinking of a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat B.C. on the west coast and a new refinery to ship finished oil products to China, Everyone (on both sides of the border) seems to be against a new line to the U.S. Gas is so cheap now in Calgary where it can get cold heating bills in the coldest months are @ $30/month. Seems there is far too much natural gas they are almost giving it away. Much talk in Canada about shipping crude oil of the country instead of refined products.
The Sable Island fields are fading, which is one reason Irving built a new LNG port in St. John. It's been bringing in LNG and shipping it south through the pipeline originally built for the Sable Island gas. Now that really cheap fracked natgas is coming online in the eastern U.S., that flow might reverse.
I had forgotten that Montreal is now the easternmost terminus for the western network. Thanks for reminding me. There has been speculation here in Maine that a proposal to build a new privately funded toll highway east to west across Maine is also designed to be the path for the final connection of the gas pipeline from Montreal to St. John so Irving can then begin to export LNG rather than import it. The European market is screaming for alternate sources of natural gas to reduce its dependence on Russia.
IOW, there is a LOT going on under the surface in oil and natural gas strategies lately.
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(please ignore the head slap. I am posting from my phone and cannot seem to edit it out) annual heating oil use fell from around 450 million gallons in 2004 to 210 million gallons either last year or in 2010. That is a bit more than a 50 percent cut and pretty impressive at that. Here in Aroostook all three of my closest neighbors - all heating oil users, have put in pellet stoves or boilers in the past year, though that surprises me a bit too because all three have significant wood lots as do I, but none of us have a pellet mill. In any case, I haven't seen many oil trucks on my rural farm road at all this season. Nobody around here it seems is falling for the new oil propaganda that's come out lately.
Coaster
