Increasingly

U.S. domestic crude oil production is at its highest level in 20 years, outstripping pipeline capacity and, increasingly, making its way to refineries and storage centers via railroads, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The capital markets for U.S. exploration and production (E&P) companies “appear wide open,” with most of the available funds likely to target onshore oil instead of natural gas through 2014, Barclays Capital analysts said on Wednesday.

U.S. domestic crude oil production is at its highest level in 20 years, outstripping pipeline capacity and, increasingly, making its way to refineries and storage centers via railroads, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Maintenance work on two platforms in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and on a project shutting in some crude oil in Alaska may halt temporarily the growth in U.S. crude oil supplies, but onshore volumes should help alleviate the shortfall, according to energy analytics provider Genscape Inc.

Global buyers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will increasingly turn to the United States, casting a shadow over Australia’s LNG industry, at least temporarily, said Wood Mackenzie’s Andrew McManus, head of the firm’s upstream consulting business in Australia.

Global buyers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will increasingly turn to the United States, casting a shadow over Australia’s LNG industry, at least temporarily, said Wood Mackenzie’s Andrew McManus, head of the firm’s upstream consulting business in Australia.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Wednesday released a follow-up assessment in which it raised concerns about the ability of an increasingly natural gas-dependent bulk power system to maintain reliability when the capacity to deliver gas supplies to generators is constrained.

The window of opportunity for exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from North America is closing, making the slate of proposed projects increasingly risky and less lucrative; however, there still is room for North American gas in the Asia-Pacific market, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI).

Unlike natural gas, oil can be carried in a bucket — or in a rail car — as is increasingly the case in the Bakken Shale, for instance, where the drill bit has gotten ahead of the pipeline, way ahead of the pipeline, in offering oil producers a route to market.