Monday Night Links

1. The Eagle Ford shale formation will put out 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day by the end of the year, Valero Energy Chief Executive Officer Bill Klesse said after the company’s annual meeting in San Antonio. Producers have told him output from the South Texas formation may rise to 1 million barrels a day in the next few years. Production in 2011 averaged 60,000 barrels a day.

2.  North Dakota oil man Harold Hamm says that  “North Dakota Needs To Shake The Culture of Negativism" about its Bakken oil boom. 

3. A new cryogenic natural gas processing plant is in place in the Texas Eagle Ford shale, adding yet another tangible indicator of the shale boom in South Texas. Enterprise Products Partners is in the start-up process of the processing plant in Yoakum. The processing plant is designed to process up to 300 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and extract up to 37,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids.

4. Marcellus shale gas wells in Pennsylvania generated about $3.5 billion in gross revenues for drillers in 2011, along with about $1.2 billion in West Virginia. But experts say that a sharp drop in wholesale prices over the last year means that in the future much more money will be made — and more jobs created —by petrochemical companies that process the gas into other industrial and consumer compounds.

Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said the current low natural gas prices benefit consumers throughout the state: “Every single Pennsylvanian has more money in their pocket today — to save, invest and help make ends meet — as a result of plentiful natural gas development from the Marcellus Shale."

5. China’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose 0.2 percentage points to 53.3 in April, above its level a year earlier. It was the index’s fifth straight monthly increase, indicating that the country’s economic activity is picking up steadily.  

6. Baker-Hughes reported last Friday that the share of rigs drilling for natural gas fell to 30.8% for the week ending May 4, the lowest share ever for natural gas since Baker-Hughes started tracking the oil/gas drilling split back in 1987.

 7.  After 154 years, Canada stopped producing pennies last week.

8.  The shale gas revolution is doing a lot more than just making renewables seem more expensive: it’s actually closing coal plants as well. That is, it is significantly reducing CO2 emissions.