Policymakers have long been concerned with the impacts of energy imports on U.S. trade, especially beginning in the late 1950s as the country moved to negative energy trade imbalances. Despite attempting to remedy these imbalances, they exacerbated the 1970s energy shortages creating ongoing concerns of potential future vulnerabilities.
However, beginning in the 2000s, new extraction technologies knowing as hydrofracking were applied to shale geological formations. With innovation and enhancements these technologies have led to a resurgence of U.S. crude oil and natural gas production.
This resurgence is broadly visible in a variety of realms. With respect to U.S. trade, the U.S. energy trade balance began moving from a deficit to a surplus in late 2018. Where during 2010, the U.S. reported a $20-plus billion monthly deficit, which breached $30 billion in 2012, the bounty of U.S. energy production has caused the balance to rise to a current $9.5 billion surplus with the trend continuing upward
EPRINC’s Emily Medina commented recently in The Hill on the threat to Mexican energy reform posed by AMLO’s election to president. Her op-ed can be found here.
Lucian Pugliaresi penned an Op Ed in The Hill on the pending legal action by local California governments claiming that U.S. oil companies have created a nuisance by knowingly causing harm to the future of human life and property. He points out that missing from the list of defendants is the federal government which had an active and aggressive program, spanning Democrat and Republican, to promote and expand domestic oil and gas production. A copy of the Op Ed can be found here.
EPRINC is happy to welcome Emily Medina as a non-resident fellow at EPRINC as we expand our research and outreach programs on U.S.-Mexican energy developments. Born and raised in Mexico, she has experience working with both the private and public sectors on important energy matters. More on Emily’s experience can be found here.
EPRINC trustee Ben Montalbano and non-Resident Fellow Trisha Curtis, both co-founders of PetroNerds, have just completed an assessment of oil hedging positions of 25 major oil producers in the Permian Basin. Hedging is a valuable tool for distributing risk and allowing producers to protect revenue streams from price volatility. Hedges protect producers revenues when oil prices fall, but also limit gains when prices rise. In addition, when oil prices rise it may limit the supply response if a large volume of unconventional production is hedged. Ben and Trisha’s assessment shows the percent of total production that producers hedge varies, but heading into Q1of 2018 producers hedged about 20% of total output. A copy of their assessment can be found here.
On April 19, 2018, the Energy Policy Research Foundation Inc. held a workshop at the Willard Hotel on the on the scale and prospective growth of the North American natural gas production platform. The workshop participants provided essential foundation information and analysis to expand our understanding of the role of U.S. natural gas as a supply source to meet both domestic requirements and to serve export markets. As EPRINC begins the second year of our joint project with the Institute of Energy Economics Japan (IEEJ) on the “Future of Asian LNG,” the findings from the workshop will expand our knowledge base on the potential for U.S. natural gas to serve the growing Asian market.
The workshop participants addressed four themes; (i) the size and productive capacity of the North American natural gas resource base, (ii) regulatory constraints on moving natural gas to domestic and export markets, (iii) demand risks, and (iv) potential consequences to the cost structure of U.S. oil and gas production from ongoing trade disputes. More importantly, the workshop brought together a broad cross section of the Washington energy community and provided an informed discussion of the opportunities and challenges on the future of the natural gas resource base.
The workshop benefitted from an excellent and well-experienced group of analysts, industry experts and policy makers. Although the discussion was off the record, all the presenters agreed to permit EPRINC to post their presentations and these can be found here.
Photos from the event can be found here.
On April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) invited Lucian Pugliaresi to meet with a group of visiting officers of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to discuss North American energy trends and energy security policy. A major natural gas find off the coast of Israel is bringing enormous opportunities for regional natural gas supplies, but also presents some important energy security challenges. A copy of Lucian’s presentation to the visiting IDF delegation can be found here.
EPRINC’s Will Pack and John Dahlberg explore the large net economic value of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in their recent paper entitled: “Untapped Potential: Why Developing ANWR Still Makes Sense.” This value is mainly driven by the expensive existing infrastructure, which will soon be lost without further development in the North Slope. The paper can be found at the following link.
EPRINC is pleased to announce that Ash Shastri has joined us as a Distinguished Fellow. Ash brings a wealth of experience on global natural gas markets and Indian energy policy. As EPRINC proceeds with the second year of our joint project with the Institute of Energy Economics Japan (IEEJ) on the Future of Asian LNG, Ash’s deep understanding of the intersection of energy policy and natural gas markets will be an invaluable contribution to this effort. Ash is now working on an assessment for EPRINC on the primary forces likely to shape natural gas demand in India. We expect to publish the report in March 2018.
On January 29, 2018 Lucian Pugliaresi gave a presentation at the Research Center for Energy Management at the London Campus of ESCP, Europe’s oldest business school. The title of the talk was The American Oil and Gas Renaissance — Reshaping World LNG Markets. The power point presentation that accompanied the talk can be found here.
In December, EPRINC chaired the US Energy Stream’s “5th Frankfurt Gas Forum 2017” in the Schlosshotel Kronberg in Frankfurt, Germany. At the Forum, Lucian Pugliaresi made a presentation on the growing importance of the North American Petroleum Renaissance in shaping world LNG markets. A copy of that presentation can be found here.
EPRINC Non-Resident Fellow Trisha Curtis and Trustee Ben Montalbano build on some of their previous work concerning US shale productivity in their recent paper entitled “Completion Design and the Impact on US Shale Well Productivity.”They identify the factors contributing to sustained productivity growth in several US shale plays and examine some of the economic constraints facing well efficiency. As the nation adjusts to relatively stable and depressed oil and gas prices, Trisha and Ben’s paper outlines the current industry environment and highlights future challenges to increasing shale productivity. Their paper can be downloaded by clicking here.
EPRINC’s president Lucian Pugliaresi, along with IEEJ Chairman and CEO Masakazu Toyoda, summarized the main findings of the Joint EPRINC IEEJ study at the 2017 LNG Producer-Consumer Conference. A brief video of Lucian’s presentation can be found here.
EPRINC’s “Running on Fumes” paper, written by Lucian Pugliaresi, Larry Goldstein, and Will Pack, was recently published in SIGMA Magazine’s 2018 Independent Gasoline Marketing Issue. A link to the PDF of that paper in the magazine can be found here.
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