by Peter Leeds on June 2nd, 2015

Top Oil & Gas Blogs

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Drillinginfo.com - This company began in the late 90's as a database for oil well permitting and completion data, and they now have one of the largest databases in the industry. The blog at drillinginfo.com is run by their team of industry consultants and analysts. A few of the reasons that this blog is at the top of our list include: the level of detail in each blog entry, industry expertise of all contributors, time and effort spent on visuals (that make it faster and easier to read each blog daily), and the tendency to provide actionable data for traders.

Energy Trends Insider- Energy Trends Insider has editorial columns from 10+ contributors. They are all great writers who write about energy-related topics so we recommend them all, but if you are looking to zero in on oil and gas content, we suggest checking out Robert Rapier's column. Robert is the Managing Editor & Director of Analysis for this site, and he is also the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President at Merica International.

Our Finite World - Gail Tverberg is a researcher, actuary, and educator who has been around the financial industry since the 1970’s and the energy industry since 2005. Her blog is focused on figuring out the real story about energy and our future, rather than relying on standard story lines provided by oil companies, renewable companies, and believers in “peak oil” theory. The blog is only updated a few times each month, but the content is in-depth, extremely well-researched, there are great visuals, and this is a great blog for anyone to read who is tired of the brief overviews that populate some of the more mainstream industry news websites.

Peak Oil Barrel - This blog features in-depth blogs about the industry, lots of data-based discussion, great data from lots of resources, and a strong following in the blogosphere with lots of discussion in the comments sections. The man behind this blog is Ron Patterson. He is a retired computer engineer and also a contributor at oilprice.com.

Euanmearns.com - Euan Mearns's blog is set apart from the others by the strong academic background and extensive consulting experience of Euan and Roger (the other contributor here). Euan Mearns Holds a PhD in Geological Sciences and is the former owner of an isotope geochemistry analysis and consulting business. He also was a contributor to The Oil Drum during the 2000's (no longer an active website). Roger Andrews is also a contributor here and has a list of credentials that is equally impressive.

Oilholics Synonymous - You might recognize Gaurav Sharma from his appearances on CNBC or from his writing about the energy industries in Forbes. He has been a writer and analyst in the oil and gas industries for 15+ years now and we think that his blog is a great fit for this list.

Oilandgaslawyerblog.com - Published by John Mcfarland from Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody (Austin, TX), this blog focuses on legal issues. We are happy to have niche blogs like this on our list because they bring unique knowledge to the table and are not typically writing about the same stories that you'll find on the authority news websites etc.

The Bakken Crude Debate - This is a great niche blog that focuses on oil spills. The author, John Wathen, travels to many of the spill sites, so you'll see up-close and personal photos and content here that you won't find anywhere else. There are also lots of aggregated news stories from other websites and they are all focused strictly on oil spills and oil train derailments etc.

Young Petro - Young Petro is the official blog for the International Student Petroleum Magazine.You might think that a blog which is essentially run by college kids might not be the best resource for anyone in the oil and gas industry, but with regards to Young Petro you could not be further from the truth. The blogs come from contributors around the globe and this is probably the only blog on our list that can actually claim to be objectively peer-reviewed.

Halliburton Blog - This blog has made it onto our top list because it goes far beyond just being the publicity wing of Halliburton. Rather, it is a large collection of tech papers and case studies from the industry.

Authority News Websites

These websites can be seen churning out multiple news stories each day that cover the entire globe. We began this list by ranking all of these sites according to their website traffic (we used compete.com to find this data). Since that data is only a piece of the puzzle and compete.com is not always 100% accurate, we then went through and adjusted the rankings within this list to move the best sites closer towards the top. Since you will find a similar level of quality and quantity across many of these sites, we have decided not to officially rank these ones below. We simply just refer to all of them as the best and most reliable news websites for the industry.

Region-Specific Oil and Gas News Coverage

• Thebakken.com (The Bakken Magazine)
• Bakkenblog.com
• Loga.la (Louisiana Oil and Gas Association)
• Arabianoilandgas.com
• Scandoil.com
• Albertaoilmagazine.com
• Oilgasafrica.com
• Oilweek.com
• Oilnewskenya.com
• Northamericashaleblog.com

Honorable Mentions

• The Oil Drum - In its hayday, this was the #1 oil and gas blog on the web almost without question. The blog is no longer updated, however there is a treasure chest of great info here that is still relevant and you can still follow their updates on Twitter.
• Oilandgasinvestor.com - A great blog, however there is limited free readership and you'll have to pay the piper if you want to gain access to all of the good stuff.
• Platts.com - Great info and frequent updates.

Blog Feeds:

If you want to import or export your RSS feeds from a feedreader on the internet, this is done using a .OPML file. Most feed readers will have quick and easy options to import these feeds, so you can easily follow all of these blogs and news websites on your own. Click on the RSS icon image below to download the .OPML feed that contains all of the oil, gas, and energy blogs in our lists below.