The News reported that the United States is seeing a dramatic surge in oil and gas production and could overtake the world’s biggest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia in another decade.
Mr Daniel Sullivan commissioner in Alaska’s department of natural resources said that “Some of the numbers are eye popping. In the last quarter the US produced 6 million barrels of conventional and unconventional oil a day. We haven’t done that in 15 years.”
According to the industry data compiler Joint Organizations Data Initiative, since 2008, the US added 1.6 million barrels of additional oil and in 2011, the US registered the largest increase in oil production of any country outside of OPEC. These figures compared to a daily output in March of about 9.923 million barrels a day by Saudi Arabia, the largest producer of the OPEC nations and 9.920 million by Russia.
Mr Sullivan said that the respected consultancy, PFC Energy had estimated that by 2020 the US could be the largest hydrocarbon producer that’s oil and gas in the world, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia.
According to the US Geological Survey, in Alaska alone, the potential off the coast was viewed as the largest of any country about 40 billion barrels in conventional oil.
Mr Barack Obama president of US has indicated that offshore oil resources could help mitigate global disruptions in supply and his administration has tried to craft an energy strategy that balances business interests with environmental concerns, especially in the Arctic.
In November the mr Obama administration proposed a new plan for offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska including the environmentally sensitive Arctic. But it did not open up for exploration the politically sensitive Atlantic or Pacific coastlines, or the eastern Gulf of Mexico along the Florida coast.
Unless it faces a last minute challenge, Shell is expected to begin drilling test wells off northern Alaska in July, opening up new possibilities for oil exploration in a previously untapped, pristine environment.
Mr Sullivan argued that the benefits of the shift in energy security could be substantial, especially in terms of growth and jobs for a country where half the US trade deficit is due to imports of oil. In 2010 to 2011, there were 600,000 jobs created in the shale oil and gas industry.
Mr Pierre Gadonneix chairman of the World Energy Council drew a more somber global picture. The economic crisis meant energy demands had slowed down, even though they were starting to grow again and that oil prices remained high. Future growth is threatened by the prospect of climate change and the drain on our natural resources. Adding the main challenges would be to improve the security of energy supply, to improve competitiveness and to struggle against energy poverty. We must recall that more than 1.3 billion people still do not have access to electricity in developing and developed countries.”
Source - The News.com.pk
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