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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (93819)	8/24/2012 6:07:12 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219764

In that scenario, US production would be 15.6m b/d in 2020 and demand about 17m b/d, leaving a gap that could be filled entirely by imports from Canada. Nothing from Mexico! Election rivals seek to exploit oil boom By Ed Crooks in New York Every US president since Richard Nixon has set an objective of reducing the country’s reliance on foreign oil, and most of have them have failed. Only Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush left office with net petroleum imports lower than when they came in. In both cases, that was largely the result of recession, and was quickly reversed as the economy recovered.So for Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, to promise “energy independence” for North America by the end of his second term in office looks like an act of hubris. Yet many analysts say the prospects for achieving that goal are better now than they have been for a generation. Energy independence is being talked about again because US oil production, after steady decline since 1971, is booming. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, techniques that have been applied to spectacular effect on US shale gas reserves, are having a similar impact on oil supplies, opening up fields in shales and other rocks that had not previously been commercially viable. North Dakota, now the second-largest oil-producing state in the US, behind Texas, is at the heart of the boom, but the revolution is spreading. Mr Romney launched his energy policy on Thursday in New Mexico, home of the Permian Basin oilfields that are promising prospects for deploying these techniques. US oil output is up 23 per cent in the past four years, and with demand falling because of the weak economy and high prices, the share of consumption taken by imports has fallen from 60 per cent in 2005 to about 42 per cent this year. Whether he goes in 2013 or 2017, Barack Obama is likely to be the third president since Nixon to have been in office while oil imports fell. In a report in March that is cited by Mr Romney, Edward Morse, the head of commodities research at Citi, argued that “North America is becoming the new Middle East”. He forecast that oil production in the US, Canada and Mexico – including biofuels and natural gas liquids such as ethane and propane as well as crude oil – could nearly double over the coming decade, from 15.4m barrels per day in 2011 to 26.6m b/d in 2020. In that scenario, US production would be 15.6m b/d in 2020 and demand about 17m b/d, leaving a gap that could be filled entirely by imports from Canada. Other analysts take more cautious views. The International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by developed country governments, last year projected much slower growth for North America, from 14.1m b/d (excluding biofuels) in 2010 to 15.2m b/d in 2020. However, in its new forecasts that will be published in the autumn, the IEA is expected to take a more optimistic view of the prospects for US production growth. Mr Morse identifies two threats to his rosy perspective. One is political: the danger of an environmental backlash that stops companies from using fracking and the other techniques they need to get the oil out. The other is if the oil price falls below the $70 or so per barrel that is needed to make the new developments in the US and Canada viable. That could happen if the world economy goes through a prolonged slump, or if there is a surge in production elsewhere in the world, for example if Iraq becomes stable enough to realise the huge potential of its oil reserves. One factor that will not be particularly significant, Mr Morse suggests, is the US presidential election. Mr Romney’s plans to open up areas of the US Atlantic coast for oil drilling, and to accelerate oil production in federal lands by handing control of resource extraction to the states, is likely to result in some extra production. But Mr Obama has also stressed his support for oil development, saying in a speech in March: “Yes, we’re going to keep on drilling. Yes, we’re going to keep on emphasising production.” His administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has set out some modest regulations for fracking, and plans further new rules. But whoever wins in November, Mr Morse expects the US oil boom to continue. “There is much less of a political difference here than people might think,” he says.