The Wolfcamp formation in the Permian Basin is the largest oil assessment ever found

Fuel Fix:
The Permian Basin's Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations in West Texas and New Mexico hold the most potential oil and gas resources ever assessed, the U.S. Interior Department said Thursday.

The region in the Permian's western Delaware Basin holds more than twice as much oil as the largest previous assessment - the Wolfcamp shale in the Permian's separate Midland Basin southeast of Midland. That study was completed two years ago.

To put the new results into perspective, the Delaware Basin's Wolfcamp and Bone Spring plays would hold almost seven times as much oil as North Dakota's Bakken shale.

The Wolfcamp shale and overlying Bone Spring in the Permian's booming Delaware Basin hold an estimated 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's new assessment.

Interior Secretary and oil and gas advocate Ryan Zinke said the news is an early Christmas present for the energy sector.

"American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy," Zinke said. "Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation."
...
Exploration companies have been talking about the Wolfcamp's potential for years and they are now starting to realize that potential.  It is just one layer of formations stacked like pancakes underneath he Permian Basin.

What is needed to make the US energy independent is for refiners to build facilities that use the light crude being produced.  There would still be abundant crude for the export market.  Right now the US is still importing heavy crude because that is what much of the refinery capacity was designed for.

It is surprising that the Trump administration has not moved to encourage this change of refinery capacity.  The US should also abandon the biofuels boondoggle. It is unneeded and the mandates make refiners waste money on it rather than invest in changes needed to deal with the light crude.

Trump's unleashing of the US energy potential has put it into a position of energy dominance.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains