US top oil producer?

wvumtnbkr wrote: I have no links to back this up... The U.S. was a net EXPORTER of gas for the last few years.

you need to be clear, when discussing petro products. when you say "gas", do you mean gasoline or natural gas/LNG?

cwh wrote: Where is all this oil coming up?

North Dakota from the sounds of it

In reply to Strizzo: I meant gasoline.

Apparently, we have a TON of refineries.

Feel free to correct me. I will not be offended. (especially because I couldn't be bothered to look up the facts anyway)

A key factor here is price. It's not that more oil reserves have been discovered, it's that oil that was formerly not economic to produce, has become economic at today's prices. Back when I was still a working geologist in the '90s, oil was selling at $18 - $22/barrel, and predictions of recoverable reserves were much lower than they are today, with oil varying between $85 - $100/barrel. Plus, drilling technology has improved, allowing areas to be drilled that weren't feasible twenty years ago.

Similarly, with the price of gold today, some old mines that have been closed for decades are reopening on a limited basis. The mines were never really "played out", it just wasn't cost effective to operate at $32/troy ounce, whereas at $1900/troy ounce, it is (as long as it's a limited operation. A big operation would run into too many related costs that a small operation can avoid).

cwh wrote: How can this not be a huge topic of discussion here? Why do I read about it on a paper from a very distant place? http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20121024/business/business3.html

It has been discussed here. We had a thread about it in March.
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/usa-oil-exports/46681/page1/

I was at an engineering conference last week and one of the speakers presented a paper on the Bakken shale deposits in North Dakota, his graph showing projected increases in production over the next decade was almost a vertical line. A lot depends on the ability to build up the infastructure for transporting and refining the crude oil, as it is now they're hauling it on trains because the pipelines are already at capacity. It also depends on market cost - the cost of oil has to stay above around $50/barrel to make it economically feasible to drill there.

They're also getting a lot of natural gas as a side result of the oil drilling, so much that they don't have a place to put it all - for the moment, a lot of it is simply being burned off until they can build enough infastructure to process and store the gas as well.

Jim Pettengill wrote: Similarly, with the price of gold today, some old mines that have been closed for decades are reopening on a limited basis. The mines were never really "played out", it just wasn't cost effective to operate at $32/troy ounce, whereas at $1900/troy ounce, it is (as long as it's a limited operation. A big operation would run into too many related costs that a small operation can avoid).

This is happening for lots of other types of mining as well - various companies are in the process of reopening mines in northern Minnesota, not only for iron ore but for various other metals.

wvumtnbkr wrote: In reply to Strizzo: I meant gasoline. Apparently, we have a TON of refineries. Feel free to correct me. I will not be offended. (especially because I couldn't be bothered to look up the facts anyway)

i had also read somewhere that we exported gasoline last year, but then again when gas prices were high last part of the explanation was that the refineries only had so much capacity and that the gubmint wouldn't let them build anymore.

With this new "oil boom" our production is almost half of what it was in 1970. The linked story is nothing but a pipe dream. There is no way for that to take place unless the worldwide demand for oil plummets. Our production will not go above what it was in 1970. We already got most of the easy/cheap/high quality oil and are now going after the junk that is either low quality or just plain hard to get out of the ground for the most part.

That CCN story was written by one of the many people passing as journalists these days who are content to just parrot whatever press release a government or government-like group passes their way. No reason to do any independent research or put any thought into any story. Just print what you're told and collect a paycheck.

The media or those who control them are convinced that most of the population is either ignorant, stupid, or lazy or some combination of those. Saying we will be energy independent without saying that there will be some new energy source breakthrough (like nuclear fusion) or a gross reduction in our population is just plain silly talk with no basis in reality. Dream on people.