David (Dave) Summers is a Curators' Professor Emeritus of Mining Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (he retired in 2010). He directed the Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center at MO S&T off and on from 1976 to 2008, leading research teams that developed new mining and extraction technologies, mainly developing the use of high-pressure waterjets into a broad range of industrial uses. While one of the founders of The Oil Drum, back in 2005, he now also writes separately at Bit Tooth Energy.
Just this month Saudi Aramco announced that production had begun at their Manifa oilfield, and by July would be supplying up to 500 kbd to…
So I suspect I should apologize. Here I am talking about the future projections for energy production that have been made by companies such as…
Each year the larger oil production companies provide their views of the future, and I recently reviewed that for ExxonMobil. Shell has now produced their…
With the death of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez the future production, and exports of Venezuelan crude are gaining a little new attention. I had…
You know it is winter when Russia and Ukraine publically row about supplies of natural gas. On Tuesday last week Ukraine completed the signing of…
Before there were refrigerators folks kept drinks cool by putting them into clay jars that had been soaked in water. The evaporation of the water…
Fifty years ago I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds in the UK. It is not something I particularly dwell on, but…
With the possibility that demand for Iranian oil may fall below 1 million barrels a day (mbd) as sanctions continue to bite, Iran has announced…
There is a lot going on in the Middle East at the moment. There is the revolution in Syria which seems now to be entering…
There has been a little stir in the news on Energy lately, as folks have begun to extrapolate the growth in American oil and gas…
In this run-up to the election, the American Energy future seems to have faded into the quiet background. Gone are the concerns of past years,…
In the introductory remarks to these posts on Chinese energy supplies and usage, I mentioned that one of the concerns beginning to be evident lies…
Saudi Aramco has stated that it designs the well layouts and extraction patterns from its oil fields so that they effectively decline at a rate…
Stuart Staniford has been watching the decline in oil prices. He has then commented that, given the Saudi need for income to hold off “Arab…
As the United States continues through the interminable process that will end with the national elections in November, the continued poor state of the economy…
It is interesting to read the viewpoint of OPEC each month, as it relates to global oil supply, and the numbers that they rely on…
There is a real, practical limit to the amount of oil that can be recovered from a reservoir. Depending on the availability and economic viability…
Gasoline prices remain high, and Reuters recently noted that there are enough countries with civil unrest, technical problems and bad weather that there are around…
It is hard to miss the recent rise in gasoline (gas) prices in the United States, and the rumblings that it has generated in the…
There are a couple of controversial items that have made it into the mainstream press recently that seem to have stirred a little controversy, and…