Oil Exploration Ramps Up In US Arctic 182
ananyo writes "A new round of exploratory oil drilling is due to begin in the Arctic this July. The oil giant Shell was granted permission some months ago by the U.S. government to drill two exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea and three in the Chukchi Sea, both north of Alaska, this year — between 15 July and late September. The project is finally coming to fruition after years spent fighting legal challenges. It will be the first oil-exploration program to run in U.S. Arctic waters since 2000, and could mark the start of the first offshore commercial drilling in the American north, although it would take another decade to establish production wells."
Burn it (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing changes until it is all gone.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
They realize quite perfectly if they have a major spill or blowout then the game is over.
You mean like BP's game is over?
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Any conversation about a sufficiently complex subject is indistinguishable from babble.
Re:This is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is likely to be the best scenario in a potential worst case scenario. Even if Shell doesn't drill in the Beaufort Sea, the Russians, Canadians, Danes and anybody else who can manage to plant a flag above the Arctic Circle will.
We ARE going to Drill Baby, Drill until it costs too much to pull the stuff out of the ground. If we have any collective brains we will use that time to figure out how to power civilization using less environmentally disastrous methods. I'm not to sanguine about the collective intelligence of humanity however.
"A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals and you know that".
Agent K
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"...how to power civilization..."
We know how...Nuclear.
But that's on the list of OhNoes!
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad.
I provided 1 trillion times the evidence and supporting reasoning of the parent. My post is better.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You both have it wrong. Here's how US public opinion on the matter actually works:
Average gasoline prices under $3.75/gal? "Bad oil company! No drill! NO DRILL! bad! bad! bad!"
Average gasoline prices over $4.50/gal? "I don't care if you have to line the well with baby seal fur and lubricate the rig with infant dolphin blood! Drill, damn you! DRILL!"
Re:the what ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
No more stupid than people basing personal and political modern nuclear power stations on 40+ year old models breaking that were far over their mean-times for operation. More people have died from sugar plant explosions than nuclear power; this even in the primitive models. A few hundred liquid fuel thorium reactors would dissolve the need for high-price municipal monopolies on energy generation and distribution. That's the real issue here.
LFTR's eat old nuclear waste from the U235 systems Carter forced upon us. So, no more poisoning the water tables!
Re:So long, Arabia (Score:2, Insightful)
We buy most of our oil from Canada but oil is a global market, so this will only help drive down prices long term.
If you buy any oil, you can't really say you are not buying or contributing anything to "Arab" countries, even if you only buy it from one place due to oil's global nature.
This has nothing to do with lowing the price of oil, and everything to do with making the oil companies richer. They've proven that all it takes is to raise the prices $2 for a while until everyone is upset, and then drop it down a $1, and everyone is happy again. Kaching. $1 price increase and no one seems to care. The price of oil right now is based purely on the highest rate that the customer is willing to bear, and has little to nothing to do with availability.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric cars are a stupid idea. And they will be until we get much better batteries, they must be smaller, lighter, charge faster and be cheaper. That is a lot of miracles that need to happen. If only one of those things had to happen we could probably do a massive research push to get there, but with everything needing to get dramatically better it is a dumb idea to cast all of our future on one dice roll.
Combine with the hard reality we will also require a massive new electrical generating and distribution capacity if electric cars are to be anything but egoboo for a select few wealthy greens subsidized by the taxes of 'wasteful' slobs they despise. And unless you know of a viable 'alternative' energy source that can not only supply current load but the massive new one implied by electrifying transportation all al electric car's battery is is a semi efficient storage medium for electricity generated by fossil fuels.
No, what I get out of this announcement is an oil company is willing to plunk down coin to drill somewhere there is no chance Obama's regulators will ever allow actual production so they are betting on that not being a problem.
Re:the what ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what we in the debate business call misdirection. Rather than conceding the parent's point, the above poster attempts to lead the debate away from that by asking what he feels is a humiliating question.
A convo i inagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil Guy: Do you find it ironic that we denounce global warming, but use higher temps and lower ice mass to get more oil for more Carbon emissions?
Tobacco Guy: no, not at all.
Re:Bzzzzzt Sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
And how did you figure that out? Wishing to the economist fairy that a non-renewable resource will instead last forever, production will never be less than demand (despite demand rising exponentially), and never go into permanent supply decline?
Futures speculation affects short-term prices. Yes. But actual supply and demand affects long-term prices. Even OPEC learned this back in the 1970s when they artificially flattened supply increases, prices spiked during the oil crisis, the global economy crashed, demand correspondingly crashed, and then so did the prices despite OPEC desperately reducing supply. If OPEC couldn't artificially dictate whatever price they wanted back in the 1970s, what makes you think speculators can artificially set whatever price they like? Speculators can perturb the overall trend for a little while, and that's where they make their money, but the price is not disconnected from availability over the long term. On top of that, if prices rise sufficiently, demand empirically falls. If the economy does poorly, demand falls, and so do prices. This is not the signature of a system entirely controlled by speculation.
Also, if supply wasn't ultimately a constraint, then you wouldn't have companies spending money to try to find oil in remote and/or deep-water and/or harsh Arctic environments where it easily costs 10x as much to drill and produce as it would on land closer to markets. They're drilling here because the conventional/cheap supplies are dwindling away. They're drilling here because they have no other choice if they want to maintain production levels. If that's not a sign of a real issue with regards to availability, I don't know what could convince you. Why spend 10x as much for a barrel of oil there if, supposedly, they could get all the oil they wanted from somewhere else cheaper?
We're genuinely in the bottom half of the barrel.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
If I was standing near you, I'd bitch slap you.
He can live where ever the fuck he wants. Who the hell are you to bitch about anything?
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure he can. But why should we, at the pump, subsidize his living there?
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Higher oil prices are the answer. They are the only external force that will cause Joe 6-Pack to care about better city planning, public transportation and the like.
So, you want poor people to pay more for food, medicine, housing, energy, and clothing, besides not being able to afford to get to work, the doctor's, the kid's school(s)?
That's the effects higher oil prices have. Not just higher gasoline prices. Nobody who advocates for higher oil prices ever mentions that or offers any practical solutions, if they'll even talk about it at all.
It won't only affect those living outside urban areas or the rich. It will take a real toll in human lives. Mostly the working poor and those on Social Security.
You just ooze the milk of human kindness, don't you?
Strat
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, the old "it'll wreck the economy" and "hurt the poor" arguments. I'll call you, and raise you a "it'll destroy civilization" argument if we don't do it.
Higher gas prices won't wreck the economy. There are alternatives. People don't have to drive monster SUVs. Don't have to live in McMansions and commute 100 miles to work every day. There are a bunch of easy things we could do to save gas if we got serious about it.
If the environment is wrecked, that will wreck the economy more surely than any tiny price increase. You'd suddenly realize just how petty a $1 or even a $5 increase in the price of a gallon of gas is compared to millions of homeless people forced to move to higher ground thanks to rising sea levels, and more hungry millions swarming over the land because the weather made our crops fail. Civilizations have fallen over crop failures.