America’s Shale Boom Makes a New Mexico

The contrast between the success of the U.S. oil and gas industry and unpopularity in the stock market grows ever starker. The Energy Information Administration released revised monthly figures for U.S. oil production on Thursday. The headline is that production is up — way, way up. It reached 11.35 million barrels a day in August, fully 2.1 million barrels a day higher than a year before. That’s almost like adding a whole new Mexico in the space of 12 months. For all the pipeline problems threatening the Permian tight-oil basin, production in Texas and New Mexico keeps pumping higher. The two states, which also include the Eagle Ford basin in southern Texas, accounted for more than two thirds of the increase. That said, growth was fairly widespread, including North Dakota’s Bakken basin, Colorado and — attracting a lot of buzz these days — Wyoming’s Powder River Basin:...Texas dominates, but the surge in U.S. oil production is evident across the country. Forecasters at the Department of Energy have just begun raising their projections for U.S. oil production in 2018 again, having trimmed them over the summer amid brewing logistical problems in the Permian basin. They will have to raise them again. In October’s short-term outlook, fourth-quarter production was projected to be 11.14 million barrels a day. But average production in July and August was already at that level. Moreover, production is now way ahead of what was predicted only 12 months ago...MORE