Rig Count foretells future oil supply/price. Oil crises unfold slowly because the US prints dollars to buy foreign oil as our energy self-reliance depletes. The fundamentals are that there have been too few rigs for too long, with low oil prices slowing additional drilling to replace depletions. Dallas Fed worries of 2024 will show up this decade. Current Rig Count is down 70% from under Obama, when current affordable oil was staged.
2025, June, EIA Calls Peak Shale as Drilling Activity Declines: US Peak Fracking has already been passed. EIA report.
2025, April, Reuters: US oil production to peak by 2027 as shale boom fades, EIA forecasts, “Production to fall rapidly from 2030 through 2050“
- Note this 20-year period of “fall rapidly” assumes that capital will be stable during the entire 20 years. That was not the case in Syria in 2012.
- The normal S-curve to shift a major infrastructure is 50-200 years. For example, the first video call was in 1927 and iPhones were released in 2007.
2025: America’s Solar Industry is UNDER THREAT, solar is essential if we are not going to crash energy availability.
2022, Sept, the Dallas Fed oil supply surveyed 153 oil companies on the supply of oil in 2024.
- Cited comment: “Shale core exhaustion and inventory concerns are mainstream and well-documented issues. Shale will likely tip over in five years, and U.S. production will be down 20 to 30 percent quickly. When it does—this feels like watching the steam roller scene in Austin Powers. Oil prices in the late 2020s will be something to behold.”
- Energy Central article and background
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” Winston Churchill
Based on data from the Dallas Federal Reserve, by 2030 car-miles will be reduced by about 60% by one of two actions:
- Cities retool to become walkable, cutting oil demand by 60%.
- A more severe replay of the 2008 banking collapse cascading through supply chains.
- 2008, May, Dallas Fed: Crude Awakening: Behind the Surge in Oil Prices
- 2013, Jul, Dallas Fed: Bottom-line Cost of 2007–09 Financial Crisis Estimated at $6 Trillion to $14 Trillion
Drill, Baby, Drill seems unlikely. Rig Count of 1,500 was required to expand US oil supply. Those wells and DUCs are depleting. Link to current Rig Count.
Warning from Ray Dalio on the risk of 2008 by 2028.
We have known the end of affordable oil has been coming since Dr. Hubbert in 1956, Admiral Rickover in 1958, and 10 of the last 10 Presidents called for the end of foreign oil addiction.
Walkable cities are the solution for Economic Development.
