If you haven’t heard, America is up to its ears in domestically produced crude oil and natural gas liquids — thanks to the shale boom. #-ad_banner-#This is good news for supporters of American energy independence. Oil imports have fallen 24.6% since 2006, from a high of 10.1 million barrels a day to 7.6 million barrels a day last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. At that pace, the U.S. could become a net oil exporter by 2020. Unfortunately for upstream oil and gas producers, there aren’t many buyers for all the new crude oil and natural gas liquids… Read More

If you haven’t heard, America is up to its ears in domestically produced crude oil and natural gas liquids — thanks to the shale boom. #-ad_banner-#This is good news for supporters of American energy independence. Oil imports have fallen 24.6% since 2006, from a high of 10.1 million barrels a day to 7.6 million barrels a day last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. At that pace, the U.S. could become a net oil exporter by 2020. Unfortunately for upstream oil and gas producers, there aren’t many buyers for all the new crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGLs) coming out of the ground. The entrenched Gulf of Mexico refineries were engineered decades ago to process heavy, high-sulfur crude oil from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Alaska’s North Slope, and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. These refineries cannot process much of the light, low-sulfur stuff now coming from U.S. shale reservoirs. Today, there is a glut of crude oil and other liquid hydrocarbons at tank farms in Texas, Oklahoma and other major supply hubs. One type of liquid hydrocarbons with which U.S. inventories are particularly oversupplied is gas condensate. Condensate is an oil-like substance that morphs from a gas into… Read More