Energy Prospectus

FWIW, this report via Chuck Butler's _Daily Pfennig_ currency newsletter. Haven't been hearing much news since the earlier announcements at the end of 2012:

<<Speaking of Australia. One of my EverBank colleagues, Steve McIntosh, sent me a link to an article that talked about a new Oil discovery in Australia. The estimated size of this Oil find is 233 Billion Barrels of Oil. And is thought to be so large that it could break the OPEC grip on Oil. For comparison purposes, Saudi Arabia estimates their Oil would yield 263 Billion barrels of Oil , but remember, recently there have been calls that the Saudis are greatly overestimating their Oil capacity. I took this snippet form the article: "Since the Coober Pedy discovery in Southern Australia is nearly six times larger than the Bakken find in North Dakota, 17 times larger than the Marcellus shale find in Pennsylvania, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford Basin in Texas, many fear this could impact America's ability to profit from its domestic shale oil boom and slow our overall economic recovery.">>

The deal with Australia is that they lack the infrastructure to develop anything fast, no matter how big it is. There are very few rigs and only a couple frac crews in the country. They have known about large shale plays in the country for several years. It will take a decade before they can ramp up production to the level that will threaten the U.S. shale plays. Keep this in mind, there are hundreds of rigs working in the Bakken and lots of infrastructure. North Dakota's total production is still under a million BOPD. The world now consumes over 92 million bbls of liquid fuels per day.

There is an Australian/American group here in Houston that has a big conference each year. It is a fantastic two day event and I am sure this will be a big topic.

I am working on a special discount rate for EPG members, so look for a Flash Alert on this soon.