EIA celebrates 20 years on the Internet

On July 1, 1995, EIA became the first agency within the U.S. Department of Energy to venture onto the Internet. In an era before Google, Facebook, and Internet Explorer, the Internet had about 40 million users and 23,500 websites. The seven users who visited EIA.gov on its first day of operation had access to a few dozen web pages and 200 files. Although the initial version of the website looked rather primitive, the website quickly established itself as the agency's primary communications channel. More »

Hawaii and Vermont set high renewable portfolio standard targets

Two states recently passed legislation that would require significant increases in renewable electricity generation. On June 8, Hawaii updated legislation setting a 100% renewable portfolio standard (RPS) by 2045. On June 11, Vermont passed a bill creating a 75% RPS by 2032. Both of these RPS target percentages are higher than any other RPS target in the United States. More »

Argentina and China lead shale development outside North America in first-half 2015

As recently as last year, only four countries in the world were producing commercial volumes of either natural gas from shale formations (shale gas) or crude oil from tight formations (tight oil): the United States and Canada, and more recently, Argentina and China. Beyond these four countries, other countries have started exploring and producing hydrocarbons from shale and other tight resources. More »

U.S. refinery capacity reaches 18 million barrels per day

Increased refinery runs—based on increases in both capacity and utilization—have helped accommodate increases in U.S. crude oil production. The United States' capacity to refine crude oil into petroleum products—measured as operable atmospheric crude distillation unit capacity—increased by 0.2% in 2014, reaching 18.0 million barrels per calendar day, according to EIA's recently released annual Refinery Capacity Report. More »

Under sanctions, Iran's crude oil exports have nearly halved in three years

In early April this year, Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany reached a framework agreement to guide negotiations targeting a comprehensive agreement by June 30. The comprehensive agreement could result in the lifting of crude oil-related sanctions against Iran, which in turn could result in an increase in Iran's crude oil production and exports. However, the ultimate decision and the timing that sanctions could be lifted are highly uncertain More »

Oil and natural gas production job declines tend to lag oil price declines

Employment in oil and natural gas extraction and support activities in the United States reached nearly 538,000 in October 2014, but then declined by about 35,000 jobs, or 6.5%, over the following six months, through April 2015, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More »

U.S. crude oil production growth helps Gulf Coast imports

In recent years, higher domestic production of light, tight crude oil has led to a reduction in crude oil imports. Certain types of crude oil have been affected more than others; for example, the increased economic availability of domestic light, tight crude oil has virtually eliminated Gulf Coast imports of light crude oil. In the past year, Gulf Coast imports of medium crude oil have also fallen because of increased production from the Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Permian regions. More »

Europe aims for wider electricity market coordination

The European Union (EU) has long sought more reliable ways to produce and distribute electricity and to coordinate its energy markets, including greater cross-border trading of electricity. The February coupling of electricity markets in Italy and France marks the most recent step toward an integrated European market. With this achievement, the majority of EU power markets are now linked. More »

Oilfield costs fall following decline in oil prices

As oil prices declined—falling more than 50% from June 2014 to January 2015, before increasing slightly in spring 2015—energy production companies focused efforts on increasing operating efficiencies. More »

Refiner margins unable to fully offset low upstream earnings for integrated oil companies

First-quarter 2015 financial results for globally integrated oil companies show that total earnings were $22 billion (54%) lower than first-quarter 2014. Lower crude oil prices contributed to a decline in profits in the upstream sector of $28 billion (80%) compared to first-quarter 2014. Profits in the downstream sector, however, were the largest for any quarter since third-quarter 2012, almost $6 billion (95%) higher than in first-quarter 2014, which offset some of the decline from the upstream segment More »

EIA's mapping system highlights energy infrastructure across the United States

EIA's energy mapping system is a data-intensive visual reference tool that includes several map layers defining energy infrastructure components across the United States. Using this series of maps, viewers can see crude oil, petroleum, natural gas, or hydrocarbon gas liquid pipelines, terminals, and ports in their area, as well as high voltage electric transmission lines. More »

EIA's new energy visualization widget embeds interactive charts and maps on any website

EIA's new energy visualization widget allows users to display interactive visualizations of current energy data pulled from EIA's data application programming interface (API) on their own websites. Using the API browser, users can discover how EIA's energy data series can be charted, mapped, or broken down into its related components. More »

Oil exploration in the U.S. Arctic continues despite current price environment

Alaska's crude oil production has declined from 1.8 MMb/d in 1991 to 0.5 MMb/d in 2014, and it is expected to continue declining through 2040. Almost 75% of Alaska's crude oil production from 1990 to 2012 was from the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields in the central North Slope. However, recent conditional approval granted to Royal Dutch Shell to begin exploratory drilling in the Burger Prospect in the Chukchi Sea may help to offset future declines in crude oil production in the region. More »

Efficiency moderates effects of higher electricity prices under proposed Clean Power Plan

EIA's recently released analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan rule finds that electricity prices are expected to rise. However, efficiency and price-induced conservation moderate the projected increase in consumer electricity bills. More »

Proposed Clean Power Plan rule would reduce coal production, especially in the West

EIA's analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan rule shows U.S. coal production falling after the proposed rule takes effect. In 2024 in the Base Policy case, coal production falls to a level last seen in the late 1970s. Total production recovers gradually thereafter, as coal-fired generation increases in the later years of the projection, but it never surpasses levels reached in the 1980s More »

Crude by rail provides the West Coast with supply as regional crude oil production falls

While total U.S. crude oil production increased nearly 3.2 million barrels per day (b/d) from 2010 to 2014, production in PADD 5 decreased by 0.1 million b/d, continuing a long-term decline. With no major crude oil pipelines connecting the West Coast to other parts of the country, West Coast refineries had adjusted to the declining in-region production by increasing imports of foreign crude oil. Shipments of domestic crude oil by rail to the West Coast have also increased, from 23,000 b/d in 2012 to 157,000 b/d in 2014. More »

New data series show more detail for crude oil stocks, storage by region

In an effort to better present crude oil storage capacity and use across the United States, EIA has prepared new tables as part of the semiannual Working and Net Available Shell Storage Capacity Report. The new series show crude oil stocks held in tanks and underground storage in each Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD). Previously, this information was only available at the national level. More »

Proposed Clean Power Plan would accelerate renewable additions and coal plant retirements

EIA's analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan shows that renewables play a critical role under a range of different market conditions and policy assumptions. The key difference across the scenarios analyzed involves the timing and extent that wind and solar electric generating capacity additions occur, as well as retirements of some generation capacity, mainly coal-fired units and relatively inefficient plants that use natural gas or oil-fired boilers to run steam turbines. More »

Increases in U.S. crude oil production are predominantly light, sweet crude

U.S. crude oil production has grown rapidly in recent years, primarily from light, sweet crude (less dense, lower sulfur content) from tight resource formations. Roughly 90% of the nearly 3.0 million barrel per day (b/d) growth in production from 2011 to 2014 consisted of light, sweet grades, meaning they have an API gravity of 40 or above and a sulphur content of 0.3% or less. More »

Levelized cost comparisons help explain value of various electric generation technologies

When power plants are built, several factors influence the choice of fuels and technologies that will ultimately generate electricity. Cost is one of the most difficult factors to compare, as technologies can have vastly different capital, fuel, maintenance, and financing costs, as well as different utilization rates and access to fuel resources. Two measures, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and the levelized avoided cost of electricity (LACE), are widely used to make cost comparisons across technologies. More »

Crude oil adjustment balances independently developed supply and disposition components

The crude oil adjustment is perhaps the most frequently misunderstood component of the U.S. crude oil balance published in EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report. This adjustment reflects the combined uncertainty around each of the crude oil data elements that EIA uses to assess the balance between U.S. crude oil supply and its disposition. More »

EIA conference on current energy issues is two weeks away

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will hold its 2015 Energy Conference on June 15 and 16 in Washington, DC. This two-day event provides the opportunity to meet and network with energy analysts, decision makers, and EIA staff. Last year more than 900 people from industry, government, and academia attended EIA's conference. More »