The Eagle Ford Shale Near San Antonio, TX May Eclipse Bakken As The Largest Producing Area In The United States

It has been estimated that the Bakken Fields of Montan and North Dakota have four times as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

The total volume of recoverable oil has been estimated at 250 billion barrels. A more conservative estimate is 17 billion barrels. A conservative estimate is based upon what we can recover NOW, given the technology at our disposal.

The Eagle Ford Shale has been estimated as high as 25 billion barrels of currently recoverable oil.

Whether that estimate is correct or not, the Eagle Ford Shale is already set to eclipse Bakken as the biggest oil-producing area in the United States:

Key findings include:

• Operators started drilling 856 new wells in January-March 2012 compared to 407 in January-March 2011.
• In early April 2012, the Eagle Ford active rig count set a new high of 217 units.
• Increased drilling translated into higher crude oil production, which is projected to average over 500,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in April, up from 182,000 bbl/d in April 2011, an increase of 175% in just one year.
• Current Eagle Ford area natural gas production is about two billion cubic feet per day.
• Horizontal wells accounted for nearly all of the new well starts so far in 2012.
• Bentek estimates that in March 2012, Eagle Ford crude oil production was approaching crude oil production in the North Dakota part of the Bakken formation.

Every time an environmentalist says we will run out of oil, we find another few billion barrels. After having guzzled oil like drunken sailors for over a century, we have more known oil reserves than at any time in history.

Goldman Sachs: The United States Will Be The World's Biggest Oil Producer By 2017

We've been telling you this for years.

The Bakken Oil Fileds (in Montana and the Dakotas) have four times as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

The Colorado Rockies have three times as much oil as Saudi Arabia.


Now, Goldman Sachs is saying that not only do we have all that oil, but now we are actually drilling for it:

James Burkhard, the managing director of IHS CERA's Global Oil Group, said at a Montana Petroleum Association conference that U.S. production of oil increased by 1.2 million barrels per day between 2008 and 2010, reports the Billings Gazette. This reversed four decades of decreasing domestic oil production.

"Not only have we reversed the trend, we're reversing that in a very big way," Burkhard said.

However, the U.S. may not be done when it comes to upping its oil production as The Sunday Times recently quoted a report released by Goldman Sachs that predicts America will become the world's largest oil producer by the year 2017. This estimate was obtained by using a different definition of oil and utilizing generous estimates for liquids-rich shale production, according to The Oil Drum.

Using these new parameters, the report predicts that U.S. daily production of oil will rise to 10.9 million barrels in 2017 from the current level of 8.3 million barrels, according to the media outlet. This estimate is not unreasonable when one considers the growth the country attained between 2008 and 2010.

Thomas Petrie, vice-chairman of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America, offered another estimate. He told Reuters that over the next five years, U.S. oil production stemming from shale plays such as Eagle Ford, Bakken and Niobrara could potentially increase to 2 million barrels per day.

What makes Goldman Sachs' prediction even more surprising is that its estimate would place U.S. production higher than that of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Press reports stated that Russia will not increase its current production of 10.7 million barrels of oil per day by any more than 100,000 barrels in the coming years.

 But wait, there's MORE:

Increased oil production in the U.S. hinges on a number of important plays located across the country.
One of these plays, the Bakken shale, has grown rapidly in recent years. Production at Bakken-Three Forks has climbed to around 400,000 barrels per day and some industry insiders believe that number could eventually be greater than 1 million barrels of oil per day.

The Permian basin will significantly contribute to rising production of U.S. oil. Permian production was at 841,000 barrels per day in 2004, according to Well Servicing Magazine. The Oil Drum estimates that in 2010, this figure crept up by 100,000 barrels.

Another play that could contribute significantly to production is the Marcellus shale. A United States Geological Survey report released in August estimates that the Devonian Marcellus shale formation holds 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that could be recovered and 3.4 billion barrels of untapped natural gas liquids.

The Utica shale, which exists below Marcellus, is another play that holds significant potential. Aubrey McClendon, President of Chesapeake Energy, told The Gartman Letter that it currently has 12 horizontal drills that are active in its section of the Utica. Some estimates put the amount of oil in the Utica formation at 5.5 billion barrels.

Regardless of what U.S. oil production is predicted to reach within the next decade, it is clear that the country will be one of the largest producers of oil in the world for years to come.

"The Death Knell For OPEC" --- Massive Oil Find In Australia "Has Put Saudis Into A Panic"

It's being called the largest oil discovery in the world.

Six times larger than the Bakken field which stretches across Montana and the Dakotas.

Wowza!

Link:

It's the biggest find in 50 years and the media is completely ignoring it...  

It is 6 times larger than the Bakken, 17 times the size of the Marcellus formation, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford shale.  

All told what was recently discovered outside a sleepy Australian town contains more black gold more than in all of in Iran, Iraq, Canada, or Venezuela. 

With current estimates at 233 billion barrels its just 30 billion shy of the estimated reserves in all of Saudi Arabia. According to one renowned international expert, this massive discovery could eventually dwarf the oil rich kingdom as the original estimates are revised.   

An advisor to six of the top 10 oil producers and active consultant to 20 world governments, Dr. Kent Moors now believes the find, "may land at 300 or 400 billion barrels," making it one of "the greatest unconventional oil discoveries any of us will see in our lifetimes." 

"It's represents a bona fide redrawing of the global energy map as we know it," Moors says, "and the mainstream media is completely ignoring it."

The Death Knell for OPEC  

The massive find has been likened to the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil projects in the US, which have created legitimate boom times in Texas and North Dakota. The outflows from these areas have been so big they have given way to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer as soon as this year. (Ed note - Already has.) 

Even at the lowest estimate, the Coober Pedy fins is set to make Australia a net oil exporter; at the higher estimate, Australia would become one of the world's biggest oil exporters. "What we're seeing up there is a very, very big deposit," says South Australia's mining minister, Tom Koutsantonis, "If the reserves and the pressure was right over millions of years and the rocks have done the things they think they've done, they think they can extract vast reserves of oil out of South Australia which would have a value of about $20 trillion." 

Dependence on OPEC's crude is already slipping as the U.S. and Canada unlock unconventional oil supplies from deep underground shale deposits with new drilling techniques. Now there's even more completion bubbling up from "Down Under." 

Given all of the trouble in the Middle East, the Saudi's have good reason to be alarmed.

The United States, Canada, and Australia, the three freest nations on Earth, will be the most oil-rich nations on the face of the Earth.

It's a Eucatastrophe.

As the Muslims outbreed us, surround us, beat us over the head with their insane ideology, and use our Freedoms to commit various forms of terror against us, the rug is being pulled out from underneath their world.

Their one real advantage all this time has been oil money.  And, of course, with his energy policies, Obama is trying to insure it stays that way.

But, it isn't going to work. There is simply too much oil. With the freest nations on Earth controlling the Energy economy, the Islamic world will lost it's tenuous grip on the only real power it has.

We are sitting on seas of oil.

Oil, Oil, everywhere and for the Muslim world, there will no longer be a way for the Islamic world to drink.

Leading Oil Expert Warns Oil Supplies are Running Out Fast - This is Absolute B.S.

From the Independent:

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

I have shown time and again, here at AB, that the United States has more than enough oil to feed it's own need, and then some.

Saudi Arabia is far and away the world's leading oil-producing nation. We are far and away the world's leading oil-consuming nation.

And yet, we already provide 50% of our own oil.

And, in the past few years, we have discovered oil fields in Montana/Dakotas, and in Colorado, which have FIVE TIMES AS MUCH OIL AS SAUDI ARABIA.

In fact, America has enough oil to be the #1 oil-producing nation in the world:

According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia.

An oil field was just recently discovered in the South Dakota/Montana region which has three times as much oil as the Rockies.

There is also a tremendous amount of oil in the ANWR region.

All that oil, and we don't drill for it.

Why?

Because of pressure from environmentalists.

We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.

I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.

That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.

MORE:

Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana.

With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.

And, when the report came out, here's what it said:

Report: 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota, Eastern Montana

BISMARCK, N.D. – The government estimates up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.

The U.S. Geological Survey calls it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN MORE THAN THEY INITIALLY EXPECTED.

THIS POINTS UP A VERY IMPORTANT FACT TO UNDERSTAND. WE KEEP FINDING MORE OIL ALL THE TIME.

ESTIMATES KEEP GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER ON THE AMOUNT OF OIL WHICH CAN BE RECOVERED.

THIS IS BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY FOR DETECTING OIL, AND DRILLING FOR IT, KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE ADVANCED.

THE KNOWN RESERVES OF OIL ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY, AND YET THE PARISIAN EXPERT QUOTED IN THE INDEPENDENT WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL.

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

IS SHE IGNORANT, OR DOES SHE SIMPLY HAVE AN ANTI-OIL AGENDA?

Here's a paper written on the subject by Dr. Bill Kovarik from Radford University.

The Oil Reserve Fallacy

*******Update/Reliapundit: FROM 7/29/09

Crude futures tumbled almost 6% Wednesday as U.S. oil inventories unexpectedly rose, raising fresh concerns of weak demand.

Light, sweet crude for September delivery settled down $3.88, or 5.8%, at $63.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. This is the lowest finish for crude futures since July 16 and the biggest single-day decline in both dollar and percentage terms since April 20. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange settled $3.35, or 4.8% lower, at $66.53 a barrel.

Crude futures dropped as low as $63.04 a barrel after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported crude oil stockpiles rose by 5.1 million barrels last week, defying analysts expectations of a 1.2-million-barrel draw. The gain was the first since May, as oil imports rose but refiners processed less crude.

INVENTORIES ARE STILL UP - BUT PRICES ARE CLIMBING, TOO.

I SUSPECT IT IS MANIPULATION BY OPEC AND THEIR ENABLERS.

WITH INVENTORIES HIGHER THAN NORMAL AND PLENTY OF RESERVES AROUND THERE IS NO LOGICAL OR MARKET-BASED REASON FOR THE PRICE TO BE AS HIGH AS IT IS AND GOING UP.

SOMETHING IN THE MARKET IS NOT FUNCTIONING.

AND IT IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL.

Federal royalties from the Bakken Fields in North Dakota and Montana could equal $18 trillion, which could also pay off the national debt

THE LEFT'S "TAX & SPEND & REGULATE" POLICIES ARE WHAT'S CAUSING AMERICA'S HUGE DEFICITS AND HUGE DEBT.


AND THEIR GREEN POLICIES ARE PREVENTING US FROM GETTING OUT FROM UNDER THE DEBT:


TAT: 

... federal royalties from the Bakken Fields in North Dakota and Montana could equal $18 trillion, which could also pay off the national debt.  

... promoting coal production could generate $300 billion in potential royalties to the federal government from coal mined on federal lands

THAT'S PAY-OFF THE DEBT AS IN WIPE IT EFFING OUT!


IN ADDITION, GENERAL TAX RECEIPTS WILL STEEPLY CLIMB AS ENERGY PRICES COME DOWN AND THE ECONOMY GROWS AS A DIRECT RESULT.


WORLD ENERGY PRICES WILL COME DOWN - HELPING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY!


SO...


IF YU WANT THE ECONOMY TO GROW AND THE DEFICITS AND DEBT TO COME DOWN, THEN VOTE ROMNEY.

New Way to Tap Gas May Expand Global Supplies

From the New York Times:

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields.

The global drilling rush is still in its early stages. But energy analysts are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. They said they believed that gas reserves in many countries could increase over the next two decades, comparable with the 40 percent increase in the United States in recent years.

“It’s a breakout play that is going to identify gigantic resources around the world,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. “That will change the geopolitics of natural gas.”

Add to this the fact that Shell has also developed technology by which they can extract oil from Shale for about $30 a barrel:

The development of an economically viable way to extract oil from oil shale would put a ceiling on oil prices and would extend the oil era by decades. It would also increase the odds of significant global warming. Well, in light of all that a variety of media outlets are reporting that Shell Oil thinks it can produce oil from oil shale at $30 per barrel using an in situ process where the shale is cooked without first mining it onto the surface.

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia, all in shale.

Additionally, in the past few years, we have discovered oil fields in Montana/Dakotas, and in Colorado, which have FIVE TIMES AS MUCH OIL AS SAUDI ARABIA.

If we wanted to do so, we could soon become an oil exporting nation, rather than an importing nation.

Why?

Because of pressure from environmentalists.

We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.

I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.

That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.

MORE:

Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana.

With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.

• IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN MORE THAN THEY INITIALLY EXPECTED.
• THIS POINTS UP A VERY IMPORTANT FACT TO UNDERSTAND. WE KEEP FINDING MORE OIL ALL THE TIME.
• ESTIMATES KEEP GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER ON THE AMOUNT OF OIL WHICH CAN BE RECOVERED.
• THIS IS BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY FOR DETECTING OIL, AND DRILLING FOR IT, KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE ADVANCED.
• THE KNOWN RESERVES OF OIL ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY, AND YET THE MEDIA WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL.
• WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

AND WHY IS IT THAT OUR PRESIDENT JUST BLOCKED DRILLING AT 60 SITES IN UTAH?

IF OUR PRESIDENT ACTUALLY WANTED TO DESTROY AMERICA, WOULD HE BE DOING ANYTHING ANY DIFFERENTLY?

MASSIVE OIL FIELD FOUND IN MONTANA/DAKOTAS

It is a little known fact that the United States was the world's #1 oil-producing nation until about twenty years ago. We are still in the top five, although we do import approximately half the oil we use.

We are sitting on a tremendous amout of oil now. The question is, will we find the means and the motivation to take it out of the Earth, or will we continue to bow to environmentalist pressure? Without the environmentalists, we would still be the #1 oil-producing nation in the world, and with this new discovery, we would be for years to come.

A massive oil field has been found in the area of Montana and the Dakotas. It is distinctly possible that this find increases known American reserves by 10 times the current known amount.

From Next Energy News:

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field
that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely
gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota
could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western
economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making
Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a
new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation
that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new
horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion
barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was
initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that
estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming
out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher
cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at
$20-$40 a barrel.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy
when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield
700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North
Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in
what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was
discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which
means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in
Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion
barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth
to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in
stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the
long run.

Add all that to the fact that it was recently discovered that there is three times more oil in the Rocky Mountains than in all of Saudi Arabia, and you can see that the United States could easily do without oil from the Middle East.

Why is it that environmentalists want to shut down our capacity to supply our own oil? Do they want us to do business with the medieval regimes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and Nigeria? Do the environmentalists want Islamofascist dictators to have more power, and for the West to have less power?

Really, what do you think is the answer?

THE COMING OIL CRASH - or the coming war with Iran

• The dollar is up this year.
• Unemployment is down.
• Exports are up.
• Gasoline inventory is up - by historical average.
• Oil inventory is up.
• Oil reserves are up - Venezuela announced today they have another 30 BILLION barrels of oil. (And remember Bakken, too.)
  
• And, there are signs that OPEC and Saudi Arabia will raise output.

DESPITE ALL THAT, THE PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL WENT UP, TOO.

There is no logical reason for oil to go up given ALL this news.

It is a BUBBLE. Driven by speculation.

And it will burst.

Sooner than you think.

Unless... the REAL reason oil is so dear is fear of a USA preemptive attack on Iran. Not so much the preemptive attack -- or the phony PUBLIC recriminations which will follow it (coinciding with PRIVATE thanks!).

But the conventional retaliatory strikes which Iran will inevitably attempt to inflict on the oil assets of the Gulf States. If they can wipe out a lot of the oil assets, then the price might go to $500/barrel.

IMHO: This is now the ONLY plausible explanation for the continued oil price SPIKE.

At one time I felt sure Bush would do the right thing and neutralize Iran with a preemptive strike. Now, I am not so sure. not at all. He has more or less let Iran eff-up Iraq and Lebanon. And let Assad get away with murder - over and over again.

Bush is a wimp - that's what Dubya stands for, it seems.

I hope the oil speculators know something I don't. About us attacking Iran, that is...

Stay tuned...

WANT CHEAPER ENERGY AND A BOOMING ECONOMY? THEN WE SHOULD JUST DRILL HERE NOW!

BBC:

The small, remote town of Sidney, Montana, is true to its cowboy roots - this is ranching country and outside one bar amidst the many pick-up trucks I noticed one with a huge set of bull horns stuck jauntily to the cab.

A nodding-donkey oil pump, Montana

But Sidney has another reason to feel bullish too: as America agonises over its future energy choices, Sidney is revelling in an oil boom.

The town's mayor, Bret Smelser, took me for a drive through the town and across the flat farmland that stretches off to the horizon in every direction to see the changes oil has brought.

Inside Sidney - population about 5,000 - the changes leap to the eye.

There's a new water-slide, for example, plenty of evidence of heavy investment in local schools and a startling number of slot-machine casinos whose operators presumably calculate that the townspeople and workers from the oilfields have money to burn.

There is an urban myth that it has also meant that Sidney has the highest-paid pizza delivery guy in North America, but we'll come back to that.

Mayor Smelser sums up the situation so far simply: "Oil has been good for us."

Shale reserves

On the landscape beyond the town limits, the change is less spectacular but equally impressive.

Dotted around the farmland are hundreds of nodding-donkey oil wells which are strangely reminiscent of the kind of pumps you'd have seen in action during oil booms in Texas, California or Oklahoma a century ago.

The similarity is deceptive. The oil boom up on the Northern Great Plains is based on dramatic changes in drilling technology. Oil deposits beyond the reach of even the most modern pumps and drills 20 years ago are now viable.

Sidney - and plenty of other small towns like it on the Great Plains of North Dakota and Montana - sit on top of the shale reserves of the Bakken Formation. They were first discovered and mapped in the 1950s but back then there was no way of reaching them.

Now, new technologies are changing the definition of what is, and is not, a recoverable oil deposit.

RTWT.

(SOME OF OUR PREVIOUS POSTS HERE.)

ONLY ONE THING KEEPS AMERICA FROM FULLY EXPLOITING OUR OIL RESERVES AND CREATING MORE JOBS: THE DEMOCRATS.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

GLOBAL WARMING ALERT!!!!

For the first time since 1965, when the tradition began, the Motorcycle Tour up the Coast Road to open Bakken - the worlds Oldest Amusement Park - has been canceled. Our sources tell us the  Police are afraid  the aggressive driving habits  of middle aged bikers would tear up the streets and leave the IMF with intolerable repair bills, because the asphalt is "almost liquid after years of Global Warming."

UPDATE: Actually the Viking ride is being cancelled for the first time in one thousand and 48 years because of cold snowy weather.   Back to you Al...

Will Liquefied Natural Gas Transform The American Economy Over The Next Ten Years?

Gradually, American fuel-providers, and trucking/transportation companies will be building the infrastructure for a complete switchover to LNG.

Will the result be a transformation of our economy similar to what happened in the 1990's with the Internet buildout?

From the New York Times:

Now the trucking industry, with its millions of 18-wheelers moving products like potato chips, underarm deodorant and copy paper around the country, is taking a leap forward in switching from petroleum to cleaner-burning natural gas. And if natural gas remains cheap, consumers may benefit again. 

This month, Cummins, a leading engine manufacturer, began shipping big, new engines that make long runs on natural gas possible. A skeletal network of refueling stations at dozens of truck stops stands ready. Major shippers like Procter & Gamble, mindful of both fuel costs and green credentials, are turning to companies with natural gas trucks in their fleets. 

And in the latest sign of how the momentum for natural gas in transportation is accelerating, United Parcel Serviceplans to announce in the next few days that it will expand its fleet of heavy 18-wheel vehicles running on liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., to 800 by the end of 2014, from 112. The vehicles will use the new Cummins engines, produced under a joint venture with Westport Innovations. 

U.P.S., like the rest of the industry, still has a long way to go in the conversion, but the company hopes to make natural gas vehicles a majority of its new heavy truck acquisitions in two years. 

The company is benefiting from incentives provided by various states and the federal government, which offer tax credits and grants for installing natural gas fuel stations and using vehicles fueled by natural gas. 

“By us doing this it will help pave the way and others will follow,” said Scott Wicker, chief sustainability officer at U.P.S. 

“Moving into L.N.G. is a means to get us onto what we see as the bridging fuel of the future and off of oil,” he said. “It’s the right step for us, for our customers and for our planet.” 

The move could also cut the country’s oil import bill. There are currently about eight million heavy and medium-weight trucks consuming three million barrels of oil a day while traveling the nation’s highways. That is nearly 15 percent of the total national daily consumption and the equivalent of three-fourths of the amount of oil imported from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Roughly two-thirds of the diesel used as transportation fuel nationwide feeds three million 18-wheelers, the main trucks hauling goods over long distances. 

In the last four years, the natural gas shale drilling boom has produced a glut of inexpensive fuel, leading producers to argue that the country should wean its commercial and municipal transportation systems from a dependence on imported oil to domestically produced natural gas. 

It is cheaper, saving truckers as much as $1.50 a gallon, and it burns cleaner, making it easier to meet emissions standards. The domestic fuel also provides some insulation from the volatile geopolitics that can drive up petroleum prices.

From National Geographic:

Over the past year, Clean Energy Fuels opted to make the first move in this game, building 70 fueling stations in 33 states. Most of those are dormant, awaiting a major development that has been delayed, but is now expected later this year—the roll-out of the first generation of standard-size heavy-duty trucks specially equipped to run on natural gas. When those trucks hit the road, Clean Energy Fuels says, its new truck stops will open. 

"At the end of this year, you are coast to coast and border to border," the company's president and chief executive officer, Andrew Littlefair, said recently. "You have a nice skeleton and the work has just started." 

ENN has made its foray into the U.S. market quietly, partnering with a small Salt Lake City, Utah, company, CH4 Energy and operating under the name Blu. The company told Reuters it already has five stations in operation and is opening three more in the coming weeks. (See related: "Pictures: A Rare Look Inside China's Energy Machine.") 

The mover behind Clean Energy Fuels has been Pickens, who chairs the private equity fund BP Capital Management, which has significant holdings in companies focused on natural gas fracking (as well as an array of other energy investments). Pickens has been one of the most vocal proponents of switching to natural gas for transportation. (See related story: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania" and interactive "Breaking Fuel From the Rock.") 

Under the Pickens Plan, introduced in 2008 and refocused to emphasize natural gas rather than wind energy in 2010, Pickens has described the shift as a way to minimize U.S. reliance on imported oil, reduce pollution and fuel costs, generate jobs, and provide a "bridge" to greener fuels. "It's a helluva deal for the country," Pickens said in an interview with Bloomberg last year.

Another effect of the move to LNG by the Trucking/Transportation industry will be that America will be able to sell more of it's oil overseas. Already America's booming oil industry (fueled by Fracking in Texas and the Bakken Oil Field of Wyoming/Dakotas) has significantly decreased the Trade deficit: 

Record petroleum exports helped shrink the U.S. trade deficit in December to the smallest in almost three years as America moved closer to energy self- sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

The gap narrowed 20.7 percent to $38.5 billion, the smallest since January 2010 and lower than any estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 73 economists, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Oil exports climbed $11.6 billion. Another report showed wholesale inventories unexpectedly declined in December.

In addition to trimming the trade deficit, greater fuel autonomy helps boost household incomes, jobs and government revenue and makes American companies more competitive. An improving global economy, reflected by record exports to South and Central America, also means manufacturers such as Caterpillar Inc. will benefit. 

“The trend toward energy independence is there, and it is picking up,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston with more than 30 years of experience in refining and trading. “This bodes well for our economy. As our oil production increases, our reliance on other parts of the world for oil comes down.”

From CNBC: 

The Citi report, titled "Energy 2020: Independence Day," also projects a larger and quicker decline in demand for oil in the U.S. over the next decade or two, due to efficiency and the shift to cheaper natural gas.

For instance, Citi expects 30 percent of the U.S. heavy duty truck fleet to turn to natural gas-based fuel by 2015, well above the 10 percent it previously forecast. That would reduce diesel demand by an estimated 600,000 barrels per day. It also expects new automotive efficiency standards to reduce U.S. oil production by two million barrels per day, up from the one million forecast last year.

"Starting this year, North American output, as we indicate in this report, should start to have tangible impacts both on global prices and trading patterns, and will eventually turn the global geopolitics of energy on its head," the report said.

Morse surprised markets a year ago with a report that envisioned the U.S. as part of an energy independent North America. Since then, the view has become mainstream. The International Energy Agency forecast last fall that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia as the top oil producer by 2017. The IEA also forecast that North America could become a net oil exporter by around 2030.

This Energy surplus will make manufacturing affordable in the United States once again: 

Steel makers, for example, benefit from both the lower cost of manufacturing and from strong demand for steel pipe used for oil and gas drilling. Companies in the steel rustbelt of Pennsylvania and Ohio are polishing up aging plants to replace coal with cheaper natural gas. Others are setting up shop closer to major gas distribution hubs like Louisiana, where steel giant Nucor is investing $750 million to fire up a new plant later this year.

Chemical, plastics and fertilizer makers, who rely on natural gas both as a raw material and an energy source, have also been expanding production. Last year,Dow Chemical announced a $4 billion investment in facilities, part of some $15 billion in expansion plans announced by Gulf Coast chemical makers.

And Vancouver-based Methanex Corp. decided last year to spend $425 million to disassemble an idled methanol plant in Chile and move it lock, stock and pipeline toLouisiana.

In December, economists with UBS bank tallied some $65 billion in announced construction of new plants related to cheaper natural gas, and said another 11 plants had been announced worth billions more.

As groundbreaking on these projects gets under way, the dividends from the energy boom will flow even further – to construction companies, engineering firms, materials and equipment suppliers and lenders who help finance the projects.

That, in turn, will help shore up state and federal budgets. The added revenue – from income taxes on new jobs created, corporate taxes on added oil and gas profits and state and federal royalty payments – could top $2.5 trillion through 2035, according to IHS Global Insight.

It seems that no matter what China does, no matter what the UN does, no matter what the Kyoto Treaty attempts to do, no matter what Barack Obama himself does, no one can keep the American economy down for long.

It's the creativity that comes from the Freedoms (which are protected, not created, by our Constitution) which allow us to implement all these new ideas and technologies, and make us, always, the most powerful economy and nation in the world.