To boldly go where no US oil patch has gone before!

The NASA inspired car showroom photographed by the Oilholic some months ago in Houston, Texas could sum up the US oil patch's inspirational streak. Its going where, quite possibly, no US oil patch has gone before. 

Sentiment is rapidly rising in favour of US production capping an all time high in 2018 of (well in excess of) 10 million barrels per day (bpd). 

If achieved, that would be the highest US production on record, well above 1980s Texan boom and more recently, when both Dakotas put the word ‘revolution’ and in the shale revolution we’ve now become so accustomed to. 

The other leveller of course, is innovation. With extraction costs having declined dramatically and oilfield services firms' offerings to exploration and production companies getting ever more competitive, some with viable shale plays can keep going even at a $30 per barrel oil price. 

Here’s the Oilholic’s assessment in a recent Forbes post. Inventories may not have quite rebalanced, while more oil is on the way. That's all for the moment folks! Keep reading, keep it crude!

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© Gaurav Sharma 2017. Photo: Exterior of NASA-themed car dealership in Houston, Texas, USA © Gaurav Sharma 2017. 

He’s making an inventory, checking it twice...

Full of festive cheer, he’s making a crude inventory, checking it thrice, gonna find out whose Iranian (sorry naughty) and nice – Saudi oil minister is coming to town. Nah, not really! 

For what it’s worth Khalid Al Falih actually turned up pretty late on Tuesday, just on the eve of the 171st OPEC Ministers' meeting. Having initially told a Saudi newspaper, an Opec production cut may not be needed, speaking at a pre-conference media scrum, Al-Falih said a deal could be done and would need wider cooperation within OPEC.

Separately, Suhail Al Mazroui, oil minister of the United Arab Emirates, told yours truly, for an IBTimes UK interview, that the ongoing OPEC meeting was not a make or break scenario for the oil market.

Al Mazroui admitted the last few months had seen “intense” negotiations, but added that: "However, from all signs I have seen, things are positive." 

We shall see. The Oilholic believes a final decision would go right down to the wire, and puts the chance of an agreement only at 50%. Watch this space! More from Vienna shortly folks! Keep reading, keep it ‘crude’!

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© Gaurav Sharma, November 2016. Photo: Khalid Al-Falih, Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, speaks to reporters at the 171st OPEC Ministers' Meeting in Vienna, Austria on 30 November, 2016 © Gaurav Sharma, 2016.