This video is about the rise of U.S. shale oil. But the oil industry also has a dirty secret: between about 2010-20, it was losing millions of dollars a day - making WeWork or Uber look like business geniuses… all while doing damage to the environment. No story about shale is complete without this side of the story, which is why I made a *second* video, even longer and more in-depth than this one, about the dark side of shale. It's exclusively available on Nebula. With this link you can watch it right now, along with our entire catalog of exclusives and Originals: go.nebula.tv/polymatter Thanks and I hope you enjoy both! -Evan
I think leaving our the fact shale oil has never been profitable from a video is akin to posting misinformation. Like I get drumming up business and the second video concept, but in this case you are leaving our that Shale plays have never made a return. And with the average barrel getting light and gassier, and well productivity dropping, that's a worsening issue. NG prices are rock bottom already. Without knowing this or seeing the draw down in DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) or decrease in the drilling rig count, you would think that shale oil is a replacement for oil security. But it isn't, it's a very limited resource that only has a few more years of activity before collapse.
I would like to watch the follow up video on Nebula. However, i used to have Nebula. For a whole year. And in that year i found that far to few video's were interesting to watch. It lacks "old media" so i find that on youtube or their own websites. It lacks gaming of any kind, so i find that on TH-cam and Twitch. It lacks history channels that are supported by museums, so i go to youtube for that. And many of the video's released on Nebula i can also find on TH-cam, albeit often released at a later date. Whilst i appreciate the thought of the Nebula, that some video's would get a channel demonetized on TH-cam, i find that in the end, Nebula isn't worth my money when the alternatives are all free of charge. And free of advertisement thanks to adblockers. Nebula simply does not hold enough content for me to feel its worth the price. Sorry!
PolyMatter, I hope you're seeing this. Your views have been dropping significantly due to your bet on Nebula. Nebula is not going to work, and all the effort you've put into it will be wasted. I, like many others, simply can't justify another subscription, and I don't see any value in Nebula. You started Nebula hoping to diversify your reliance on TH-cam, but this move will leave you nowhere. If not enough people watch you on TH-cam, no one will know you on Nebula either. TH-cam isn't a bad platform, despite what you might think or have been convinced of by your other peers. You're either delusional or have been misled. The algorithm you're trying to contest has always aimed to promote the best value, and although it's missed the mark a few times in the past, it's still the best we've got. I know your content is good, and it will surely make a positive impact on TH-cam if you dedicate yourself to it. However, if you choose to focus on Nebula, you may slowly fade into irrelevance. TH-cam is a powerful platform, and with the right approach, you can thrive there. The algorithm's goal is to promote valuable content, and your videos have the potential to shine, if you put in the effort. The choice is yours, but I believe your future lies in continuing to build your presence on TH-cam, rather than splitting it into Nebula. The decision is obviously yours, but I hope you'll reconsider your Nebula strategy and double down on TH-cam, where your audience and impact can truly grow. We love your content man.
The USA has a never-ending supply of luck. If a particular commodity suddenly becomes a hot item, it'll be some farmer in Pennsylvania discovering his land sits atop a huge deposit of said commodity, thereby reducing the USA's reliance on other nations to get their hands on it
Alaska is actually a very small producer in the modern oil economy, mainly only effecting Californias market and the Pacific coast, and mainly doing it just through Washington state refineries.
If Alaska wasn't so cold and far away more people would live there and due to that, Alaska would easily be the biggest oil producing state cause Alaska has a shit ton of untapped oil in it.
While Alaska is by far the largest state It’s population is only 700,000 with no indication that it will significantly grow & most of those people live in the south narrow strip
@@abdiganiaden Actually, not really. In total GPD filthy rich, sure. In GDP per capita? Rich yes, richest no. And even the GPD they have is highly focussed on a very small percentage of the population, tendency growing. So a few americans are rich. Most of them live in pretty shitty (read: dystopian) conditions, as far as first world countries are concerned. Overall, wouldnt wanna live there at all. Horrible place.
1. The majority of frac water used today is produced or water that comes out of the well with the oil and it’s reused. This is what the company I work for does. The only reason it could be radioactive is because of NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) not because we’re putting anything with radiation in the water. Also this water if not used for frac ends up being put down hole back into the ground.
18:02 the fact that CEOs were being paid based on production and not profit is absolutely obscene. this creates an incentive too over produce, even if it comes at massive overdevelopment costs that will lead directly to huge losses after the CEOs is paid off. When PRC does this with EVs we call it corruption, but our own CEOs get away completely clean. why is this blatant corruption not investigated?
Lmao that's one false equivalence there buddy. China is actually subsidizing the shit out of its EV industry and the US doesn't subsidize its auto industry.
@Annexation_ thats not a subsidy. DOE loans and grants dont count. Try again bud you're really bad at this just come out and say you hate America and love china
🔄 There is a global resource shortage 🔄 "US hegemony is finished" 🔄 A random farmer in nowhere middle America stumbles across the largest supply of said resource known to man America remains undefeated 😎
So true. People love to fantasize about the collapse/defeat of America, because when you have the most power, others will always try to take it from you.
@@nikkity5491 Please elaborate how you got there, from the simple fact that you live on a pretty nice piece of land. In terms of what americans actually do to themselves .. yeah nah, i'll stay in europe lol
The cycle of American hegemony: America is dependent on resources owned by its rivals --> "US hegemony is finished!" --> Some farmer in Nebraska discovers largest deposit of said resources --> America creates some new tech that abandons the old resource for a new one to be dependent on
Sort of actually the US exports oil and then imports heavy sour crude to refine, but a lot of things use natural gas directly which is domestically produced. This happens to take advantage of the US' high tech refineries and allow countries to refine high quality oil with simpler refineries.
The US is never “dependent” on others. It makes choices based on the market. When supply chains are cheap and secure abroad they invest abroad and import. Once the security and market environments change they focus domestically.
19:47 Nebula exclusive videos are a thing for a long time, but this is the first time I'm seeing that part 1 of a story is free and part 2 is paywalled and I don't like it. It gives off kinda scammy vibes, like these "free" dating sites that you can use for free except that actually sending a message costs money. And stuff like that should be mentioned at the start of a video and not at the end.
Can you please upload P2 to TH-cam eventually? Like, its fine if its paywalled for now to get more people on Nebula but it really doesn't make me want to buy it if it's a forever exclusive.
I don't believe you are looking at this with enough granularity. You talk about the realities of infrastructure and crude characteristics, but then seem to ignore this by the conclusion. There is frankly no way to look at the Midwest and Rockies without them being import dependent - dependent on Canada, sure, and with legal protection and a near monopsony due to pipelines, but more than half the oil consumed is still imported in these regions. California as well simply can't be viewed as anything but energy dependent. The refineries need a heavy crude, there is no pipeline capacity with the continent, and again we see growing Canadian fractions but I say energy independence is to ignore reality. We can only say the US south, from Permian shale and Offshore, is an actual net surplus. And it's an enormous surplus, no doubt. But you can't look at a basement full of people drowning and an 11th floor of people dying of thirst and say there seems to be no issues with water access. Not only is there no way to move Permian shale throughout the country, but it's the wrong "flavor" for almost all the infrastructure it's near. A hypothetical refinery has a pipe a meter in diameter with oil flowing in. Let's say it was built for heavy oil, the oil enters the distillation chamber and is seperated into components according to the size of molecules. The really light molecules, 1-3 carbons (methane, ethane, propane) exit out a 1 inch pipe at the top, another 1inch pipe for butane, a 2 foot diameter pipe for gasoline which is a mix ~10 carbon long molecules, a foot diameter for diesel which is heavier, and then some real heavy stuff out the bottom. And that all works because I know the oil coming in has ratios that break up to fit the pipes going out. If you decide to try and switch that input oil to something light, you have to reduce the amount of oil you're processing, because the fractions have changed. Suddenly that 1 inch pipe at the top is completely full, even though the gasoline take away pipe is half full, and the Diesel is near empty. And shale oil IS light, super light, sometimes even called ultralight. In some cases it's comparable to that 1 inch pipes output, or condensate, or NGL liquids. Which is a huge problem, because that shale oil requires an enormous amount of diesel to access, but gives very little back. You cannot run the US economy on shale oil, I might be able to fill my car, but construction vehicles? Transport trucks? Farm Tractors? Ships, trains, fire trucks etc? That's why we saw Diesel prices skyrocketing after Russia invaded Ukraine. And US refineries, most relevant for this discussion in the Gulf but also in Chicago and California, are built for the heaviest possible oil. Talking about replacing imports with shale oil isn't just getting less diesel out of a barrel, it's talking about using that 1 meter input pipe at half capacity, because your methane outtake and gasoline outtake are full at that point. But, as bad as all that, most of the wasted equipment is related to the really heavy sludge at the bottom. US refineries are the most advanced and expensive, because they have the equipment to upgrade that sludge into something more like regular oil. Gulf refineries actually buy the sludge from other countries refineries, that used to include Russia's. All that equipment goes completely unused is you try to force shale to be used. Which is going to add to gas prices, because those refineries compete by buying cheap oil to make up for their high cost, and shale oil has just about the highest production cost in the world, only beat by strip mining bitumen in Fort McMurray. *All numbers should be taken as examples and not literally.
To be fair: His part 2 actually goes into greater depth about the realities of American shale in terms of its high cost and its light/sweet output. He looks at refining capacity and its bias towards heavy/sour crude (in the context of saying the US is not “energy independent” but rather a net exporter since US refineries need heavy crude imports.) It’s obviously not a deep dive into the market (I don’t think recall him explaining that sour refers to sulphur or explaining different benchmarks, for example), but it is a more nuanced look at why the next decade of the shale industry will be much different from the last decade. I will say, one thing he didn’t touch on is how much US refineries may be shifting to handle at least some shale oil. I know the XOM refinery in Beaumont recently became the #2 or #1 by crude capacity because it added a new crude tower geared towards Permian-like crudes. I don’t feel like digging through EIA refining data at the moment, but could make an interesting study.
Peak oil a great exemple of" the science" was correct, but they did not factor a unforseen x ,a variable that's new drilling technology, namely fracking.
Peak oil wasn’t really a scientific principle, is was a reasonable economic assessment based on limited data, and like all models you can’t account for every unknown future technology. It would be goofy for instance to project future construction prices based on the assumption that low-cost commercial graphene or fortified fast-growth lumber is invented a few decades down the road because we have no clue what the viability is.
@@zandaroos553 Agreed. No Model can just assume ‚we will figure out something new‘, you need to work with the data you have. And as PM said, fracking was known for a long time already. It was just considered not economical. Which it was, and currently is. That’s the whole point of the video. No one back than thought we would be stupid enough to just absorb the negative delta with loans.
Sort of funny that you say fracking is helped by the desolation of the Great Plains. The suburbs north of Denver are filled with fracking rigs intermixed into suburban development. The put up these big boxes 40 feet high around the derricks to keep the noise down during the operation. Then they tear them down and move them to the next location.
There was only 1 McDonalds in Williston ND. The whole city is there to service the Bakken oil fields, most of the workers are seasonal so they need to compete for pay. You could quit your job and get a new job the very same day. Walmart started at $18 but the housing there was BS. So much seasonal workers rent fluxuates heavily.
The actual and sensible alternative to US energy independence is KeyStone LX or a similar pipeline bringing Canadian oil south to the Gulf of Mexico so that a reliable supply (unlike sanctioned Russia or Venezuela or unreliable Mexico) of heavy crude is available to Gulf refineries. I am all for the energy transition. There is really no way Solar won't become the dominant source of electricity over the next decade, which is great. NG will likely be needed in that time, but not in the evening or for load following, which will be done with batteries. It will be needed overnight and seasonally for cloudy periods, where storage is further off. And EVs are going to take over a large chunk of Transportation. But oil won't stop being used for decades, and in that time a secure supply is to the US's advantage.
"There is really no way Solar won't become the dominant source of electricity over the next decade, which is great" This is in now way apparent. I'll say there is no way it'll be the dominant source in a decade. I'll actually put money on that. The only way you are doing an actual energy transition is with nuclear. You have 20 years to build one. Even if you do a complete energy transition, 1/4th of the whole oil budget goes to petrochemicals. Basically to make anything that isn't wood or metal in your everyday life. These have no alternatives or significantly expensive alternatives.
@mignik01 So first, I quite clearly said oil would remain needed for decades for both an energy source and petrochemicals. But nowhere near a quarter of oil is used as petrochemical feed stock. Naphtha is the main feed stock and it's like a tenth of a barrel. By 2050 I'd expect US oil demand to still be a third of what it is today, mainly gasoline being displaced along side a drop in Diesel from some rail and trucking electrification and a drop in fracking which uses large amounts. Maybe that gets replaced by biofuels but I genuinely hope not. But obviously I disagree on the point of solar for Electrical generation. Solar has increased 8 fold over the last decade, even halving that growth rate and it's the majority over the next. And the amount of manufacturing for solar has grown enormously and continues to grow. Look at China's build out of solar. Incredibly and historically rapid. The price solar can be produced for shows a clear market superiority that even Texas embraces. Again, I think existing NG plants used for peaking will be repurposed for combined cycle use to increase capacity and be heavily used over night. I don't think 24 hour storage will be common until 2040. But 2-4 hour storage for use in the evening is already commercialized and growing. And I think Solar with storage that keeps output generally stable through the day, will continue it's rapid growth. I have nothing against nuclear. I think SMRs could be a key part of the energy make up, even large power plants in some large regions. I think industrial heat would likely be best served by SMRs, the Oil sands in Canada, even shipping could be transitioned to SMRs. But in terms of electrical production, excluding certain highly dense Urban regions or particularly cloudy geographies, I don't believe nuclear can compete with solar.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 The last I could find was 12% in 2018. I have read it is close to 20% currently but I can't find the source. However, the petrochemical industry is only going to take more of a share because the demand of plastics is only increasing and this demand is only going up. I saw 55% of the total oil demand going to petrochemicals in 2050 by IEA. Trucking electrification will be a complete joke. You won't produce enough energy in the US to keep all the trucks running. This will be Diesel for in your lifetime. Locomotives are more realistic The biggest misstep people make is the trend of progress being linear. There is nothing to suggest this will be half a third or one tenth. That is just an assumption which has nothing to support it. It is just as likely to hit a wall and make no progress. I would bet money on the latter because the physics just isn't there in my opinion. There is no situation on planet earth with current or even projected viable technologies that solar can replace the density, reliability, and cost of nuclear power. Absolutely none. You go to solar because you can't do nuclear for some reason.
@@mignik01You are wrong. Solar is stupidly cheap, (5x cheaper than nuclear) and will replace coal, gas, nuclear and coal electricity production. Nuclear is stupid because we need quick powerplants that don’t take days to start up and cool down - also nuclear energy is the most expensive form of electricity production we have.
@mignik01 I guess by default I have to agree the share of oil going to petrochemicals will increase since I think the share going to fuel will go down. But I think that 55% number is many because the IEA also sees a global decrease in demand by 2030. And I have to say that 12% is a lot closer to my claim of around 10%. The point to remember is Petrochemical feed stock is generally the lighter end of hydrocarbons. So shale oil from the US, it might actually be nearly half a barrel. Because you can put those small molecules together to make polymers. But you can't just use the entire barrel that way, the heavier end that goes into gas and diesel and jet fuel, until you get back to the really heavy stuff where you make lubricant and carbon fibers. I think short haul trucking will likely be electrified. I agree long haul trucking will remain Diesel. I don't think physics really has much to do with it. I think the shear economy of scale is what is most relevant now. Even without efficiency improvements, the module nature means manufacturering millions of panels and installing millions. The same is true for batteries. These aren't technically complex items. And the manufacturing is growing in the US, in China, and in India and Europe. Look at China, they could built their entire grids worth of capacity in about 5 years. That's just unparalleled. And the US is following suit to avoid being caught with the more expensive energy. Even without improvement solar is the cheapest cost of energy. Again, it costs less than nuclear. That's just the reality. No one is even pretending to have a nuclear power generation system in the range of solar. Sure, nuclear is "denser". And? Roof top solar destructively competes with any utility delivered power, if half a block has solar and a battery, the other half doubles all their transmission and distribution fees, which are already the majority of cost. Solar is highly reliable. The sun rises daily. Utility projects in Texas or the West or south California are in regions where you might have a half dozen clouds for half the year. And solar still works with clouds, just less. And, AC demand is a huge portion of consumer demand, and fits perfectly with solar. Some days you will have lower solar. On those days NG will be run. But you don't run a nuclear plant at night and occasionally, and nuclear doesn't compete in the day. Again, nuclear for process heat with co-generation makes a lot of sense for industrial clusters. Nuclear might make more sense in New York and the surrounding area with an enormous density of people and more regular cloudy conditions. But across the majority of the majority of regions, solar wins. I think it's one of the greater ironies that the US north East and Europe were the two areas to first push solar, when they are likely the two areas worse suited to it. But regardless. No one is building nuclear right now. Not anywhere near the scale of solar. Even if you're right, solar will have won before Nuclear gets to the starting line. And nuclear only works when you have large amounts of unmet demand. If a region has electricity you can't just add a GW of power. That said, my belief is that nuclear is a big part of China's plan. Everyone is always talking about them building coal, but you have to note their coal plants are much more advanced than the ones built in North America or Europe 30 years ago. Anything built in the last 10 years is super or ultra critical. And I think they are working on SMRs so in the 2030s they can rip out the boilers of these coal plants and plug the nuclear reactors in.
Absolutely! The phrase "excluding Alaska" often pops up in discussions about U.S. geography, climate, or even statistics, and it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting. Alaska’s unique location, size, and extreme conditions mean that it can skew data or comparisons dramatically. Whether we’re talking about land area, temperature records, coastline length, or wildlife populations, Alaska frequently stands as an outlier in U.S. statistics.
PolyMatter, we will never run out of anything. Engineers design everything we use, and no product we use is the perfect way of doing something. If so all wire would be made of pure gold. Instead we use copper and aluminum because it works well enough for the application. As oil becomes more expensive we will switch to using something that is simply cheaper. Whether it works better or not, that doesn't really matter.
I mean...in a way that's kinda is what's happening now. Always edging closer to a civil war/distopian country. The biggest enemy is itself, not abroad imo. Hence why the Russians use culture wars/bots etc to drive hate division so much all across the developed world. You can only weaken/defeat such countries from within.
USA does Oil like Taiwan does Computer Chips. A 20 year headstart, and nobody else is plausibly close to competing for 1st place within the next generation
Truly lol. I grew up in Mexico and all the oil that is found is automatically owned by the nation/government and the land above it. How are they ever going to hope to compete with these kinds of incentives
0:00:00 - Nixon, oil crisis and Project Independence 0:01:48 - Peak Oil and US production decline 0:03:11 - The unexpected US oil comeback 0:04:36 - Cost of oil extraction and conventional oil 0:06:33 - Shale oil, fracking and big oil 0:08:24 - Wildcatters, horizontal drilling and natural gas 0:10:17 - Fracking environmental concerns and narratives 0:11:42 - US geography and fracking infrastructure 0:14:10 - Factors for the shale boom 0:15:47 - Economic impact and job creation 0:17:05 - Unprofitability of the shale industry 0:18:14 - Energy superpower and geopolitical dominance 0:19:12 - End of cheap oil and the future 0:20:14 - Nebula promotion
The graph at 3:40]6 is either wrong or is showing boe (bbl of oil equivalent) which includes natural gas. I think we topped out at 13.9 bbl of oil sometime in 2023
This channel, and reallifelore are the reason I subscribed to nebula. Entirely worth it and found so many more great things. Also, big fan of the channel! Love the work and always am excited when I see a new video!
@@magivkmeister6166 considering the neighbors China and Russia has, America has literal saints. Canada is basically a 52nd state and Mexico does plenty of trade.
Guess it would be nice if it had as much water as Canada, but you are pretty much correct. American geography is just comically great. On top of that put a Nation that was created with good intentions by the founding fathers and you get 30% of the world's GDP with just 4% of it's population
The United States isn't densely populated enough to have high speed rail for civilian transportation like Japan. American geography also encourages an unhealthy diet, since beef, potatoes, and corn are unhealthy foods. The United States wouldn't be dependent on oil in the first place if it had HSR instead of car-centric urban infrastructure.
"Empty" is always such a horrible way to describe huge masses of land. It's only empty if you ignore the literal MILLIONS of people living there and all of the land that's in use.
@17:00 The shale industry wouldn't have operated at such a loss if Americans were actually shown what the price of gas actually was. Plus you wouldn't all be going around in the biggest vehicles I've ever seen just for commuting. Electric vehicles would have taken off earlier too.
What's rarely understood is that Saudi Arabia back then used a small percentage of their commodity. It would be like a restaurant eating all their profits before they sold it. Even today Saudi Arabia doesn't use majority of its Oil.
As a Gen Z adult, I do worry that we are not transitioning to renewable energy fast enough due to lobbying groups and oil cartels. But overall I get why the Biden Administration had to ramp up oil production. Of course, energy independence is ridiculously important, but so is keeping prices manageable. The inflation from pandemic supply chain issues, price gouging, and Russia's invasion have already put immense stress on working class people. So they had to be pragmatic by expanding production of both fossil fuels and renewable energy.
It wasn't necessary to increase oil production to reduce inflation. Stop price gouging through legislation. Diversify energy supply through alternative sources. Plan the economy properly so you're not at the whims of dictators abroad and domestic lobbyists.
@@Randint73 yeah but it only lasts for 12 years , and its 200 times less abundant , we tripled the athmospheric methane in the last 100 years and its impact is way lower than 10% of the co2 increases
2:49 I think there is a problem with the units used for the graphic : you say that in 1970 peak oil production was 11 million barrels per year, but your graphic shows 3.5 billions barrels per year in 1970. I still confused, are they millions or billions ? And is it 11 or 3.5 ?? Edit : 3:10 You actually change the units of the graphic and then we can see that in 1970 it really was 11 millions barrels per year. I just don't understand... :\
2:39 - That's a curious omission. What does it look like with Alaska included? I think you could have shown both (or at least explained why you omitted Alaska), because it makes it look like you're cherrypicking data
I remember when I was a kid in the early 2000s the price for gas was still cheap compared to the rest of the country, it was close to 10 or something like that due to importing from Canada a few hours north of me (I live in upsate ny for context)
> Peak Oil Was Real > Excluding Alaska Yeah, and if you exclude Iowa, we hit peak corn. That wording "excluding Alaska" is carrying this argument like Atlas carries the Earth.
I understand your need to make a profit from Nebula, but I implore you to release Part II on TH-cam. Most people are terribly ignorant about how dark the future will be when the world finally runs out of oil. If we don't raise enough awareness, our civilization will be more likely to collapse because of it.
I know that woman (Maria Angelina Alexander) If you were born and raised in new York you'd know too, she's my family's Broker for 3yrs till now and a very good one if you asked me. No doubt she is the one that helped you get where you are!!!!
Gen Z Texan here, The first is the Fracking industry saved my hometown Odessa. I obvious view it favorably. The issue with Oilers going into massive debt is a known factor in the state. This problem is viewed as a cyclical one due to oil industry having Boom and Bust cycles. The most likely outcome is consolidation in the market under healthy business that are not as leveraged and can run profits. This is not new and Texans have planned for it. The Renewable issue is another and is important for my generation. A logical look at the energy production tech of 2020 shows some problem with either energy type. Oil is abundant now and new field ls are beginning found regularly so the supply problems are not the same as conventional oil. The problems are water and refining. The water is heavily polluted in the process and newer plants are moving to a water recirculation process which will cut usage by 25%. The refining has a fuel type issue at the moment and newer refineries are using modular systems to change from type to type without 5 years of buildout. The problem with other tech is Solar has a power storage problem and a manufacturing one. Lithium Ion storage is big, toxic and controlled by China. China also has recently cornered the market on solar panels and that why they currently are so cheap. Wind power has maintenance and bird problems. The Bird issues are massive in Texas and the wind farms are in the path of migration birds who keep the insect population down. In west Texas the insect pollution has gotten completely out of hand and bird are the insects main predators. Causing a Chinese style famine with farms being eaten alive without the birds.
I do share sympathy for the severe environmental costs of fracking. I am a Floridian and we are not happy with our wells offshore. But more crucial to me is that mining all this oil now will be detrimental to the supply in 30-50 years. If we don't have that crude in the ground by then, when prices are likely going to be quadruple what they are now, it will become more like the Fallout resource wars. If we use it all up in good times, the bad times will be even more painful.
Yea. Churchill was right. "America will do the right thing, right after it's tried everything else" Kicking the can down the road has been the boomers favorite game. And now with them sunsetting politically I highly doubt genX is gonna do much different. But hey, resource wars aren't waiting for us. Egypt and Sudan, Turkey and Iraq, Pakistan and India. The water wars are just about to boil over.
America has TRILLIONS of barrels of untapped oil in vast oil shale deposits. The same American ingenuity that brought us fracking will happen again for oil shale.
I don't think there will be a very large market for shale in 30 years. It's already running out, it's getting lighter every year and is already to light to refine without mixing. And frankly, in 30 years oil demand will be so much lower the cost of fracking won't make sense.
Notice how US involvement in the Middle East has declined in proportion to the boom in shale oil production. The US has never been less interested in the Middle East.
17:30 I dislike the way this is presented. You use "free cash flow" in an investment heavy field, where net profit after interest or something might be better to see the financial health of this industry. In addition, I'd very much like to see this data past 2020. I imagine they made a nice profit in 2021 and 2022 with the high gas prices, and I think a good picture of health for the industry would be if they are making money now, where prices are a little low. Not saying that second thing is your fault, maybe there just isn't data there yet
The environmental legacy of occasional poisoned wells will last for thousands of years. Thankfully, nature on the whole adapts pretty rapidly to crude oil spills when oxygen is present (bacteria break it down) so this danger, while annoying, is not nearly as bad as heavy metals, fluorinated crap or radioactivity.
@@Ray_of_Light62 I agree, but I think oil production from shale will. Shale fracturing for NG will be a long term industry. But Shale oil is a temporary side effect. We can see the Bakken, the first shale plays, is decreasing output annually. Same with Eagle Ford. And the average well productivity in the Permian is declining. "Shale oil" used to refer to using oil shale, and things like the Permian were called "light, tight oil" because it is light, and it's in tight rock formations. The tighter the formation, the lighter the hydrocarbons. The first wells are drilled in the easiest, most productive locations, which have the least tight formation, and therefore the "heaviest" (in quotes because it's still very, very light) oils. As time has gone by, wells in the Permian are shifting to less ideal sites (tighter), and getting lighter, and therefore gassier. So each barrel of oil is actually half a barrel of oil and half a barrel of NG, when it used to be 75/25. And the half that is oil is still getting lighter, more butane and less gasoline. The big issue here is all the pumps run on diesel. But the light shale oil has a smaller fraction of the heavier hydrocarbons, notably those that make diesel. A barrel of Brent (global standard) produces more than twice the diesel you get refining WTI (the oil from the Permian). So even for NG fracking, I think we will need to commercialize a technology to use wet CNG from nearby wellhead to run the pumps, which I've seen in development. The diesel to NG equation just doesn't work. But shale oil has never really worked. Because OPEC exists, and keeps prices at a low enough level for the fracking industry to just barely cover expenses. And if OPEC didn't exist, oil would be so cheap that it never would have made sense.
Oil is basically very very very old flash from rotting corpses from dinosaurs and other animals. The bones after the flash was gone stays and are fossilized.
Thanks to the shale oil boom, the US is now sitting on more oil reserves than Russia, which estimates as having 256 billion barrels of untapped oil. The next-richest countries in terms of oil after that are: Saud Arabia (212 billion), Canada (167 billion), Iran (143 billion) and Brazil (120 billion).
Peak oil! Thank you for this video, i think energy cost explain everything from our declining standards of living to declining birth rate and an important distinction is that since we burned through the cheap sweet oil energy is more expensive making everything else more expensive so it’s better to say peak energy return on investment. When using it to explain our slow decline.
@@alexanderthurber4257 I like this phrasing "peak energy return on investment". Although I'd say more of what is driving the issue you mention is loss of manufacturering, US still has very cheap energy, but other countries willing to trash their environment are hard to compete with. I'd also say the type of energy matters a lot. Big issue with Fracking is you need a lot of Diesel to produce a very light oil that may be a net loss of diesel. The Oil Sands also have a lower EROI, but I don't think anyone would care if, instead of burning natural gas for steam, you stuck a nuclear generator at the largest sites.
@ i dont think technology of any sort (like nuclear) will solve our industrial problem, push comes to shove the carrying capacity of our earth is 2 billion without oil and associated nitrates for farming. And there is such a huge short term advantage to using available resources that there will be no slowing down. Like every biological system, we will use all the temporarily available energy and then go bust. I expect a slow steady simplification over the next 100 to 200 years, with subsistence farmers winning out eventually since they already have low energy consumption societies. I think America is just another empire on borrowed time.
You realise gas for you guys is still dirt cheap compared to the rest of the developed world right?? It makes up far less % of your disposable income spend than other countries. This isn't the reason for 'declining standards of living'. If anything gas prices have hardly were stagnant pre covid for best part of a decade.
@@d.b.cooper1 yes America is 5% of pop and uses 35% of energy. Since standers of living are so high, they are the most fragile to disruption. And the west depends on an expensive military to maintain status quo of essentially theft of other regions like the middle east. Rich nations that depend on cheap energy will fall faster as the cost to maintain military dominance increases. Also as America/europe continues to trade debt for oil, eventually the middle east will find it cheaper to abandon the dollar and face the military conflict than to continue to get valueless debt for valuable oil. Again America has lots of exports like shale and food, but there is still more consumption than production bought by debt and that debt will be called on eventually. Also consider, if china buys mideast oil, then makes a widget and sells it to America for debt, it is a roundabout way of extraction.
I strongly disagree: If you had invested in fracking materials companies (ie. drilling equipment and proppant materials) you made plenty of money investing in the fracking boom - The Selling Pickaxe Principle. It was foolish if investors thought that a free market supply boom of a commodity would create a market niche or higher prices, that's not how economics work, but I would point out you have answered the big investors' motive - cheaper energy was a great benefit to the entire economy and their other investments.
This video is about the rise of U.S. shale oil. But the oil industry also has a dirty secret: between about 2010-20, it was losing millions of dollars a day - making WeWork or Uber look like business geniuses… all while doing damage to the environment. No story about shale is complete without this side of the story, which is why I made a *second* video, even longer and more in-depth than this one, about the dark side of shale. It's exclusively available on Nebula. With this link you can watch it right now, along with our entire catalog of exclusives and Originals: go.nebula.tv/polymatter
Thanks and I hope you enjoy both! -Evan
I think leaving our the fact shale oil has never been profitable from a video is akin to posting misinformation. Like I get drumming up business and the second video concept, but in this case you are leaving our that Shale plays have never made a return. And with the average barrel getting light and gassier, and well productivity dropping, that's a worsening issue. NG prices are rock bottom already.
Without knowing this or seeing the draw down in DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) or decrease in the drilling rig count, you would think that shale oil is a replacement for oil security. But it isn't, it's a very limited resource that only has a few more years of activity before collapse.
Yeah but at what cost?
I would like to watch the follow up video on Nebula. However, i used to have Nebula. For a whole year. And in that year i found that far to few video's were interesting to watch. It lacks "old media" so i find that on youtube or their own websites. It lacks gaming of any kind, so i find that on TH-cam and Twitch. It lacks history channels that are supported by museums, so i go to youtube for that. And many of the video's released on Nebula i can also find on TH-cam, albeit often released at a later date. Whilst i appreciate the thought of the Nebula, that some video's would get a channel demonetized on TH-cam, i find that in the end, Nebula isn't worth my money when the alternatives are all free of charge. And free of advertisement thanks to adblockers. Nebula simply does not hold enough content for me to feel its worth the price. Sorry!
PolyMatter, I hope you're seeing this. Your views have been dropping significantly due to your bet on Nebula. Nebula is not going to work, and all the effort you've put into it will be wasted. I, like many others, simply can't justify another subscription, and I don't see any value in Nebula.
You started Nebula hoping to diversify your reliance on TH-cam, but this move will leave you nowhere. If not enough people watch you on TH-cam, no one will know you on Nebula either. TH-cam isn't a bad platform, despite what you might think or have been convinced of by your other peers. You're either delusional or have been misled. The algorithm you're trying to contest has always aimed to promote the best value, and although it's missed the mark a few times in the past, it's still the best we've got.
I know your content is good, and it will surely make a positive impact on TH-cam if you dedicate yourself to it. However, if you choose to focus on Nebula, you may slowly fade into irrelevance. TH-cam is a powerful platform, and with the right approach, you can thrive there. The algorithm's goal is to promote valuable content, and your videos have the potential to shine, if you put in the effort. The choice is yours, but I believe your future lies in continuing to build your presence on TH-cam, rather than splitting it into Nebula. The decision is obviously yours, but I hope you'll reconsider your Nebula strategy and double down on TH-cam, where your audience and impact can truly grow. We love your content man.
Now look at the aging oil processing facility in America. How US need to buy crude from outside for their own usage.
Shale boom right in the middle of the Great Recession: further proof the USA has the plot armor of an anime protagonist
The USA has a never-ending supply of luck. If a particular commodity suddenly becomes a hot item, it'll be some farmer in Pennsylvania discovering his land sits atop a huge deposit of said commodity, thereby reducing the USA's reliance on other nations to get their hands on it
It’s called easing regulations 😂😂😂
Anything is possible with enough debt. Shale oil is still unprofitable as shown by polymatter.
@@johnmaris1582 it has been amazing for the economy still.
Besides, big oil will buy off struggling little ones anyway so not total loss.
And discovery of the largest rare earth metal deposit in the world in Wyoming when the relationship with China is worsening.
That phrase, "excluding Alaska" is carrying some freight.
Alaska is actually a very small producer in the modern oil economy, mainly only effecting Californias market and the Pacific coast, and mainly doing it just through Washington state refineries.
100th like (idc if someone removed their like earlier or later)
If Alaska wasn't so cold and far away more people would live there and due to that, Alaska would easily be the biggest oil producing state cause Alaska has a shit ton of untapped oil in it.
Also because ecologically it’s pristine and fragile. Shouldn’t be ruined, major fisheries depend on clean rivers up there
While Alaska is by far the largest state
It’s population is only 700,000 with no indication that it will significantly grow & most of those people live in the south narrow strip
The part two on nebula... having the easy way for free but having to pay for the consequence is so American
@Dr.Kraig_Ren Are they tho?
@@Yamyatos Yes.
Oh no, does somebody have to wait a week because they don’t want to spend $2.99 a month to support creators? 😢
@@abdiganiaden Actually, not really. In total GPD filthy rich, sure. In GDP per capita? Rich yes, richest no. And even the GPD they have is highly focussed on a very small percentage of the population, tendency growing. So a few americans are rich. Most of them live in pretty shitty (read: dystopian) conditions, as far as first world countries are concerned. Overall, wouldnt wanna live there at all. Horrible place.
Thanks for letting me know. Skipping this video
1. The majority of frac water used today is produced or water that comes out of the well with the oil and it’s reused. This is what the company I work for does. The only reason it could be radioactive is because of NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) not because we’re putting anything with radiation in the water. Also this water if not used for frac ends up being put down hole back into the ground.
Thx, I never understood how it became radioactive and toxic. Is it otherwise pretty safe for the environment provided precautions are taken?
18:02 the fact that CEOs were being paid based on production and not profit is absolutely obscene. this creates an incentive too over produce, even if it comes at massive overdevelopment costs that will lead directly to huge losses after the CEOs is paid off. When PRC does this with EVs we call it corruption, but our own CEOs get away completely clean. why is this blatant corruption not investigated?
Lmao that's one false equivalence there buddy. China is actually subsidizing the shit out of its EV industry and the US doesn't subsidize its auto industry.
Apparently, $80 billion of direct US Treasury funding "is not" the US government subsidizing the auto industry lol. Good grief.
Double standards.
@Annexation_ thats not a subsidy. DOE loans and grants dont count. Try again bud you're really bad at this just come out and say you hate America and love china
The CEO's have the money to pay off big media to not talk about it. The PRC can't.
🔄 There is a global resource shortage
🔄 "US hegemony is finished"
🔄 A random farmer in nowhere middle America stumbles across the largest supply of said resource known to man
America remains undefeated 😎
We are made different (better)
So true. People love to fantasize about the collapse/defeat of America, because when you have the most power, others will always try to take it from you.
@@nikkity5491 Please elaborate how you got there, from the simple fact that you live on a pretty nice piece of land.
In terms of what americans actually do to themselves .. yeah nah, i'll stay in europe lol
the goat is here
@Yamyatos This is some top tier European cope. You better hope America stays a "nice piece of land" so that we're able to defend Europe from itself.
Looks like America needs some freedom 🦅
That is well on it's way with laughable candidates (judging by 2024 Presidential Debate)
Bulshits narrative. China, India and the rest of the world benefited by us interventions in the middle east providing stability in the region
P-diddy is going to invade us
Each member of the House "represents" 500,000 people. The average human can only meaningfully remember 150 individuals.
@@DisFantasy Well, we can't exactly have a direct democracy with 335 million people, soooo...
Polymatter oil up buddy
I'm gonna touch you
Nice try Diddy
Diddy going to look like Saint when I'm done with an oiled up Polymatter @@minecraftzocker272
@@minecraftzocker272 how did you know it was me
Who's Ya DIDDY ❓
Please put P2 on TH-cam
The cycle of American hegemony:
America is dependent on resources owned by its rivals --> "US hegemony is finished!" --> Some farmer in Nebraska discovers largest deposit of said resources --> America creates some new tech that abandons the old resource for a new one to be dependent on
@@RyBrownhe isn't wrong lol
Sort of actually the US exports oil and then imports heavy sour crude to refine, but a lot of things use natural gas directly which is domestically produced. This happens to take advantage of the US' high tech refineries and allow countries to refine high quality oil with simpler refineries.
The US is never “dependent” on others. It makes choices based on the market. When supply chains are cheap and secure abroad they invest abroad and import. Once the security and market environments change they focus domestically.
@chillxxx241 so when the market makes the choice to depend on nations who use slave labor we should just sit back and do nothing?
@@thefrozongamer5071 Its profitable is it not?
Polymatter consistently producing super insightful videos. Thank you!
19:47 Nebula exclusive videos are a thing for a long time, but this is the first time I'm seeing that part 1 of a story is free and part 2 is paywalled and I don't like it. It gives off kinda scammy vibes, like these "free" dating sites that you can use for free except that actually sending a message costs money. And stuff like that should be mentioned at the start of a video and not at the end.
He makes great content. Pay him, or stop complaining.
@@victoneterhe shouldn’t make a video on youtube if a second part will be paywalled, not everyone can pay and they shouldn’t be forced to
@@victoneterWe do pay through watching ads. Lol
Apple's and oranges, you aren't entitled to a part 2, and I think it's ungrateful to call it scammy
He's free to put up a pay wall and we're free to think less of him for it.
Can you please upload P2 to TH-cam eventually? Like, its fine if its paywalled for now to get more people on Nebula but it really doesn't make me want to buy it if it's a forever exclusive.
Lol, if being exclusive doesn’t convince you to pay then free def won’t either lol
Nebula is worth it.
agreed
Your delivery has improved greatly
Outstanding work on this video! I'm grateful for your dedication! 🌟
Love these longer videos.
I don't believe you are looking at this with enough granularity. You talk about the realities of infrastructure and crude characteristics, but then seem to ignore this by the conclusion.
There is frankly no way to look at the Midwest and Rockies without them being import dependent - dependent on Canada, sure, and with legal protection and a near monopsony due to pipelines, but more than half the oil consumed is still imported in these regions.
California as well simply can't be viewed as anything but energy dependent. The refineries need a heavy crude, there is no pipeline capacity with the continent, and again we see growing Canadian fractions but I say energy independence is to ignore reality.
We can only say the US south, from Permian shale and Offshore, is an actual net surplus. And it's an enormous surplus, no doubt. But you can't look at a basement full of people drowning and an 11th floor of people dying of thirst and say there seems to be no issues with water access. Not only is there no way to move Permian shale throughout the country, but it's the wrong "flavor" for almost all the infrastructure it's near.
A hypothetical refinery has a pipe a meter in diameter with oil flowing in. Let's say it was built for heavy oil, the oil enters the distillation chamber and is seperated into components according to the size of molecules. The really light molecules, 1-3 carbons (methane, ethane, propane) exit out a 1 inch pipe at the top, another 1inch pipe for butane, a 2 foot diameter pipe for gasoline which is a mix ~10 carbon long molecules, a foot diameter for diesel which is heavier, and then some real heavy stuff out the bottom. And that all works because I know the oil coming in has ratios that break up to fit the pipes going out. If you decide to try and switch that input oil to something light, you have to reduce the amount of oil you're processing, because the fractions have changed. Suddenly that 1 inch pipe at the top is completely full, even though the gasoline take away pipe is half full, and the Diesel is near empty. And shale oil IS light, super light, sometimes even called ultralight. In some cases it's comparable to that 1 inch pipes output, or condensate, or NGL liquids. Which is a huge problem, because that shale oil requires an enormous amount of diesel to access, but gives very little back. You cannot run the US economy on shale oil, I might be able to fill my car, but construction vehicles? Transport trucks? Farm Tractors? Ships, trains, fire trucks etc? That's why we saw Diesel prices skyrocketing after Russia invaded Ukraine.
And US refineries, most relevant for this discussion in the Gulf but also in Chicago and California, are built for the heaviest possible oil. Talking about replacing imports with shale oil isn't just getting less diesel out of a barrel, it's talking about using that 1 meter input pipe at half capacity, because your methane outtake and gasoline outtake are full at that point.
But, as bad as all that, most of the wasted equipment is related to the really heavy sludge at the bottom. US refineries are the most advanced and expensive, because they have the equipment to upgrade that sludge into something more like regular oil. Gulf refineries actually buy the sludge from other countries refineries, that used to include Russia's. All that equipment goes completely unused is you try to force shale to be used. Which is going to add to gas prices, because those refineries compete by buying cheap oil to make up for their high cost, and shale oil has just about the highest production cost in the world, only beat by strip mining bitumen in Fort McMurray.
*All numbers should be taken as examples and not literally.
Thanks for the detailed explanation
Thanks for the detailed explanation
To be fair: His part 2 actually goes into greater depth about the realities of American shale in terms of its high cost and its light/sweet output. He looks at refining capacity and its bias towards heavy/sour crude (in the context of saying the US is not “energy independent” but rather a net exporter since US refineries need heavy crude imports.)
It’s obviously not a deep dive into the market (I don’t think recall him explaining that sour refers to sulphur or explaining different benchmarks, for example), but it is a more nuanced look at why the next decade of the shale industry will be much different from the last decade.
I will say, one thing he didn’t touch on is how much US refineries may be shifting to handle at least some shale oil. I know the XOM refinery in Beaumont recently became the #2 or #1 by crude capacity because it added a new crude tower geared towards Permian-like crudes. I don’t feel like digging through EIA refining data at the moment, but could make an interesting study.
@@Randint73thx
Peak oil a great exemple of" the science" was correct, but they did not factor a unforseen x ,a variable that's new drilling technology, namely fracking.
Peak oil wasn’t really a scientific principle, is was a reasonable economic assessment based on limited data, and like all models you can’t account for every unknown future technology. It would be goofy for instance to project future construction prices based on the assumption that low-cost commercial graphene or fortified fast-growth lumber is invented a few decades down the road because we have no clue what the viability is.
@@zandaroos553 Agreed. No Model can just assume ‚we will figure out something new‘, you need to work with the data you have. And as PM said, fracking was known for a long time already. It was just considered not economical. Which it was, and currently is. That’s the whole point of the video. No one back than thought we would be stupid enough to just absorb the negative delta with loans.
You didn't mention the fact that the U.S. taxes its oil less than basically every other western country, by a lot
Sort of funny that you say fracking is helped by the desolation of the Great Plains. The suburbs north of Denver are filled with fracking rigs intermixed into suburban development. The put up these big boxes 40 feet high around the derricks to keep the noise down during the operation. Then they tear them down and move them to the next location.
Perfect
There was only 1 McDonalds in Williston ND.
The whole city is there to service the Bakken oil fields, most of the workers are seasonal so they need to compete for pay. You could quit your job and get a new job the very same day. Walmart started at $18 but the housing there was BS.
So much seasonal workers rent fluxuates heavily.
The actual and sensible alternative to US energy independence is KeyStone LX or a similar pipeline bringing Canadian oil south to the Gulf of Mexico so that a reliable supply (unlike sanctioned Russia or Venezuela or unreliable Mexico) of heavy crude is available to Gulf refineries.
I am all for the energy transition. There is really no way Solar won't become the dominant source of electricity over the next decade, which is great. NG will likely be needed in that time, but not in the evening or for load following, which will be done with batteries. It will be needed overnight and seasonally for cloudy periods, where storage is further off. And EVs are going to take over a large chunk of Transportation. But oil won't stop being used for decades, and in that time a secure supply is to the US's advantage.
"There is really no way Solar won't become the dominant source of electricity over the next decade, which is great"
This is in now way apparent. I'll say there is no way it'll be the dominant source in a decade. I'll actually put money on that. The only way you are doing an actual energy transition is with nuclear. You have 20 years to build one. Even if you do a complete energy transition, 1/4th of the whole oil budget goes to petrochemicals. Basically to make anything that isn't wood or metal in your everyday life. These have no alternatives or significantly expensive alternatives.
@mignik01 So first, I quite clearly said oil would remain needed for decades for both an energy source and petrochemicals. But nowhere near a quarter of oil is used as petrochemical feed stock. Naphtha is the main feed stock and it's like a tenth of a barrel. By 2050 I'd expect US oil demand to still be a third of what it is today, mainly gasoline being displaced along side a drop in Diesel from some rail and trucking electrification and a drop in fracking which uses large amounts. Maybe that gets replaced by biofuels but I genuinely hope not.
But obviously I disagree on the point of solar for Electrical generation. Solar has increased 8 fold over the last decade, even halving that growth rate and it's the majority over the next. And the amount of manufacturing for solar has grown enormously and continues to grow. Look at China's build out of solar. Incredibly and historically rapid. The price solar can be produced for shows a clear market superiority that even Texas embraces.
Again, I think existing NG plants used for peaking will be repurposed for combined cycle use to increase capacity and be heavily used over night. I don't think 24 hour storage will be common until 2040. But 2-4 hour storage for use in the evening is already commercialized and growing. And I think Solar with storage that keeps output generally stable through the day, will continue it's rapid growth.
I have nothing against nuclear. I think SMRs could be a key part of the energy make up, even large power plants in some large regions. I think industrial heat would likely be best served by SMRs, the Oil sands in Canada, even shipping could be transitioned to SMRs. But in terms of electrical production, excluding certain highly dense Urban regions or particularly cloudy geographies, I don't believe nuclear can compete with solar.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427
The last I could find was 12% in 2018. I have read it is close to 20% currently but I can't find the source. However, the petrochemical industry is only going to take more of a share because the demand of plastics is only increasing and this demand is only going up. I saw 55% of the total oil demand going to petrochemicals in 2050 by IEA. Trucking electrification will be a complete joke. You won't produce enough energy in the US to keep all the trucks running. This will be Diesel for in your lifetime. Locomotives are more realistic
The biggest misstep people make is the trend of progress being linear. There is nothing to suggest this will be half a third or one tenth. That is just an assumption which has nothing to support it. It is just as likely to hit a wall and make no progress. I would bet money on the latter because the physics just isn't there in my opinion.
There is no situation on planet earth with current or even projected viable technologies that solar can replace the density, reliability, and cost of nuclear power. Absolutely none. You go to solar because you can't do nuclear for some reason.
@@mignik01You are wrong. Solar is stupidly cheap, (5x cheaper than nuclear) and will replace coal, gas, nuclear and coal electricity production. Nuclear is stupid because we need quick powerplants that don’t take days to start up and cool down - also nuclear energy is the most expensive form of electricity production we have.
@mignik01 I guess by default I have to agree the share of oil going to petrochemicals will increase since I think the share going to fuel will go down. But I think that 55% number is many because the IEA also sees a global decrease in demand by 2030. And I have to say that 12% is a lot closer to my claim of around 10%. The point to remember is Petrochemical feed stock is generally the lighter end of hydrocarbons. So shale oil from the US, it might actually be nearly half a barrel. Because you can put those small molecules together to make polymers. But you can't just use the entire barrel that way, the heavier end that goes into gas and diesel and jet fuel, until you get back to the really heavy stuff where you make lubricant and carbon fibers.
I think short haul trucking will likely be electrified. I agree long haul trucking will remain Diesel.
I don't think physics really has much to do with it. I think the shear economy of scale is what is most relevant now. Even without efficiency improvements, the module nature means manufacturering millions of panels and installing millions. The same is true for batteries. These aren't technically complex items. And the manufacturing is growing in the US, in China, and in India and Europe. Look at China, they could built their entire grids worth of capacity in about 5 years. That's just unparalleled. And the US is following suit to avoid being caught with the more expensive energy. Even without improvement solar is the cheapest cost of energy.
Again, it costs less than nuclear. That's just the reality. No one is even pretending to have a nuclear power generation system in the range of solar.
Sure, nuclear is "denser". And? Roof top solar destructively competes with any utility delivered power, if half a block has solar and a battery, the other half doubles all their transmission and distribution fees, which are already the majority of cost.
Solar is highly reliable. The sun rises daily. Utility projects in Texas or the West or south California are in regions where you might have a half dozen clouds for half the year. And solar still works with clouds, just less. And, AC demand is a huge portion of consumer demand, and fits perfectly with solar. Some days you will have lower solar. On those days NG will be run.
But you don't run a nuclear plant at night and occasionally, and nuclear doesn't compete in the day.
Again, nuclear for process heat with co-generation makes a lot of sense for industrial clusters. Nuclear might make more sense in New York and the surrounding area with an enormous density of people and more regular cloudy conditions. But across the majority of the majority of regions, solar wins.
I think it's one of the greater ironies that the US north East and Europe were the two areas to first push solar, when they are likely the two areas worse suited to it.
But regardless. No one is building nuclear right now. Not anywhere near the scale of solar. Even if you're right, solar will have won before Nuclear gets to the starting line. And nuclear only works when you have large amounts of unmet demand. If a region has electricity you can't just add a GW of power.
That said, my belief is that nuclear is a big part of China's plan. Everyone is always talking about them building coal, but you have to note their coal plants are much more advanced than the ones built in North America or Europe 30 years ago. Anything built in the last 10 years is super or ultra critical. And I think they are working on SMRs so in the 2030s they can rip out the boilers of these coal plants and plug the nuclear reactors in.
Absolutely! The phrase "excluding Alaska" often pops up in discussions about U.S. geography, climate, or even statistics, and it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting. Alaska’s unique location, size, and extreme conditions mean that it can skew data or comparisons dramatically. Whether we’re talking about land area, temperature records, coastline length, or wildlife populations, Alaska frequently stands as an outlier in U.S. statistics.
It’s funny how the purchase of Alaska was decried as a waste when it happened.
If only they knew.
PolyMatter, we will never run out of anything. Engineers design everything we use, and no product we use is the perfect way of doing something. If so all wire would be made of pure gold. Instead we use copper and aluminum because it works well enough for the application. As oil becomes more expensive we will switch to using something that is simply cheaper. Whether it works better or not, that doesn't really matter.
Reality of physics does matter. We run into walls of free energy to use. Just because we start to scrape the barrel doesn’t mean we are advancing
America : "Looks like America needs Freedom and Democracy!"
"...Freedom and Democracy!*..."
*Made in the same facilities as fascism, might not actually contain any democracy
L joke
I mean...in a way that's kinda is what's happening now. Always edging closer to a civil war/distopian country. The biggest enemy is itself, not abroad imo. Hence why the Russians use culture wars/bots etc to drive hate division so much all across the developed world. You can only weaken/defeat such countries from within.
Anaheimon here. Anaheim has officially gotten a shout out by Real Life Lore! 😎🗣️‼️
USA does Oil like Taiwan does Computer Chips. A 20 year headstart, and nobody else is plausibly close to competing for 1st place within the next generation
Peter Zeihan’s 10 year old presentations were good research.
I like the username
America is so amazing. Even our issues become our greatness with enough time
Truly lol. I grew up in Mexico and all the oil that is found is automatically owned by the nation/government and the land above it. How are they ever going to hope to compete with these kinds of incentives
@@samsaek666
If you know the incentives
You know the results 👍
@@samsaek666It worked well for the Norwegians...
Perhaps implementation matters more than the concept.
America on top as usual
RAAAAAAAHHHHHHH🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
Until the whole debt thing catches up with them…
@@Mrnapoleon121never gonna happen 😂
@@Mrnapoleon121 they have been saying that for 20 years and us is still the top immigrant destination
Yes the Walmart component is underrated 🤣
I moved to Williston, ND during the oil boom in 2013. First thing I did when I got to town was find out where the Walmart was.
Poly matter the goat 🔥🔥🔥
0:00:00 - Nixon, oil crisis and Project Independence
0:01:48 - Peak Oil and US production decline
0:03:11 - The unexpected US oil comeback
0:04:36 - Cost of oil extraction and conventional oil
0:06:33 - Shale oil, fracking and big oil
0:08:24 - Wildcatters, horizontal drilling and natural gas
0:10:17 - Fracking environmental concerns and narratives
0:11:42 - US geography and fracking infrastructure
0:14:10 - Factors for the shale boom
0:15:47 - Economic impact and job creation
0:17:05 - Unprofitability of the shale industry
0:18:14 - Energy superpower and geopolitical dominance
0:19:12 - End of cheap oil and the future
0:20:14 - Nebula promotion
We are so back man
learnt a lot, thank you
One word. Fascinating
19:26 A phrase no big businessman wants to hear
The graph at 3:40]6 is either wrong or is showing boe (bbl of oil equivalent) which includes natural gas. I think we topped out at 13.9 bbl of oil sometime in 2023
This channel, and reallifelore are the reason I subscribed to nebula. Entirely worth it and found so many more great things.
Also, big fan of the channel! Love the work and always am excited when I see a new video!
Because despite our crappy political system, we have the will to over come our problems without succumbing to corruption.
It's unbelievable how perfect a country can be geographically like the United States. There's not a single thing I can think of that is a negative.
Could have better neighbors perhaps... but not much else.
@@magivkmeister6166 considering the neighbors China and Russia has, America has literal saints. Canada is basically a 52nd state and Mexico does plenty of trade.
Guess it would be nice if it had as much water as Canada, but you are pretty much correct. American geography is just comically great.
On top of that put a Nation that was created with good intentions by the founding fathers and you get 30% of the world's GDP with just 4% of it's population
Cicadas are annoying...that’s about it though
The United States isn't densely populated enough to have high speed rail for civilian transportation like Japan. American geography also encourages an unhealthy diet, since beef, potatoes, and corn are unhealthy foods. The United States wouldn't be dependent on oil in the first place if it had HSR instead of car-centric urban infrastructure.
"Empty" is always such a horrible way to describe huge masses of land. It's only empty if you ignore the literal MILLIONS of people living there and all of the land that's in use.
It’s a matter of density. Even the “Vacuum” of space is not void of particles.
Interesting topic thanks
@17:00 The shale industry wouldn't have operated at such a loss if Americans were actually shown what the price of gas actually was. Plus you wouldn't all be going around in the biggest vehicles I've ever seen just for commuting. Electric vehicles would have taken off earlier too.
Hybrid drivetrains, Atkinson cycle, and cylinder deactivation would have become popular earlier.
I like how he didn't even mention the damn fracking earthquakes. theres so many of them
What's rarely understood is that Saudi Arabia back then used a small percentage of their commodity. It would be like a restaurant eating all their profits before they sold it. Even today Saudi Arabia doesn't use majority of its Oil.
0:25 Please lower the high pitch noise here
Some people can't hear it well, but for some, it is REALLY loud
America stuck in fossil age while China moves on to electric age
What a well presented video 👍 gained a subscribers
So this was a 22 minutes ad to engage us
this is the ONE youtube channel that consistently knocks it out of the park with relatively unbiased analysis
keep up the great work man!
Very well done
4:23 Alternatively, kindly, "What the fuck?"
6:19 you do know there's incredible amounts of oil left in Alaska right? They barely got any of it considering the amount left...
As a Gen Z adult, I do worry that we are not transitioning to renewable energy fast enough due to lobbying groups and oil cartels. But overall I get why the Biden Administration had to ramp up oil production. Of course, energy independence is ridiculously important, but so is keeping prices manageable. The inflation from pandemic supply chain issues, price gouging, and Russia's invasion have already put immense stress on working class people. So they had to be pragmatic by expanding production of both fossil fuels and renewable energy.
Don't worry no other big industrial policy of transition to renewable energy will not be passed like IRA 2022
It wasn't necessary to increase oil production to reduce inflation. Stop price gouging through legislation. Diversify energy supply through alternative sources. Plan the economy properly so you're not at the whims of dictators abroad and domestic lobbyists.
Yup time to watch Land Man
Unmentioned here is that methane breaks down in the atmosphere very quickly.
Even on a century timescale, though, it’s nearly 30 times more climate-intensive as the same weight in CO2.
@@Randint73 yeah but it only lasts for 12 years , and its 200 times less abundant , we tripled the athmospheric methane in the last 100 years and its impact is way lower than 10% of the co2 increases
Please also tell them why Saudi imposed the embargo
Some oil is stuck under Springfield Elementary 😂
2:49 I think there is a problem with the units used for the graphic : you say that in 1970 peak oil production was 11 million barrels per year, but your graphic shows 3.5 billions barrels per year in 1970. I still confused, are they millions or billions ? And is it 11 or 3.5 ??
Edit : 3:10 You actually change the units of the graphic and then we can see that in 1970 it really was 11 millions barrels per year. I just don't understand... :\
2:39 - That's a curious omission. What does it look like with Alaska included? I think you could have shown both (or at least explained why you omitted Alaska), because it makes it look like you're cherrypicking data
3:14 - Ah, so that's how it looks like if you include Alaska
16:00 - Also, why don't you start your graphs at 0? You seem to playing around too much with the statistics
I drink your MILKSHAKE
He'll be making this exact video about China and solar energy.
Yet another story abou how the US in just ridiculously gifted geographically
i recognize that stock 50s footage anywhere… Cyriak
America is just the most OP country on Earth, on every scale it just dominates without exception, its truely incredible.....
I remember when I was a kid in the early 2000s the price for gas was still cheap compared to the rest of the country, it was close to 10 or something like that due to importing from Canada a few hours north of me (I live in upsate ny for context)
Another amazing video….
You should have mentioned George Mitchell as the father of the shale revolution.
PolyMatter is slowly slowly turning into RealLifeLore
Turmoil: Fracking DLC
When?
You gotta make part 2 available on TH-cam, unless what it covers is not really that big of a deal you're making it out to be
> Peak Oil Was Real
> Excluding Alaska
Yeah, and if you exclude Iowa, we hit peak corn.
That wording "excluding Alaska" is carrying this argument like Atlas carries the Earth.
Anaheim mentioned!!!
The chart says 2023 while you say 2018 3:57
Good video
I understand your need to make a profit from Nebula, but I implore you to release Part II on TH-cam.
Most people are terribly ignorant about how dark the future will be when the world finally runs out of oil. If we don't raise enough awareness, our civilization will be more likely to collapse because of it.
Shale boom will prove exceedingly transitory.
After seen that animation 6:48 , i get turmoil game flashbacks
*I'm glad you made this video,* it reminds me of my transformation from a nobody to good home, $89k biweekly and a good daughter full of love..
Please how ?
It's Maria Angelina Alexander doing she's changed my life. A BROKER- like her is what you need.
$356K monthly is something you should feel differently about....
Lovely! I enjoyed it like I enjoy a $100k monthly around the turn!!!
I know that woman (Maria Angelina Alexander)
If you were born and raised in new York you'd know too, she's my family's Broker for 3yrs till now and a very good one if you asked me. No doubt she is the one that helped you get where you are!!!!
Gen Z Texan here, The first is the Fracking industry saved my hometown Odessa. I obvious view it favorably.
The issue with Oilers going into massive debt is a known factor in the state. This problem is viewed as a cyclical one due to oil industry having Boom and Bust cycles. The most likely outcome is consolidation in the market under healthy business that are not as leveraged and can run profits. This is not new and Texans have planned for it.
The Renewable issue is another and is important for my generation. A logical look at the energy production tech of 2020 shows some problem with either energy type. Oil is abundant now and new field ls are beginning found regularly so the supply problems are not the same as conventional oil. The problems are water and refining. The water is heavily polluted in the process and newer plants are moving to a water recirculation process which will cut usage by 25%. The refining has a fuel type issue at the moment and newer refineries are using modular systems to change from type to type without 5 years of buildout.
The problem with other tech is Solar has a power storage problem and a manufacturing one. Lithium Ion storage is big, toxic and controlled by China. China also has recently cornered the market on solar panels and that why they currently are so cheap.
Wind power has maintenance and bird problems. The Bird issues are massive in Texas and the wind farms are in the path of migration birds who keep the insect population down. In west Texas the insect pollution has gotten completely out of hand and bird are the insects main predators. Causing a Chinese style famine with farms being eaten alive without the birds.
Fracking: fucking earth at the double
National speed of 55! Ha! Looks like I will always be speeding then.
some of the text gets cut off in the thumbnail
🎉🎉🎉 another gud video
I do share sympathy for the severe environmental costs of fracking. I am a Floridian and we are not happy with our wells offshore. But more crucial to me is that mining all this oil now will be detrimental to the supply in 30-50 years. If we don't have that crude in the ground by then, when prices are likely going to be quadruple what they are now, it will become more like the Fallout resource wars. If we use it all up in good times, the bad times will be even more painful.
Yea. Churchill was right. "America will do the right thing, right after it's tried everything else"
Kicking the can down the road has been the boomers favorite game. And now with them sunsetting politically I highly doubt genX is gonna do much different.
But hey, resource wars aren't waiting for us. Egypt and Sudan, Turkey and Iraq, Pakistan and India. The water wars are just about to boil over.
America has TRILLIONS of barrels of untapped oil in vast oil shale deposits. The same American ingenuity that brought us fracking will happen again for oil shale.
I don't think there will be a very large market for shale in 30 years. It's already running out, it's getting lighter every year and is already to light to refine without mixing.
And frankly, in 30 years oil demand will be so much lower the cost of fracking won't make sense.
There are plenty of places around the globe to explore and mine more... I am more concerned about pumping all the carbon into the atmosphere
@@genethebean7597 I do agree with the idea that we shouldn't be using oil as a fuel to aggressively in favor of longer term fees stock, though.
Notice how US involvement in the Middle East has declined in proportion to the boom in shale oil production. The US has never been less interested in the Middle East.
17:30 I dislike the way this is presented. You use "free cash flow" in an investment heavy field, where net profit after interest or something might be better to see the financial health of this industry. In addition, I'd very much like to see this data past 2020. I imagine they made a nice profit in 2021 and 2022 with the high gas prices, and I think a good picture of health for the industry would be if they are making money now, where prices are a little low. Not saying that second thing is your fault, maybe there just isn't data there yet
The environmental legacy of occasional poisoned wells will last for thousands of years. Thankfully, nature on the whole adapts pretty rapidly to crude oil spills when oxygen is present (bacteria break it down) so this danger, while annoying, is not nearly as bad as heavy metals, fluorinated crap or radioactivity.
Shale is not going to end.
@@Ray_of_Light62 I agree, but I think oil production from shale will.
Shale fracturing for NG will be a long term industry. But Shale oil is a temporary side effect. We can see the Bakken, the first shale plays, is decreasing output annually. Same with Eagle Ford. And the average well productivity in the Permian is declining.
"Shale oil" used to refer to using oil shale, and things like the Permian were called "light, tight oil" because it is light, and it's in tight rock formations. The tighter the formation, the lighter the hydrocarbons. The first wells are drilled in the easiest, most productive locations, which have the least tight formation, and therefore the "heaviest" (in quotes because it's still very, very light) oils. As time has gone by, wells in the Permian are shifting to less ideal sites (tighter), and getting lighter, and therefore gassier. So each barrel of oil is actually half a barrel of oil and half a barrel of NG, when it used to be 75/25. And the half that is oil is still getting lighter, more butane and less gasoline.
The big issue here is all the pumps run on diesel. But the light shale oil has a smaller fraction of the heavier hydrocarbons, notably those that make diesel. A barrel of Brent (global standard) produces more than twice the diesel you get refining WTI (the oil from the Permian). So even for NG fracking, I think we will need to commercialize a technology to use wet CNG from nearby wellhead to run the pumps, which I've seen in development. The diesel to NG equation just doesn't work. But shale oil has never really worked. Because OPEC exists, and keeps prices at a low enough level for the fracking industry to just barely cover expenses. And if OPEC didn't exist, oil would be so cheap that it never would have made sense.
Why would it not end? Remember It’s not an infinite resource. Also by the rate they are drilling they might only have a few decades left.
New Road Maps, by Rand and Atlas will help transports.
railroads are better for long distances. fight me.
Ayo savannah mention :)
I'm so glad Nebula creators mention their new videos on TH-cam because I don't ever actually check over there except when I'm reminded to do so
BILLINGS MONTANA MENTIONED 13:21 ❤❤❤❤❤
Oil doesn't come from fossils. Most of the oil now is below the fossil layer.
Oil is basically very very very old flash from rotting corpses from dinosaurs and other animals. The bones after the flash was gone stays and are fossilized.
@@mashy712it is mostly vegetation tbh
Ok but the earth will never run out of oil let’s be real 😊
America became the biggest producer by pumping way faster than it should. It's just gonna run out within a decade or so at current consumption rates.
And we're tapping the shale source rock for conventional oil. So there's nothing left afterwards but coal hydrogenation.
Which is why the future is nuclear.
Thanks to the shale oil boom, the US is now sitting on more oil reserves than Russia, which estimates as having 256 billion barrels of untapped oil. The next-richest countries in terms of oil after that are: Saud Arabia (212 billion), Canada (167 billion), Iran (143 billion) and Brazil (120 billion).
There’s plenty of shale. And Canada’s is not really tapped yet
Peak oil! Thank you for this video, i think energy cost explain everything from our declining standards of living to declining birth rate and an important distinction is that since we burned through the cheap sweet oil energy is more expensive making everything else more expensive so it’s better to say peak energy return on investment. When using it to explain our slow decline.
@@alexanderthurber4257 I like this phrasing "peak energy return on investment". Although I'd say more of what is driving the issue you mention is loss of manufacturering, US still has very cheap energy, but other countries willing to trash their environment are hard to compete with.
I'd also say the type of energy matters a lot. Big issue with Fracking is you need a lot of Diesel to produce a very light oil that may be a net loss of diesel. The Oil Sands also have a lower EROI, but I don't think anyone would care if, instead of burning natural gas for steam, you stuck a nuclear generator at the largest sites.
@ i dont think technology of any sort (like nuclear) will solve our industrial problem, push comes to shove the carrying capacity of our earth is 2 billion without oil and associated nitrates for farming. And there is such a huge short term advantage to using available resources that there will be no slowing down. Like every biological system, we will use all the temporarily available energy and then go bust. I expect a slow steady simplification over the next 100 to 200 years, with subsistence farmers winning out eventually since they already have low energy consumption societies. I think America is just another empire on borrowed time.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 High temperature nuclear can also generate hydrogen for tar sands upgrading which would extend supplies by 27%.
You realise gas for you guys is still dirt cheap compared to the rest of the developed world right?? It makes up far less % of your disposable income spend than other countries. This isn't the reason for 'declining standards of living'. If anything gas prices have hardly were stagnant pre covid for best part of a decade.
@@d.b.cooper1 yes America is 5% of pop and uses 35% of energy. Since standers of living are so high, they are the most fragile to disruption. And the west depends on an expensive military to maintain status quo of essentially theft of other regions like the middle east. Rich nations that depend on cheap energy will fall faster as the cost to maintain military dominance increases. Also as America/europe continues to trade debt for oil, eventually the middle east will find it cheaper to abandon the dollar and face the military conflict than to continue to get valueless debt for valuable oil. Again America has lots of exports like shale and food, but there is still more consumption than production bought by debt and that debt will be called on eventually. Also consider, if china buys mideast oil, then makes a widget and sells it to America for debt, it is a roundabout way of extraction.
Says, “Anaheim,” shows Orlando…😂
I strongly disagree:
If you had invested in fracking materials companies (ie. drilling equipment and proppant materials) you made plenty of money investing in the fracking boom - The Selling Pickaxe Principle.
It was foolish if investors thought that a free market supply boom of a commodity would create a market niche or higher prices, that's not how economics work, but I would point out you have answered the big investors' motive - cheaper energy was a great benefit to the entire economy and their other investments.