Fifty

The Houston-based arm of energy giant BP plc Tuesday said it was leasing thousands of acres in a yet-to-be explored area of northeastern Ohio’s Utica/Point Pleasant Shale formation near the Pennsylvania border for future natural gas and oil production.

Though somewhat unremarkable in that it featured a 151 Bcf withdrawal that was well within market expectations (see related story), the weekly storage report released Thursday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) drew attention from industry analysts and data crunchers alike because it was a calendar anomaly — it was the 53rd weekly storage report for 2004.

Though somewhat unremarkable in that it featured a 151 Bcf withdrawal that was within market expectations, the weekly storage report released last Thursday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) drew attention from industry analysts and data crunchers alike because it was a calendar anomaly — it was the 53rd weekly storage report for 2004.

The Energy Information Administration released its Annual EnergyReview this week chronicling 50 years of changes in the U.S. energyindustry. Fifty years ago the nation was nearly self-sufficient inpetroleum and was a net exporter of natural gas, the report notes.Now, on the eve of the new century, America imports more than half ofits petroleum and 15% of its natural gas. Gas supply and demand werein relative balance in the U.S. until the mid-1980s when aproduction-consumption gap developed. In 1998, U.S. production was 19Tcf, consumption was 21 Tcf and imports were 3 Tcf. While the numberof wells producing gas in the U.S. grew 263% over the 50 years, theaverage output per well fell by 55%. The report is available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/ on EIA’s web site.Printed copes will be available later this month from the U.S.Government Printing Office, (202) 512-1800, or through EIA’s NationalEnergy Information Center, (202) 586-8800.