High oil prices and improved horizontal drilling techniques made oil production in tight oil plays like the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas and the Bakken Formation in North Dakota economical for the first time.
Would they be happy letting BP develop indigenous Chinese shale and tight oil plays?
The oil market is tight, but price is a wondrous mechanism, and rising prices have spurred investment.
And, there is promise in domestic resources from the application of horizontal drilling and staged frac technologies to tight oil reservoirs.
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Hurricane Katrina roared into already tight oil markets, damaging much of America's oil-pumping and -refining capacity, and another hurricane, Rita, threatened to wreak more havoc along the Gulf coast this week.
The fact that Beijing has set 100bcm production targets for shale by 2020, and is eying its 14.5bn barrels of tight oil plays, remains a very attractive proposition for anyone concerned.
Though the Singapore dollar is close to its highest for seven years, some analysts expect the city-state's central bank to raise the ceiling on the currency's (unpublished) trading band soon, to counter the inflationary effects of high oil prices and a tight labour market.
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The reason oil prices had been quite tight and gasoline prices had gone up earlier this year was there was a fear of a difficult hurricane season.
Fracking is a vital contributor to the recent renaissance in the U.S. oil and natural gas supply picture, as it is the technology, along with horizontal drilling, that makes producing oil and natural gas from very tight shale rock formations possible.
Even with all current deep-water projects going forward full blast, the oil market is anticipated to be extremely tight.
Tight supply promises to keep oil prices relatively resilient in 2012, even if world GDP actually contracted, so say a handful of industry analysts at Barclays Capital in London.
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For those of you investing directly in ETFs that track commodities like gold, oil and platinum, a word of caution: Many popular ETFs that were designed to track commodities like gold, oil and platinum may NOT be in tight lockstep with the price changes of the underlying physical commodity.
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Volume and price rise and fall together, a consequence of tight or loose supply, like oil.
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With global oil prices near all-time highs and tight cereal markets according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, companies in the agricultural sector face interesting opportunities, despite a frail global economy.
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That looks like a bargain, given that 30 billion barrels of oil lie beneath, but the oil is molasses-thick and locked in very tight limestone formations.
Every well that gets drilled into shale formations or other tight reservoirs requires hydraulic fracturing before the oil and gas will flow.
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But Alaska politicians, industry consultants and analysts question whether tight new regulations in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf might discourage offshore drilling in the Arctic, removing that as a way to postpone the Trans-Alaska Pipeline's decline.
Its profits aren't expected to be as strong next quarter because of the seasonal demand for natural gas and softer crude oil prices, but analysts say oil and gas price fluctuations will not be drastic because of tight supply and strong demand.
They're off from work at Iraq's Southern Oil Co. and they're here to be seen, tight shirts open at the chest and hair sculpted with gel.
Despite central-bank pooh-bahs' fretting about oil prices (up more than 50% in recent months) and tight labor markets, inflation is hardly a threat.
Despite central-bank Poo-Bahs fretting about oil prices (up more than 50% in recent months) and tight labor markets, inflation is hardly a threat.
As it is, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela already are the key suppliers of oil to the U.S. But middle eastern oil nations have gotten the U.S. into more than one tight spot on foreign policy matters.
So it's that mismatch that explains the oil price rises over the last five years and I think the market will remain tight.
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