John Kingston : US as oil production king needs an asterisk

[Javaman]

http://www.petroleumworld.com/lagniappe12121201.htm

One of the arguments long made by followers of peak oil is that organizations such as the International Energy Agency count crude and natural gas liquids equally.So the world market of 89 million b/d of liquids contains mostly energy-intensive versatile hydrocarbons such as crude oil–versatile in the sense that they can be processed to make products that do everything from propelling cars to making carbon black–and a lesser amount of NGLs with a far more limited use.

So when the IEA came out with its widely covered announcement a few weeks ago that the US would be the world’s biggest oil producer in a few years, I was traveling and didn’t have immediate access to the report. But I didn’t need to see it to know that there was going to be a lot of NGLs in its calculation, and somebody would eventually point that out…somebody other than the peak oil folks.

Somebody has: the folks at Bernstein Research. The team headed by Bob Brackett last week put out a report entitled “All that is liquids is not oil, and cars can’t run on ethane.”

“We do agree that the US will likely become the world’s largest liquids producer for a short time,” the report said. “But the higher percentage of NGLs in the US’ liquids profile will almost certainly leave the US short of Saudi’s true crude oil production.”

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