saudi arabia

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As if the economics of shale gas development weren't challenging enough in such an environment, the key ingredient that has fueled the US shale revolution, water, is in short supply in Saudi Arabia.[read more]

energy resilience

Resilience–measured in strength, portfolio diversity, adaptability and innovativeness–is essential for the oil and natural gas industry to continue to play a role in the future.[read more]

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Governments and industry must recognize that shale gas and oil are not cheap or inex­haustible: 70% of US shale gas comes from fields that are either flat or in decline.[read more]

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Last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its annual long-term forecast, the World Energy Outlook (WEO). Its projection that US oil output would exceed that of Saudi Arabia within five years was featured in numerous headlines, although some of the report's other findings look equally consequential. That includes the...[read more]

Oil Rigs via Shutterstock

America is expected to become the largest crude oil producer in the world by  2020, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia.It is expected to reduce its imports from 10million barrels a day to about  4million barrels within ten years, the International Energy Agency forecast.It will become self-sufficient in about 2035 as a boom in...[read more]

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 HomeEnergyWatchWashingtonLoren SteffyVoicesJobschron.com  Saudi Cabinet Shuffle Could Be Prelude to Larger ChallengesPosted on November 8, 2012 at 9:28 pm by Amy Myers Jaffe in General Comments()| E-mail| Print Saudi Arabia’s commitment to keep oil markets amply supplied has been keeping a lid on prices this autumn,...[read more]

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I've seen numerous references in the last several days to a Citgroup analysis suggesting that Saudi Arabia might become a net oil importer by 2030.  The premise behind this startling conclusion seems to be that economic growth and demographic trends would continue pushing up domestic Saudi demand for petroleum products and...[read more]

Is relying on Saudi Arabia in times of war a smart tradition or future folly? As oil prices ticked above $115 per barrel last week, a White House leak revealed that President Barack Obama may dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the United States' 695 million barrel stockpile of emergency fuel supplies. The leak might have been a signal that Washington wants Gulf countries to take action to lower oil prices.[read more]

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Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil plans to install a solar capacity of 41,000 megawatts by 2032. Critics have noted that to achieve this, Saudi Arabia would need to produce and export approximately half of the world’s total annual installed capacity of solar. Can the country achieve this ambitious target?[read more]

Photo by Guillaume Cattiaux via Flickr

How often have we heard that installing renewable energy sources like wind and solar power will improve US energy security and reduce oil imports? There are other reasons for promoting these technologies, but this one has little substance, because we generate less than 1% of our electricity from oil. Ironically, this logic looks much...[read more]

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published an article on 2011 U.S. crude oil imports. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at where the U.S. currently obtains its oil, and how that has changed over the past decade. The EIA story is: Nearly 69% of U.S. crude oil imports originated from five countries...[read more]

On gasoline prices, President Obama is starting to learn the lesson of his predecessors. The quickest way to lower gasoline prices is by calling on Saudi Arabia.For three decades, US presidents have called on Saudi Arabia to get them out of an oil price bind. Saudi Arabia helped President Ronald Reagan get a leg up in the Cold War by...[read more]

In an interview with Austrian newspaper Kurier at the end of the month, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem al-Badri went so far as to declare that “$100 a barrel doesn’t hurt the world economy at all.” As oil consuming nations struggle to climb out of global recession, does $100 per barrel constitute a reasonable price? Not likely.[read more]

A pair of items in today's Financial Times could signal a longer run of high oil prices, even if Europe were to slip into recession and economic growth elsewhere slow. Geoffrey Styles explains how the combination of Saudi Arabia's increase of its target oil price and Venezuela's volatile leader will affect long run oil prices.[read more]

Escalating tensions over Iran’s threat to block the Strait of Hormuz have contributed to a several dollar rise in the price of oil over the past two weeks, portending an even higher oil price security risk premium that could emerge – were Iran to become a nuclear power.[read more]