WHISKEY BAY – Department of Wildlife and Fisheries officials say a fish kill in the Atchafalaya Basin is the result of high temperatures and low water levels in the Southern Louisiana waterway. LDWF …
treatment and disposal of fracking wastewater and water withdrawals for natural-gas drilling outside the basin.) Murphy and the commission have been under relentless pressure from fracking opponents t…
treatment and disposal of fracking wastewater and water withdrawals for natural-gas drilling outside the basin. Murphy and the commission have been under relentless pressure from fracking …
Phil Murphy to block a proposed Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) rule permitting the storage, treatment, disposal and discharge of wastewater generated from fracking in the basin. “Ignoring the …
And those same concerns surround the wastewater produced by the fracking process. Now, thousands of people want Gov. Phil Murphy to make sure fracking and those public health risks never come to New J…
A ban on fracking in the watershed is expected later this year, but there’s still a proposal to allow discharge of fracking waste in the region. Murphy is being asked to prevent that happening With a …
though they proposed allowing “related activities” such as using the region’s freshwater for fracking and disposing of fracked wastewater at treatment facilities within the basin. A vote on the draft …
The Permian Basin in West Texas is on track to produce more oil within five years than any OPEC nation except Saudi Arabia, positioning the Texas Gulf Coast to rival the Persian Gulf when it comes to oil and gas activity.
Crude volumes from the Permian will more than double by 2023, making the region the world’s third-largest producer after Russia and Saudi Arabia, according to the research and consulting firm IHS Markit. Most of that oil is headed to refineries and ports near Houston and Corpus Christi, as U.S. crude exports are expected to surge to nearly 5 million barrels a day by 2023, up from more than 2 million today.
“In the past 24 months, production from just this one region — the Permian — has grown far more than any other entire country in world,” said Daniel Yergin, IHS Markit vice chairman.
The comeback of the Permian, which today accounts for more than half the nation’s active oil drilling rigs, is among the the most remarkable stories in the industry’s history. At the beginning of the decade, the aging oil field was struggling with declining production. But advances in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling pioneered by Houston companies such as EOG Resources, have tapped massive reserves of previously inaccessible oil and gas.
By 2023, the shortage of pipelines to move oil, gas and natural gas liquids to Gulf Coast markets and beyond is expected to be alleviated by multibillion-dollar projects now underway or planned. Oil, petrochemical and liquefied natural gas companies are investing billions of dollars to process and export petroleum from the Permian and other shale plays, which, according to the International Energy Agency, has made the Gulf Coast a global trading center as vital to world’s energy needs as the Straits of Hormuz, through which tankers filled with Middle Eastern crude travel to the world’s markets.
Near Corpus Christi, for example, the Houston exploration and production company Occidental Petroleum, is continuing to expand its crude export terminal at Ingleside. In 2017, Texas accounted for three-fourths of U.S. crude exports, which recently hit a weekly record in May of 2.6 million barrels a day.
IHS Markit estimates that $308 billion in new spending is required to drill more than 40,000 new wells in the Permian needed to meet its projections. That’s more than double the $150 billion invested there from 2012 to 2017. The report also assumes that oil prices will continue to average at least $60 a barrel.
Oil settled in New York Thursday at $66.89 per barrel.
That accounts for 45 percent of total U.S. fracking sand needs. While BNSF and Union Pacific will provide the long-haul rail shipment routes that will move the barrels from the Permian Basin to the U.S. Gulf, shippers still have to use short lines such as …
Earthsight documented approximately 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of deforestation to clear the way for new rubber and oil palm plantations in Central Africa’s rainforest countries in the past five years. The team also found that companies in …