The flow of oil out of Oklahoma’s STACK and SCOOP and the Permian basin in Texas has resulted in the need for more pipelines and truckers. But one report says major oil discoveries are at their lowest levels in more than 70 years across the globe.
The Houston Chronicle reports the year will end with about 7 billion barrels of oil and gas, a figure that compares with the 30 billion barrels identified in 2012.
“We haven’t seen anything like this since the 1940s,” analyst Sonia Mlada Passos of Rystad Energy told the paper. “We have to face the fact that the low discovered volumes on a global level represent a serious threat to the supply levels some 10 years down the road.”
As the research firm suggested, it could mean supply shortages and sharply rising prices as the global demand creates falling reserves.
And the shale production in Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere in the U.S. won’t come even close to providing enough oil for the world. Another energy research firm, IHS Markit indicated the shale fields production total only about 7 percent of the global production.
New oil discoveries around the globe started falling about 7 years ago. An estimated 30 billion barrels of oil and gas were recovered from newly-found fields in 2012 but two years later, the number had been slashed to 15 billion. By last year, the number was down to 8 billion barrels.