Good morning, here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• IEA Sees Peak Oil Demand… Again

• Shale Drillers Race To Drill the Longest Horizontal Well

• Upcoming Oil and Gas Events

• Tweet of the Day

IEA Sees Peak Oil Demand… Again

Every once in a while, the International Energy Agency forecasts that peak oil demand is just years away.

The latest update came from its head, Fatih Birol, who said oil demand will peak before 2030.

Same old song

According to Birol, oil demand will peak under the weight of EVs, e-scooters, and e-buses.

Because EV sales have been doing so well.

In China, the biggest EV market in the world, thousands sit unsold and rotting.

In the U.S., car dealers are so swamped with EV inventory they don’t know what to do with it.

But sure, EVs will definitely lead to peak oil demand.

After this year, the IEA itself projected growth to a record 102.2 million bpd.

Despite surging EV sales globally.

Gas, apparently, is also on its way to peak demand.

Thanks to “the spectacular growth” in things like solar, per Birol.

That growth has been so spectacular California can’t go a summer without a blackout warning.

And in Europe, countries are turning off their solar farms.

Because the grid can’t take the excess output at a time of low consumption.

Oil and gas are going nowhere

Much as it would pain Mr. Birol to admit it, oil and gas demand is not about to peak anytime soon.

It can’t because we depend on these fuels.

How else do you explain this year’s record demand?

After a decade of massive buildout of wind and solar, and of EVs?

All those hundreds of GWs in capacity, half of them in China, and China is consuming more oil, gas, and coal than ever.

Yeah, peak oil and gas demand is definitely coming before 2030.

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Shale Drillers Race To Drill the Longest Horizontal Well

Shale drillers are locked in a new race.

This time, it’s not about output. It’s about efficiency.

The race is on to drill the longest possible horizontal well. And it is already paying off.

The 2023 well productivity surprise of the year

Earlier this year, several shale operators reported better-than-expected well productivity.

That’s after last year saw worse-than-expected productivity.

The reason for the nice surprise: longer laterals.

Previously tricky, drilling longer horizontal wells has improved as the tech improved.

And it is saving operators a lot of money.

Which is music to the ears of their Wall Street bankers.

And these bankers probably deserve some music after years of cash-burning.

The stock market has appreciated the gains, too.

Energy has outperformed IT and communications services on the S&P 500 in the past three months.

Talk about an effort that paid off.

It’s not going to last, analysts say

Despite the boost in ell productivity, analysts are skeptical about the long term.

The shale patch, they argue, is in a structural decline.

The best sites have been drilled and drained.

Total inventory is shrinking.

The boom is over.

Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.

But in the meantime, U.S. oil output is going to break another record this year.

And then another in 2024.

All thanks to shale and its ever-longer laterals.

Upcoming Oil & Gas Events

• September 11-14: American School of Gas Measurement Technology, Marriott Houston Westchase, Houston, TX

• September 14: KOGA Fall Meeting, CountryMark Pavillion, MT Vernon, IN

• September 14: PIOGA’s Birds & BBQ Clay shoot, West Penn Sportsmen’s Club, Murrysville, PA

• September 14: Dallas Cowboys Golf Tournament, Cowboys Golf Club, Grapevine, TX

Around the Global Patch

🇹🇲 Tightrope diplomacy: Turkmenistan's balancing act.
🇨🇳 China's oil imports, no guaranteed economic rebound.
🇵🇦 Panama's water crisis, global trade implications.

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