ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT: Game-Changer: Watch Out, Middle-Eastern Oil Suppliers

I'm thinking the US will be in a position to shift its energy dependency on the Middle East, with political and economic ramifications that will be far reaching.

Balancing that possibility, the ecological cost will be very great, because the shift depends on an infrastructure based on extensive use of fracking technology, long pipelines, and international shipping.   

"U.S. oil production is rising sharply and increased output from shale will be a "game changer" in global energy markets in the coming years, according to a new report out Tuesday by the International Energy Agency." (NPR)

At the same time, the transportation industry is turning to natural gas to power trains, buses, and trucks, increasing demand for LNG.

NYTimes, 5-16-2013
Look at this mess of waste oil production sludge.(a Koch Brothers-owned industry site). Surely the trade-offs that will remove our Achilles heel of energy dependence are going to be a Faustian bargain as the earth is excavated to bone. It sickens me.  We can't go back. 

"U.S. shale oil will help meet most of the world's new oil needs in the next five years, even if demand rises from a pick-up in the global economy," the Paris-based agency said in its five-year outlook, called the Medium-Term Oil Market Report.

Alexis Smith, "Rule of Thumb", from Craig Krull Gallery
The artist has placed an old wooden school ruler across an old postcard like image of a dream mountain environment.  So simple, didactic in calling out the cost-benefit analysis regarding environmental issues. The loss grieves me daily and deeply.

 It works for me as I live depending on my relation with the natural world for meaning and transcendence:  how can I ever really do anything more than meditate upon the the magnitude and profundity of nature's processes? 

"North American supply is an even bigger deal than we thought. A real game changer in every way," said Maria van der Hoeven, the IEA's executive director.

She said that North American production has set off a "supply shock that is sending ripples throughout the world" and urged the United States to dismantle the Export Administration Act of 1979, which bans the sale of U.S. crude abroad, except to Canada and Mexico.

"This issue is on the table. I think it has to be addressed because if there are no export licenses for crude, then the industry will find different ways, as they are looking for now already with processed, half-processed products, things like that," van der Hoeven said.

Canada, one of the world's largest petroleum exporters, has also gotten oil from tar sands ....Fracking/tar sands production is responsible for the change in the energy industry.

Those combined factors have resulted in a "steeper than expected" rise in North American production....

On the demand side, Gjelten reports, it's no longer the big industrialized countries such as the United States that are also the biggest oil users. The IEA predicts countries such as China and India will need more oil than the industrialized counties at "some point" in the future.

"But it's happening. And it's happening fast. It's faster than expected," van der Hoeven says.

One big reason for rising supply is that energy consumers are expected to look more toward natural gas to fill their needs. Antoine Halff, head of the IEA's Oil Industry Division, says trucks and trains, for example, will turn away from oil.

"In fact, we're now expecting that we're going to see some transition of transport demand from oil to natural gas before the end of the forecast period," Halff says.  (NPR)

The market shifts:

Cheniere Energy has an export license for liquified natural gas and is converting a gas terminal in Sabine Pass, LA to do so"... the expansion which will enable the facility to export U.S. natural gas worldwide. It will include two enormous refrigeration units used to cool the methane gas coming in to the terminal from pipelines across the country." (NPR, 5-17-2013)