Oil May Be Finite, But U.S. Production Is Ramping Up 745
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that the discovery of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers, and according to Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, if fully developed the field in Bakken contains 24 billion barrels, doubling America's proven oil reserves. One reason for America's abundant supply of oil and natural gas has been the development of new drilling techniques, including 'horizontal drilling,' which allows rigs to reach two miles into the ground and then spread horizontally by thousands of feet." Not surprisingly, Hamm considers some of the current administration's loans and subsidies for alternative energy ventures to be misplaced.
Don't they get it (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how much oil we find here it would be unwise to burn. Hot planet!
Re:Don't they get it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your analogy is faulty.
It's a well-established, replicated fact that healthy nutrition leads to better health. That's why it makes sense to eat healthy, for each generation in perpetuity.
For burning oil, the situation is entirely different. It is certain that the planet will get hotter because earth's normal climate is hotter than it is today. So, the best we can hope for is delay that a little, but there is no evidence that even completely stopping man-made carbon emissions would accomplish even that.
stop being such a flat earther (Score:3)
You are making the assumption that stopping to burn fossil fuel will prevent climate change. It will not do so. The polar ice caps will melt no matter what we do. Coast lines will move around, that parts of the globe will become uninhabitable, and that other parts will become habitable. Change is part of living on this planet. If w
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False. At some point it will become too expensive to find, extract, and refine the remaining oil. If we continue to subsidize oil and its uses, we will ultimately burn more oil than if we were to end the subsidies here and now.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
So they maybe found enough for three years and a half years of consumption at current rates. The problem is now truly solved.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, come on. Don't you know anything about capitalism? If there's sufficient demand for oil, then the market will provide for more dinosaurs to be turned into oil on the supply side. Didn't you ever take an economics course?
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Last major oil discovery, truely major, is in fact back in 1950 with the Arabic peninsula reserves. Since that time, nothing really significant was discovered. Since today, the Saudia Arabia was able to match the demand with the production. It is now over, they can no longer boost the production to match the demand and this is the indication their reserves are on the down side of the peak. The 1970 crisis is due to the US oil reserves reaching themselves the highest production peak, what is just happening today with Saudia Arabia reserves. Then, back in 1970, the Arabic countries decided to no longer sell their oil for cheap and they united into what is then known as OPEC. That triggered the 1970 crisis because USA was now dependant on oil from other countries since its own reserves were depleting.
Also, don't mix things, plastic and fuel are made from different components of the oil. It's not because you have plenty of tar you are necessarily don't have a fuel shortage problem with the current oil production.
Another way to look at it... (Score:3)
If we SAVE that oil for now, when the world's supply starts to run low, we'll have 3.5 years of reserves (more with rationing).
If we use it now, we'll have 3.5 years of reduced imports ... and fewer reserves when the other sources start to run low.
Which plan is in the nation's best interest?
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This is a complete myth (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that only an oil-intensive economy is capable of adaptation is laughable.
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Europe was less affected by the increase in the price of oil than the USA because of taxes. We pay 2-3 times as much as the USA for petrol, and that difference is almost all tax. When the price of crude oil doubles, the price at the pump in the USA almost doubles, while the price in Europe goes up by 10-20%. It's much easier to adapt to a 20% increase in a regular expense than a 100% increase.
You see something similar with the recent increases in global food prices. In most of the western world, the pr
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Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprisingly, Hamm considers some of the current administration's loans and subsidies for alternative energy ventures to be misplaced.
That guy is an idiot.
24e9 barrels / 20e6 barrels per day just for the US / 365 days per year = a bit more than a 3 year supply, assuming it can all be recovered. Realistic recovery ratios are always WAY less than 100%... Figure just several months supply, realistically.
So, some 1%er will make hundreds of billions of profit.. nice for him... and 3 years later, we'll be wishing you had a solar panel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [wikipedia.org]
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So, some 1%er will make hundreds of billions of profit.. nice for him... and 3 years later, we'll be wishing you had a solar panel...
- isn't oil what you want? If you didn't want it, why would you buy it?
If you think you have something better to offer, go ahead, offer it. Of-course somebody who develops an oil field and sells that product will be in top 1% of earners, what else is new? Do you know why he is going to be there? Because 100% of people want that product.
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason why people buy it is because the oil industry has successfully stalled efforts to replace it with something that's less polluting and renewable.
- and you call ME an idiot with this IDIOTIC assertion?
What a bunch of nonsense. Do you know why people are still using oil and coal and gas today? It's because it's the CHEAPEST and most abundant, easiest to use, easiest to transport, easiest to store and easiest to handle solution.
You don't have to grow it like corn and reprocess it into ethanol, you don't have to design security procedures around it that are equivalent of those used in nuclear power, you don't have liquefy it and hold it under extreme pressure like hydrogen, it has very dense energy content per volume and mass (of-course nuclear beats it, but every time [slashdot.org] I suggest a nuclear car, everybody freaks out [slashdot.org]).
Oil and gas and coal are not going anywhere until they are so expensive to extract, because technology can no longer be used to extract them cheaply, that even nuclear option becomes feasible, be it with nuclear power car engines or be it with nuclear power plants everywhere and completely redesigned infrastructure to support everybody driving an electric vehicle.
Your paranoia, that somebody had to sit and devise a way to destroy your water propelled car just to sell more oil is the idiotic fantasy, not my assertion that 100% of population wants oil, coal and gas - because they do.
Every single piece of bread you ate in your life was brought to you by oil, coal and gas (and in some cases nuclear). From fertilizers, to transport, to the heat of a stove, to your bus, to your elevator at home.
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, things are not all peaches and butterfly farts. Do you know what they do to get hydro electrical power sometimes? They flood entire valleys, destroys rivers and grounds, they destroys forests.
Do you know what kind of nonsense the solar is? The poisons that are created by the manufacturing process are not better than any other industrial waste, it's at least as bad as most other manufacturing processes out there. [businessgreen.com]
Gas and oil are the simplest forms of fuels to store. We figured out the way to store them that are the simples, safest forms of storage developed compared to ANY other types of fuels. Your assertion has no value here, no electrical battery is better than a gas tank.
They are the simplest to handle, they are liquids basically, they are the easiest to refill into a container, they are the most convenient, obviously there are no nuclear rods and there are no dams.
There is NOTHING that people do that does not produce SOME FORM of pollution. It's physically impossible to produce no pollution of any kind at all while storing/using/generating energy.
Even electrical transmission lines can be called 'polluting' or 'hurting' the environment in some other ways.
Do you know why that is? It's because it's energy. We need energy to do stuff and if we don't have energy, we die. We die from hunger, from dirty water, from lack of sanitation, from cold, whatever. We MUST modify our environment and that's how we will survive and we MUST use the cheapest ways of producing energy that are available at any point in time so we can concentrate our attention on the pressing things that we DO with that energy, which probably lead to our continuous survival not only on this globe, that is now supporting 7billion people and will support probably 1000 times as many people in 1000 years, but also off this planet. There is nothing that we do that can be considered 'clean' by everybody, but we do what we must.
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
For anyone who hasn't seen it, check out this old mathematician (Albert Bartlett) talking about energy and exponential growth. He makes it so obviously clear why we'll be running out of oil shortly even given the most optimistic projections of future growth. It's clear enough for Joe Sixpack to understand - as Einstein would say "as simple as possible, but no simpler".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy#Opposing_views [wikipedia.org]
The DOE reported that annual United States consumption of crude oil and petroleum products was 7.55 billion barrels (1.200×109 m3) in 2006 and again in 2007, totaling 15.1 billion barrels (2.40×109 m3).[38] In comparison, the USGS estimated that the ANWR reserve contains 10.4 billion barrels (1.65×109 m3). Although, only 7.7 billion barrels (1.22×109 m3) were thought to be within the proposed drilling region.[17]
It's true green sources aren't quite ready yet but it would make more sense to pour money into improving those rather than dicking about and ruining our countryside to delay the inevitable by a year.
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It's only a tiny area of ANWR that they want to drill in. The area that is to be developed is remote, uninhabited, doesn't have much wildlife and has been called a wasteland.
Most of our lives are spent in delaying actions. In the long run, we are all dead.
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The problem is not with the actual drilling area. The problem is with all the support that is required to support the drilling, and with the impact of a spill. ANWR won't be ANWR for a very long time if anything more than dripping valve happens.
We might be all dead in the long run. But that doesn't mean we have to fuck everything for everyone who comes after us.
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Re: (Score:3)
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"Lovely piece of nature" is a complete lie. The place is a cold, barren, dark, mosquito-infested wasteland. It's one of the least hospitable areas on earth.
Why are you spreading falsehoods about it?
Also, the part they want to drill for oil in is ecologically insignificant.
The arguments against drilling there are all essentially "I hate oil" and "I don't care about the people who would benefit from drilling there. Screw them."
I'm more swayed by the people who actually live there who are fighting tooth, nail, and claw to PREVENT drilling...but thanks for the typical "everyone who doesn't agree with me is a whiner...and probably a libural!" schtick (as made popular by talk-radio).
P.S. -- I could care less what people think who DON'T live there...it isn't for the people who do to sacrifice just to subsidize every 10mpg SUV driver who's too stupid to see the writing on the wall (even when it's directly in their face).
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If you think it will lower gas prices you're living in the land of make believe.
So you delay the people losing their jobs for a year? Unless they're all like a year from retirement that's pretty freaking useless. The volume is too low because there isn't that much oil up there. When that happens you have to shut it down. Delaying it for a year or if we're lucky a few ye
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been saying that since 1920... well... they said it would run out in 1920... and then they said it would run out in 1950... and then they said it would run out in 1980... and then they said it would run out in 2000...
I get it. I was running a little short on breakfast cereal this week. I thought that my remaining breakfast reserves would run out on Thursday, but I managed to reduce consumption a little by only eating three quarters of a bowl. And then on Friday I added some fruit to eke it out a bit further. On Saturday I discovered some leftover bread and ate that. So here I am, on Sunday, and I still have some bread left. THEREFORE I CONCLUDE THAT I WILL NEVER HAVE TO GO SHOPPING AGAIN AS I WILL NEVER, EVER RUN OUT OF BREAKFAST RESERVES. WHEN MY RESERVES ARE LOW, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE NEW FOOD TO DISCOVER IN MY KITCHEN.
See any problem here?
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
And when you finally do decide to use those forbidden or more difficult to reach cereal boxes/bread, you'll learn from your earlier experience and really work to spread them out over a longer time than your original box.
... and will therefore never run out of cereal again??
Whichever way you look at it, that dude is going to go hungry for breakfast at some stage unless he starts investing in alternative breakfast sources soon ...
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ you deniers freak me out. It's simple mathematics. The stuff is finite, we've been tapping it for years, it's beginning to reduce in discoveries and production, in the very least - less is being found. It doesn't 'magically grow back' - logically we should be preparing for the possibility that we simply have none.
Same with the 'keep breeding' crowd. Finite sized rock with finite resources, oxygen, water, food capable land, wood, oil, minerals, hell even finite real estate for solar panels.
Simple logic dictates we must be sensible about this. Infact DECENT logic actually implies we should abso-damn-loutely be self sufficient, capable of living indefinitely, assuming the sun doesn't die out (soon) - however it will (eventually)
Humanity is reducing the quantity of fish, wood and minerals from the planet, we simply can't live how we live now, it's simple mathematics and logic. It makes utterly no sense to be anything BUT self sufficient for the long haul.
Denier? (Score:3)
No really the guy has a good point. We've been hearing "Oil is running out! It'll be gone soon! We are so fucked!" for a long, LONG time. We have already passed many "It'll be gone," benchmarks from the past.
Thus maybe you can understand why people are more than a little skeptical when someone trots out a new "We are fucked," benchmark. Doomsday has been upon us so many times before it gets a little old.
I don't think anyone is saying that resources aren't finite... But doomsayers seem to underestimate what
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It is not so much that the supply of oil is infinite as that it is so ****ing big that we have yet to quantify its bigness.
On the contrary, I rather venture to speculate that we can indeed quantify the bigness of the supply of oil on Planet Earth as, for one, at least less than the total volume of Planet Earth. In other words, a bigness of lessbig than the Andromeda Galaxy and potentially morebigger bigness than the bigness of the moon.
At least assuming that Planet Earth is made of a crunchy hydrocarbon core surrounded by a juicy, delicious oil-soaked mantle with a crisp skin of petroleum byproducts forming the rocky crust - bu
not a factual article (Score:3, Informative)
Please note the byline at the bottom of the article stating, "Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board. ". This is an editorial, not a factual article. It's also informative to temper Mr. Hamm's personal enthusiasm with a look at the US oil production record from the U.S Energy Information Administration (205.254.135.24/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M). Although there is an upturn in US production since 2006, it is unlikely that we will drill our way out of the peak oil decline.
We're reached peak oil! (Score:2)
Everybody panic!
Oh, wait, nevermind, we keep [blogspot.com] finding [shaleoilplays.com] more [ogj.com] - and we keep developing new technology to get to the stuff.
Granted, processed oil isn't the friendliest thing to the world, there is a finite (though huge) supply, and cleaner fuels are a better alternative once they're economically viable without gigantic government subsidies. But for now we're just fine.
Re:We're reached peak oil! (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me about the man who fell off a tall building, and every time he passed another floor he said to himself, "so far, so good!"
Re:We're reached peak oil! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your first link: 165 million barrels.
US consumption: about 20 million per day.
Yep, an 8 days supply proves that there's nothing to worry about.
The actual problem (Score:3)
My understanding is that new oil fields continue to be discovered, but the pace and size of the discoveries is trending downward or at least stagnating. Meanwhile global oil demand is accelerating.
Since oil price is the congruence of supply and demand, and becaus
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When we pass the peak, half the available oil is still in the ground.
No, the peak is about production (as you correctly stated earlier): as in, the number of barrels being produced per annum begins to level off and will eventually decline. Production does not have to peak at 50% of cumulative extraction, and in fact is very unlikely to do so. Suppose that 90% of global oil reserves were not recoverable at all in an economically viable way - we would still hit "peak oil", even though only 10% of available oil could ever have been viably extracted.
Regulations are so bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hamm has the nerve to say Obama is killing US oil with regulations?? How the hell have we ramped up production in the last 5 years if the regulations are so bad? Why are companies developing the Bakken if regulations are so bad? More like they aren't making as much money as they want. Cause billions upon billions just is never enough... never enough. The greed is beyond repulsive; it's psychotic.
(Happily will admit that US production helps keeps gas prices from soaring. I am not complaining about oil production. I am pointing out the greed of these bastards is insatiable.)
No fair calling them misplaced (Score:3)
Call them "not economically viable"; or "in my opinion not good investments", if you like.
There are reasons for government to put some money to effective use in promoting alternative energy technology research besides expected financial ROI. In fact... the government is really the only organization that really can put money in something that doesn't make economic sense... the private sector will mostly only invest if there is a profit to be made in a relatively short amount of time; the exception would be non-profit organizations, and their resources are more limited.
Reasons like greater long-term viability of our civilization; liberating our people and our way of life from dependency on some scarce resources...
We might lose money on the investment for the next 20 years, but it could still be a good "investment", if there's an ultimate improvement in our way of life
Our government just needs to make sure it makes the spend intelligently, so as little of the money is spent on dead ends, fancy office furniture/meeting rooms/expensive/excessive office space, or bureaucrats' pocketbooks / other blatant waste as possible.
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Many of these reasons involve the government's meddling in making oil and its uses artificially cheap, and the government's inability to internalize the negative externalities of using oil.
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I agree with you on the need for Government investment in things like alternative energy. My problem is in giving blank checks out like happened with the recent half billion dollars green energy scam. Giving any corporation a blank check is asking to get screwed, no matter if it's a "green" enery research project or a wall street bank that's, uh, bankrupt. You can guarantee that large chunks of that money are, at the least, going to get wasted if not just outright disappear. The best thing the US Govt.
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Why do people keep using the word "blank check" and then following it with a dollar amount?
As far as Solyndra: haven't you ever made a bad investment with your money? I've bought stocks that I've lost money on. While I've never had a company go bankrupt while I was invested, I'm certain that those investors exist. Solyndra was only a small fraction of the money being put into alternative ene
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the private sector will mostly only invest if there is a profit to be made in a relatively short amount of time
In a hyperregulated centrally controlled economy like ours, the government enforces the above.
1) Select a solution
2) Create a problem the solution solves
3) Announce the solution
4) Profit!!!
That is why:
government to put some money to effective use in promoting alternative energy technology research
Destroying peoples life (Score:2, Interesting)
Horizontal drilling or so called fracking poisons the ground water thus making it undrinkable. It should never be allowed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEB_Wwe-uBM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A&feature=related
It is disaster and big companies shoudn't get away with this but apparently they do.
Re:Destroying peoples life (Score:4, Interesting)
What concerns me is that I live in a state that's right on the ocean, so, all that crap water coming from red states up river from me has the chance to screw up our crops and our drinking water. Fortunately, the city owns the entire water shed so those chemicals shouldn't be getting into our water, but there's a good chance that they'll end up polluting the fisheries in other states.
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Horizontal drilling isn't fracking. You frack frist to break rock which then allows horizontal drilling.
And of course the environmental impact of fracking is increasingly being called into question.
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But you're a media consumer, so I wouldn't expect you to knw anything about either of those points. And as an AC, you don't deserve any more reply.
Oil "may be" finite (Score:5, Interesting)
Economically, petroleum is even more of a finite resource. Currently Saudi and other middle eastern oil keep prices down. Estimates say it costs about $2 a barrel to extract oil in Saudi Arabia. Venezuela oil might costs three times that much to extract. US oil might be as much as $20 a barrel. At these extraction costs a barrel of oil is $80, and it costs over three dollars at the pump in the US. Now, one can blame the greed of the oil companies, but that is not going to change. Explorations costs are not going to decrease either.
OTOH, conservative extraction costs for so-called shale oil, the better name is tar pits, is $75 dollars a barrel. If the oil companies sell at a comparative markup, this means that the selling price would be $300 a barrel. If we just add $60 profit, that would still be $135 a barrel. This puts gas firmly in the $5 a gallon range.
Recall that the oil companies were going bust when oil was below $50 a barrel. This was still a large markup over extraction costs, but oil companies appear to be extraordinarily inefficient and require a large markup. It would be fantasy that the oil companies are going to give away the product. If shale oil forms a large percentage of the petroleum mix prices will go up, consumption will eventually go down as it did a few years ago. Oil companies will either have a choice of selling at higher prices for lower volumes, or find another product.
Therefore shale oil is not an indication of a long term prosperous oil economy, but a clear signal that oil is becoming too costly to base an economy on.
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>>OTOH, conservative extraction costs for so-called shale oil, the better name is tar pits, is $75 dollars a barrel
Estimates range "from $12 to $95/barrel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_economics)
>>If the oil companies sell at a comparative markup, this means that the selling price would be $300 a barrel.
From the same link, says that it's competitive between $10-$30/barrel.
So you're only off by, you know, a factor of 10x.
>>Therefore shale oil is not an indication of a long term p
Molleindustria (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how a game can emulate reality, and then reality can re-emulate the game: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy
production rates matter more than volume (Score:2)
After the initial rush, the Bakken wells settle down to about 100 barrels a day. The US uses about 18 million barrels a day. Do the arithmetic, then decide if it's even possible to drill that many wells.
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That works out to 180,000 wells
meh (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless there is a quantum leap in the efficiency with which electricity can be produced from non-fossil sources, we are eventually going to exhaust all the retrievable coal, oil and gas in the earth's crust. What is considered "retrievable" is a moving target determined by current extraction technology. Even if the U.S. were to institute subsidies that evened the playing field between fossil sources and green sources in the U.S., it is unlikely those subsidies would be duplicated across the entire globe. Ergo it would remain profitable to extract U.S. oil. It seems unlikely there will ever be the political will to forbid oil exploration and extraction altogether in the United States.
It's also worth noting that extracting and refining this particular cache of oil does not significantly alter the global price, and therefore does not significantly alter global consumption. It is not the case that more oil will be used because this particular batch was extracted. More U.S. oil will be used, on the other hand, which means more jobs, etc. for U.S. citizens.
Given the economy is in the dumps, the only reasons I can see not to extract it are:
* Strategic. When oil becomes scarce (and thereby prohibitively expensive) we want to have national reserves on tap for military consumption.
* Environmental, but in a local sense. You could argue that the environmental costs at the point of extraction are just too high.
"Global warming" doesn't seem like a compelling reason at the moment given the small percentage of global production these new fields represent. "Drill here, drill now, pay less" is a ginormous fallacy. To the extent "pay less" is fallacious, though, so is the notion that domestic drilling will lead to more consumption and consequently more atmospheric CO2.
Not an either-or proposition! (Score:3)
Horizontal drilling is not a "US-developed" range (Score:4, Informative)
... of techniques. Nor is it new, for any meaningful meaning of "new". In fact, it was old hat a decade ago. As was "extended reach" drilling, which is likely to be next week's buzzword.
I've been doing horizontal drilling, in the oilfield sense, using Norwegian techniques from Finnish and South Korean rigs, with multiple nationalities, for longer than I've been posting on Slashdot. All of which time spans are bloody long times (in a non-geological sense of "bloody long").
("Extended reach" drilling ... about the same duration that I've been on Slashdot. Give or take a half-decade.)
You'd think /. ers would be better at math. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, guys here's the deal.
First review the numbers around oil (i.e. how much we've got and what that means energetically). For that, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [wikipedia.org]
Then look here to see how much we have access to in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org].
I'd refer everyone to a web site for consumption rates, but the ballpark answer is that the world uses 28-30 billion barrels of oil per year, and the USA uses between 7-8 billion barrels per year. We have about 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable conventional oil left. Perhaps about 50% of that is economically recoverable today. Perhaps a bit more as prices rise, if prices don't rise enough to break the world's supply chains or cause nationalistic hoarding - two very distinct possibilities.
The most optimistic assumptions regarding conventional oil that's both energetically and economically profitable is about 40 years max. Realistically, expect about half that. After that, we're um, scraping the bottom of the barrel. Oil doesn't disappear (It never will). We just won't be using it as much. Too expensive energetically and economically.
Bottom line? All the "Drill ANWR and we're saved " idiots would have us destroy the Alaska ecosystem for about 2 years extension of our oil supply. Every moronic Reuters news story that so breathlessly reports that over 1 billion barrels of oil have been found ignores the fact that 1 billion barrels is less than 2 months supply just for the USA, much less the planet.
There are plenty of alternatives and solutions, just none that involve having 7 billion people or more living on Earth in the year 2100 using as much energy as an American uses today.
You can not trust the WSJ ... Ever (Score:3)
For starters, the US would be the world's number three oil producer with or without the Bakken Shale. In fact it has been second or third (depending on what is going on in Russia and Saudi Arabia) since 1970. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Russia [wikipedia.org] and note that the accompanying chart shows conventional oil production only. The US also produces about 3 million barrels a day of "Natural Gas Liquids" -- Basically liquid hydrocarbons that are coming out of gas wells along with natural gas.
And production from the Bakken Shale is about 400,000 bpd -- about 5% of total US production and about 2.5% of US oil consumption. Yes, the Bakken (and other formations) will help. No, these discoveries are extremely unlikely to solve the US energy problems. Anyone who is seriously interested in world and US energy issues should spend some time at www.theoildrum.org
I assume that "Hugh Pickens" is getting his information from the editorial page of the WSJ. IMHO. The Wall Street Journal editorial page should be read only by those whose goal is to be systematically and seriously misinformed on a wide variety of subjects. The paper version of the editorial page is excellent for lining bird cages.
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Has he never heard of CO2? Why would any sane person want to burn all that and turn it into CO2?
Oh, yeah, profit. Fuck the Earth and all future generations, there's profit to be made! I can own sixteen mansions instead of twelve and have a bigger yacht.
Because the only people who make any money are the CEOs with the twelve mansions you mention? What about the tens of thousands of jobs that we could use in our economy, right now - or the fact that energy prices are climbing precisely when Americans are suffering through the toughest economic times since the 1920s?
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Renewables are much more likely to produce jobs, and improve our economic outlook. Continuing to service the needs of the oil companies has not improved our economic outlook for a decade now. Why do you think it might suddenly start?
Solyndra (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and Solyndra is a perfect example of this great job producing industry right? No you are talking about creating non sustainable employment with cash taken from the taxpayer. Green energy companies are not profitable and will not be profitable anytime in the future.
I would love to see it myself also but unfortunately I can do simple math.
Re:Solyndra (Score:4, Insightful)
But, as any one could have guessed this was coming, that's not factoring in that said competitors are inherently subsidized by not paying for all external costs. That's a very, very important note. Coal is cheap and profitable, but has huge external costs. Nuclear is very expensive and nowhere near as profitable, but it pays off a much higher portion of its external costs. Same with a lot of greener technology. So it's a market failure that's helping tip the scales.
* There are exceptions, of course. I've heard that the paper industry has been moving progressively more sustainable because it's in their favor. IIRC, modern paper plants obtain most of their power from their own waste. They still do pollute, but then again I imagine that's the fundamental nature of having to serve a tremendous worldwide demand.
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or the fact that energy prices are climbing precisely when Americans are suffering through the toughest economic times since the 1920s?
But there was such a huge backlash against the banning of certain lightbulbs...
Over in this country the government gives grants for people to put solar panels on their roofs. They always get snapped up within half a week. Its an investment which pays for itself (granted over 10 years or so) - you have to pay less (its free energy), and you're not killing the environment.
That's the way forward. Not polluting more so we add farming problems due to climate change , enviromental damage, and lung cancers to the
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If we're using less oil, the energy costs should diminish by an amount, meaning that in the end we're doing better from a purely economic perspective.
Its not really broken window, because the upkeep you need on solar panels (aside from replacing every 25 years or so - by which time technology moved up), is incomparable to the upkeep you need on oil.
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If I remember correctly, obviously depending on where you live - small panels pay for themselves in 5-10 years.
Panels are currently guaranteed for around 25 years.
So basically you're paying 5-10 years of your electricity bill now (sure, its a high cost, that has to be admitted), but then you're getting at least 15 years of a free ride.
I don't know too many places where investments are secure and give you 150%.
And this is just for you putting them on your roof. If you're investing in a large power station wi
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Ah, but is the reduction of pollution really worth the extra cost from an economic point of view, especially when the economy is down in the dumps?
Reducing pollution is a luxury we can ill afford at the moment.
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Yes, it's worth the cost. If you ever lived near a factory before the Clean Air Act you would vehemently agree. That pollution has costs in the most expensive of commodities -- health care. Monsanto didn't go out of business in 1970, and the cost of their goods didn't increase any faster than anything else (cost of oil caused the '70s recession after the Arab Oil Embargo; that and paying for the Vietnam War).
The fact that the price of gasoline more than quadrupled from 2000 to the crash in '08 surely was a
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Aha. I wonder how this can be moderated "Informative". First, it only contains a statement an opinion and no fact. Second, this opinion has been proven wrong over and over again. The only country which still believes that global warming does not exist or is not man made is the US. At least the US-media produces that vision.
Europeans think the CO2-production nowadays is a problem. China and India think it is a problem. The third world countries and pacific states think it is so. But obviously they all are ha
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1 informative, one overrated, and one troll. Two out of three mods got it right. The one who modded "informative" probably works in the oil industry, or holds a lot of BP and Chevron stock, or has simply been brainwashed by the industry propaganda.
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http://www.youtube.com/Potholer54#p/c/0/52KLGqDSAjo [youtube.com]
CO2 is a gas vital to all life on earth.
This doesn't mean that it doesn't have warming effects.
The concentration is very minute
Yes, it is. However, light interacts differently with greenhouse gases than it does other gases. Light passes through most gases without having any effect. Greenhouse gases absorb it and heat up. (On the topic of "concentration is very minute" the same thing could be
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I love how "climatologists" are economically driven by grant money (as if a competent scientist couldn't make a better living easier working for private industry than working for government grants!) but oil producers are altruists who clearly have only humanity's best interests at heart.
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Nobody says climatologists are pure altruists. All people say is that they're generally competent at their jobs, and aren't especially corrupt. Because there's no legitimate reason to say otherwise. There are illegitimate reasons to say otherwise: liars, polluters, the generally corrupt and the stupid have plenty of illegitimate reasons.
Success as a scientist requires that a lot of the science profession agrees that you have professional integrity. Science has some of the most objective, testable and routin
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The scientific community is rarely wrong about a major conclusion that many thousands of scientists agree with high confidence over many years of research
Our latest chemistry Nobel Prize winner disagrees.
http://news.yahoo.com/vindicated-ridiculed-israeli-scientist-wins-nobel-183256852.html [yahoo.com]
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It wasn't "a single Nobel Prize winner". Racial theories, Einstein's relativity, evolution, the settlement of the Americas, deep space and time, quantum mechanics--most major scientific revolutions took decades, sometimes centuries, to be settled and widely accepted. Your faith in "scientific consensus" is based on your ignorance of science, nothing more. Science is ill-equipped to make definitive short-term conclusions. Really the only time a matter is settled in science is when almost nobody is workin
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Informative)
CO2 concentrations have already significantly increased due to human influence (burning of fossil fuels). So there should be more than enough for the growth of plants.
The contribution to the Greenhouse effect is estimated at 9-26% of all greenhouse gases according to Wikipedia. Not dominating, but not negligible either.
So GP was either uninformed or trolling. Probably the latter.
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there should be more than enough for the growth of plants.
In unrelated news, we're also cutting down tons of forests and rainforests. And there is a limit of CO2 up to which plants will grow, more than that and its just extra.
planet heating (Score:3, Insightful)
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So, are you saying simply that our time has come? That it's time to roll over and wait for desertification to happen? That people can do nothing about it? That what is happening now isn't possibly a whole lot faster than it happened ages ago?
It amazes me that people don't think it's absurd to attempt to dam enormous rivers, build rocket ships that go to the planets or tunnel under the ocean but that somehow when it comes to greenhouse gases there is just simply nothing we could or should do.
Yes, things l
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That's right, it's cyclical, and has been forever. We also should not ignore the big fusion furnace at the center of our system, either, though many do.
There's three issues at play in the global warming debate.
1) Is the Earth warming up?
2) What is causing the Earth to warm, if 1 is true?
3) What do we do about it?
Evidence for #1 is tentative, as methods of measuring are highly variable in their effectiveness, and we haven't really been taking good scientific readings for a long enough period of time. Still,
Yes it can (Score:3)
Well make up your mind. Does global warming cause rain or does it cause drought, because it can't cause both because both happen all the time, global warming or none.
Actually yes it can. Adding heat (energy) to a system can sometimes drive it into oscillations, like the pendulum under an old clock. More energy, more oscillation. The system isn't necessarily linear like you are supposing.
So it's entirely possible that adding heat energy to the weather system could make it do all sorts of crazy things
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before it is cut off when it stops matching
That is different from the dendrochronology graphs cut off at both ends (pre 16th century and late 20th century) just how?
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/ [climateaudit.org]
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because his "no warming since 1998" claim relies on some serious cherry-picking of temperature data, and he's afraid of people linking this dishonesty back to him.
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More to the point it seems you're talking more about hippies than environmentalists. It's pretty safe to ignore the ones who've joined hands and begun swaying.
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Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy can't drill oil at low prices ... it's the increased price which is making shale oil profitable, and then only just (which is why he's crying for subsidies, to make even less easily recovered oil profitable). There are security reasons to have your own oil supply, but cheap it's never going to become again.
Wind/Solar and "synthetic natural gas" [sic] have much a better chance of getting large cost reductions going forward.
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Well, it depends what you mean by "cheap". Cheap compared to, say, the mid/late-90s? No. We'll probably never see 99c/gallon gas again in our lifetimes (at least, not under any scenario not involving massive government subsidies to maintain artificially-low prices and rationing of that artificially-cheap (and almost certainly scarce) gas).
Cheap compared to $4/gallon? Probably. The magic price point for shale to become profitable is retail gas prices of approximately $3/gallon. Until the oil industry is conv
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Europeans (or at least Germans) might willingly march back to stone age lifestyles in the holy name of Mother Earth, but Americans (and Russians, and Indians, and China) won't stand for it.
Germans are hardly in the stone ages. They have some of the highest tech energy solutions available - and they have positioned themselves to be leaders in the new energy economy. They currently have 20% renewable energy sources and are on target to decarbonize midcentury. They are also the European country with the strongest economy. So how is Germany able to move beyond combustibles so far ahead of other modernized countries? Their primary advantage is that they don't have fossil fuel funded misinform
Re:Reserves isn't the only reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask your grandpa what a factory was like before the EPA. Environmentalism a luxury in poor countries? Yeah, and so is food.
You have no right to dirty up MY air and water. Clean air is my right.
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The price of the dollar is driven by supply and demand, just like anything else.
The thing that most people miss is that the total supply of "dollars" is consists of both currency units and credit. Credit is a much larger fraction of all the spendable dollars than currency so changes in credit available tend to dominate the behavior of the overall money supply.
Right now credit availability of credit is shrinking on a per-capita basis as loans default and new loans are more difficult to obtain than in the pas
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Uh no.
Carbon Monoxide is unstable and will eventually decay. Its only toxic if you're in a very confined space (which is why you shouldn't run a car in a closed garage).
Plants do use CO2, but we're also cutting rainforests down (good job) and anyway there is only a limit to how much CO2 plants can take. There was a balance before we started with heavy industry.
Other problems with fossil fuels are oxides of sulfur (which contribute to acidic rain and are toxic), Oxides of Nitrogen (pretty much the same), and
Re:Thank . (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of sounds like a drug addict. "I'm going to quit eventually, but right now I need that hit."
Re:Thank . (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904491704576571052525514860.html [wsj.com]
If you're willing to fabricate this fact, why should we believe anything you say here?
Re:Thank . (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming you're indeed an American, quit whining about gas prices and it "killing the economy". Apparently one dollar per liter is currently considered "zomg expensive" (ref: http://gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx [gasbuddy.com]). In Europe, ten years ago, one liter costed anything between 99 and 109 EUROcents (that's $1.32-$1.45). You don't even want to know what they're paying there now.
Re:Thank . (Score:5, Interesting)
It's those low prices which have "killed the economy". Going from $1.50 gallon to $3.50 gallon is a much bigger shock than going from $4.00 to $6.00 gallon.
Gas taxes need to be raised - at a minimum enough to pay for road infrastructure, but probably a good amount more (gradually, of course). But no-one has the balls to do it.
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Yeah -- let's eke out every last bit of strategic oil in US territory! And let's cram it into a bunch of stupid SUVs!! Because That's How America Uses Oil!!!
And let's do this all in the next decade or two, guaranteeing the current generation of oil billionaires a semi-permanent place in history, as the last such. They can get started on their even more gated communities, and wall their future families in thoroughly.