Oil Prices are being setup for $100s again.
Oil Prices easily topped $100+ for 6 years in 2008-2014. After shale oil hit the seen oil prices averaged $40’s from 2015-2016 , $50’s 2017 , $60’s 2018 and $50’s 2019-2020. I’m going give you the why for $100 dollar oil.
Shale Oil
What is Shale Oil?
Shale oil is an unconventional oil produced from oil shale rock fragments. Shale Oil is very expensive to produce due to the formation have low permeability. In other words it’s to tight. It’s kind of comparing a kitchen sink sponge to a piece of chalk. The sponge has high permeability and chalk has low perm. If you sat a sponge and chalk into a bowl of oil for 100 years which would be the easiest to squeeze the oil out?
Why is Shale not profitable?
Shale Oil formations are so tight you can’t extract oil without a massive frac. Fracking is a slang term for hydraulic fracturing, which is the process of creating fractures in rocks and rock formations by injecting specialized fluid into cracks to force them to open further. Because of fracking, the shale oil revolution was born but at a high cost. Drilling and Fracking cost upwards of $20 million dollars making it impossible to profit @ these prices. This compared to conventional wells without a major frac @ 300k – 2 million. Most of the Shale was funded by bank financing causing a massive surge in new shale development. The fracking boom caused oil to flood the market thus causing oil prices to stay below $60 over the last 5 years. Everyone that invested in shale whether on the stock market or privately lost big!
Shale Today
Shale Oil Companies are seeing record of bankruptcies due to zero profits and not being able to payback banks and investors. 50 oil companies filed bankrupt the first 9 months of 2019 and 2020 is going to be much worse. Shale Oil Funding has come to a skreetching halt and has no chance of coming back even if oil hits $100+ again. The banks lost from two rounds of major funding. Fool me once shame on you, full me twice shame on me.
Shale oil has to be artificially stimulated using fracking tech in order to extract oil from the tight shale. As the oil flows through the tight rock it eventually goes back to the low permeability causing oil output to drop quickly.
There is also an increase in decline rates with each well being drilled as the massive formation get’s flooded with frac fluids. Each well frac causes 2 million gallons of fluid to be pumped in the formation causing the oil to be diluted. Shale wells produce water and oil. Each well being drilled has more water being produced causing each well to be less profitable.
Now What?
Without new shale oil development the 10 million increased output due to shale will drop rapidly as shale has a fast decline. The majors are going off shore again with hopes to find new discoveries. Without Shale you are going to see a fast drop off in oil production and with the divestment in oil due to all the banks closing the doors to oil you are going to see a rapid increase in oil prices. Currently we use 100MM BOPD growing an additional 1MM BOPD each year. That number continues to grow regardless of all the new renewable tech invented. There has been a major attack on fossil fuels due to the agenda of the democrats being anti oil and pro green. College students across the nation are having anti oil rallies and calling their college to divest from fossil fuels. The younger generation is not investing in oil and is more interested in green tech. With a growing demand for oil, green tech only able to help with a fraction of energy needs, and the divestment of oil you will see major supply problem thus oil prices will go up to the high $100’s again.
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