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.
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This may have been meant as a snarky comment, but it is true. Find it all and burn it until a barrel of oil costs more than a barrel of blood, only then can we focus on sustainability.
Unfortunately, by that time, this world simply can't sustain us anymore
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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!"
And here's how pump prices really work... (Score:2)
Chevron: We really don't care about the price of a barrel of oil one way or the other, except for those of us who have commodities futures in our portfolios. We've just successfully lobbied California to get the gas reformulated again so out of state gas can't compete in our private sandbox. Oh yeah, we'll be taking two of our refineries offline for preventive maintenance to celebrate this achievement.
Re:Good (Score:4)
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You forgot to adjust for inflation.
Inflation was not 40% in the last 10 years.
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No, it was 30% (assuming you mean the CPI).
Of course I'm not sure how you got 40% from $2.00->$3.75
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No. Inflation is the increase in general prices in an economy over a period of time -- specifically, we're talking about price inflation. While there is a direct correlation between rising money supply and inflation under certain conditions, the two are not the same thing.
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Prices don't inflate, prices rise and fall.
Money supply is what inflates - it expands and contracts. Prices do not expand, they rise, they don't contract, they fall.
This entire conversation is based on propaganda that is pushed by the powers that want to confuse you and prevent you from understanding most basic concepts.
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Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Electric cars are not the answer. Better city planning, public transportation, and human-powered transportation are the answers.
The second half of the 20th century was an experiment in car-centric city planning. It failed.
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Better work planning too. Ie, work from home, don't put offices miles away from residential areas or in upscale neighborhoods where workers cant' afford to live. Even then you will have problems due to geography. Ie, SF Bay Area is never going to have great public transportation or city planning because the geography is oddly shaped and confining. Never the less SF area has better transportation than LA which is flat and perfect for designing things efficiently. Still you have yuppies commuting an hour
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Let people telecommute and live wherever the hell you want.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Electric cars are not the answer. Better city planning, public transportation, and human-powered transportation are the answers.
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.
What about those of us that do not live in a city? Everywhere I need to go is 20 minutes from where I live.
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Move out of the sticks, hayseed!
If you move everyone into urban areas, then good luck raising your own chickens, cows, pigs, and growing all your grains, fruits, and vegetables in downtown $YOURCITY.
Let the rest of us know how that works out for you.
Strat
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If you move everyone into urban areas, then good luck raising your own chickens, cows, pigs, and growing all your grains, fruits, and vegetables in downtown $YOURCITY.
Once all the Americans live in the cities, the only people left afuera will be the undocumented agricultural workers. It's all part of the secret plan to cede the Southwest back to Mexico.
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Suburbs have been eating up farmland like crazy these past decades. Killing the suburb and exurb growth is probably the way to keep farms producing in rural areas.
Killing the suburbs through higher oil/transportation costs will make both those in the suburbs AND those on farms move to urban areas. There may be more land available to clear and to farm, but nobody will be able to afford to live out there and clear the land, then farm it, and then ship it into the urban areas to feed everyone. The price will come in human lives, particularly the working-poor and those on Social Security retirement/disability.
Strat
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What are you going to eat, grass clippings city-slicker? Can't grow much wheat in an urban square foot garden; bottom line, you need the hayseeds a lot more than the hayseeds need you.
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I don't live in a city. Have used public transportation in the past, use a bicycle now. Never in my life have I been so fit.
Admit it, you are just lazy.
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I don't live in a city. Have used public transportation in the past, use a bicycle now. Never in my life have I been so fit.
Admit it, you are just lazy.
The closest bus station to my house is 10 - 15 minutes away by car going at an average of 55 - 60 mph. From there, if I choose to take the bus, I am guessing it would tack on an additional hour of travel when you consider the low bus count in the area. Even if it only tacked on 30 minutes, by the time I am at the bus station, I am only 5 - 10 minutes from work by car. Is it really going to save all that much if I just go all the way to work by car?
As far as bikes go, even if I was willing to pad on the extr
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Joe 6-Pack cares about the cost of gas at the pump, not the cost of crude. If we stop subsidizing car traffic by cutting subsidies for oil, refining, road building, maintenance, and parking space and let the price of gas (and tolls and parking rates) go up accordingly, Joe will notice.
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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.
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:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Those are easy to fix. They have all been fixed on a small scale already, and the solution scales well. The problem is that nobody wants to invest the capital to make it work. Everyone expects the government to pony up a trillion dollars or so for the fix, so any private work done before that is at a loss. After all, we spent multiple trillions to kill two people (neither of which tried for the reason we initiated aggression against them), so what's another trillion to greatly improve the US? If we can find so much money to ship overseas, why can't we spend a fraction of that domestically?
Eletric cars are easy. They pre-dated IC for a reason (they were easy). The *only* issue left is that with everything solved, nobody will do it. Selling a few here or there to the niche makes more money and protects the embedded interests better than raising CAFE to 50 and mandating appropriate standards on electric cars, which would solve the problem in less than a year.
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> Those are easy to fix. They have all been fixed on a small scale already, and the solution scales well.
No they haven't. Even you agree with me if you would stop doublethinking for a second and try to think a bit you would see it. But you won't. I write the material below for the benefit of readers who aren't so emotionally invested.
> The problem is that nobody wants to invest the capital to make it work. Everyone expects the government
> to pony up a trillion dollars or so for the fix, so any p
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So which is it? Is EV just waiting for somebody to actually build them or are they a trillion or so in R&D and capital expense away?
It's $0 in R&D away. If there weren't trillions of dollars in oil infrastructure, IC would be worse off. But with 100+ years and trillions of dollars in pipelines and stations and such, it has an advantage. The R&D is done. There is no more required time or money on that. But the infrastructure of electric cars is not equal to gasoline. Wow, and you are the one asserting I'm blind by my emotional attachment.
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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.
206 days left
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Try getting a sig without an error in every word, then someone might take your seriously. Also, a brain.
Well, at least your post shows you have "brains" enough to attack him personally for his sig while completely avoiding refuting anything the OP posted.
That's something, I suppose...
Um, congratulations? :/
Strat
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Sadly, science funding very much depends on public opinion. No political will, no science.
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Not good great!
Living in Alaska gave me a different perspective. The oilpipeline is Alaska. What I mean by that is it funds natives(indians) to survive, pays for education, gives research money to conservation and global warming researching indirectorly by funding the U of Alaska system, brings in 20% of the population in Anchorage and so on.
By 2016 the oil pipeline will be done! The state and its people will be devestated. Any oil they find needs to quickly be pipped to the oil pipeline. The oil industry i
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What makes you feel that you're entitled to live in Alaska? Are you a native? Why should we pawn future generations' climate for cheap oil so that you can live more comfortably in one of the harshest climates on Earth?
--Jeremy
What makes you feel that you're entitled to live? Why should we pawn future generations' climate so that you can exhale CO2 with every breath.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure he can. But why should we, at the pump, subsidize his living there?
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Or we can just not drill and have you pay more at the pump?
Or let Canada get the money instead and really pollute the environment with its tar sands?
Why is it evil to help poor native Americans living in these villages get free education and money for groceries and a better life for their kids? No matter where you spend your money you subsidize people regardless through standard economics. Alaska pays to use its resources because most of the population is native and they own a majority stake in the pipeline. It is their land so why can't they keep it?
So where I used to live has resources and a large part of the economy is more dependent on that than any other source. Natives fish around the oil well in Prudhoe Bay all the time and the water is prestine and clean. They have a stake in making sure it is.
I am not an ulta conservative nutcase or work in the oil industry. I am just giving slashdotters another perspective.
This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
For techy people? Oh well, probably more topical that a fake severed head on a fake TV show.
FWIW, Shell has drilled in the Arctic before - several other exploratory wells. They've done quite a bit of due diligence to mitigate problems including painting their disaster recovery ship a dark blue so as not to scare the whales.
They realize quite perfectly if they have a major spill or blowout then the game is over. Further, there is no assurance that this will go anywhere beyond the exploratory wells - they may not find oil, they may not find much oil, it may cost too much to pull out.
And if they wait long enough, the whole area may turn into a tropical paradise, much like it was when the algae, etc. that created the biomass that subsequently became oil was alive.
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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
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"...how to power civilization..."
We know how...Nuclear.
But that's on the list of OhNoes!
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?
---
Any conversation about a sufficiently complex subject is indistinguishable from babble.
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It should be. They have an appalling safety record. Why anyone would sell them an oil lease is beyond me.
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Because oil is useful? Also, because a couple of years after "the worst thing that ever happened anywhere, ever" there's very little evidence any oil was spilled in the Gulf of Mexico at all. Incidents without lasting harm are easy to forget or disregard, as they should be.
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Oh yeah it makes so much more sense for BP to be drilling in the gulf under Cuban rules and regulations.
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You mean like BP's game is over?
Good point, but keep in mind It would be over if people were to go elsewhere for gas.
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Can't actually do that. Gas for a geographic area is usually supplied by the nearest refinery. Here in Denver all you can get is Conoco gas. I don't care where you go Shell, Wal Mart, Costco, Safeway, etc. you're getting Conoco gas. The only difference is the additives.
Hooray for free market competition!
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Gasoline is fungible. The pipeline operators are just optimizing the physical flow.
Money flow follows entirely different patterns that reflect ownership.
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Nope. BP had a spill on an established field. They get to pretend like nothing's wrong and continue on as before.
Shell wants to start up a new field. They need permission, and they won't get it if they create a PR clusterfuck.
Right? Wrong? Few care. It's politics.
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"And if they wait long enough, the whole area may turn into a tropical paradise ..."
You mean, like with a dramatic shift in the magnetic poles? Do you know something that the rest of us are not aware of, like perhaps being associated with the HAARP program?
BTW, IIRC Shell Oil has had a number of less-than-stellar environmental issues in regions like Nigeria and Brazil. BP also had a reasonable environmental record, but only so long as their operations were located off-shore of a country that actually gave a
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Continental Drift.
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For techy people? Oh well, probably more topical that a fake severed head on a fake TV show.
Hate to be pedantic* but it's certainly a real TV show. The content is fake, but the show really exists.
* blatant lie, obviously
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So long, Arabia (Score:3, Interesting)
The sooner we decouple [wsj.com] from the Muslim extremists the better
Re:So long, Arabia (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
Bzzzzzt Sorry... (Score:2)
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.
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That sounds exactly like the market determining the price. of course you charge as much as the market will bear - you'd be an idiot not to.
Especially when you are selling something of fixed supply.
You have X barrels of oil available to be pumped out of the ground, as supply dwindles price will rise so you want to sell as little as possible now and as much as
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You are correct that location affects price. That's why, for instance, Cushing OK has lower gas ($0.10 to $0.15/gal) prices than surrounding areas, because the existing Keystone pipeline terminates there.
You're arguing that increased production can significantly change prices on a local level, and that delivery costs are a big issue. If that was the case, no one would care if the XL pipeline is extended from Cushing to the Gulf--which is in progress. The purpose of adding that leg is to get oil to the refin
Re:So long, Arabia (Score:5, Funny)
"the US imports more oil from Canada than any country in the Middle East"
But of course yes. Why the hell would any Middle East country import oil from Canada?
Economist article on Arctic warming (Score:5, Interesting)
The Economist has a funny quote in their article -http://www.economist.com/node/21556800 - on how faster-than-expected warming in the Arctic will open up previously inaccessible resources:
"Oil companies are reluctant to admit that climate change plays a part in their northward shift. They do not want to be seen to be profiting from the environmental damage to which their activities have contributed."
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Nothing to worry about. The Heartland Institute has their backs. They can safely ruin the environment while the Heartland Institute and like-minded organizations go around teaching school children that God wants us to puke CO2 into the atmosphere and that nothing can possibly go wrong with it.
Re:Economist article on Arctic warming (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not the only ones. Russia has also been making noises about creative interpretation of the international law rules about territorial waters. The UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (which the US has signed but not ratified) allows countries to measure their territorial waters and exclusive economic zone from the edge of the continental shelf rather than from land. Russia has claimed that a undersea mountain range crossing over the North Pole is part of the East Siberian Shelf, which if allowed gives them sovereignty over the North Pole and exclusive economic control over a vast swath of the Arctic Ocean running from Komsomolets Island to almost Greenland.
With about equal justification, Denmark has argued that the same range is an extension of Greenland, and Canada that it is an extension of North America. Russia has already sent a deep submersible to plant the Russian flag at the North Pole. If there are significant resources found in an ice-free region of what is now international waters, we could well see a serious conflict develop as each claimant seeks to control who gets to extract those resources.
This business of allowing territorial claims out to the continental shelf is insane, and very dangerous.
Of course they are. (Score:3)
They're desperate, as they should be. There's less then 40 years of conventional oil at current usage rates. Far more importantly, the remaining oil is going to have declining energy return all the way to the bottom. If the oil companies can put the days of reckoning off for five more years, they've done well for themselves, and we have that much longer before people start starving.
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Which has nothing to do with overall supply, and even less to do with depleting energy return of hydrocarbons over time.
Numbers. They're good things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [wikipedia.org]
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.
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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.
It's funny you should mention tobacco... every time I hear about the push to drill in the (newly ice-free) Arctic, this [abcnews.com] image (of the cancer victim who has figured out that his newly installed throat-hole makes a fine nicotine delivery mechanism) is what comes to mind.
Alaskan Pipline may have to shut down (Score:5, Interesting)
I drove along the pipeline road from Valdez to Fairbanks 6 years ago. Its an amazing thing to see,
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you're not thinking fourth dimensinally, Marty. why use a pipe when we can have caravans of supertankers burning #2 bunker oil? That makes demand even higher, and drives up shareholder and executive satisfaction.
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I was speaking of ignoring Alaska altogether and getting oil from the arctic ocean floor. oil spills won't matter as Alaska will become a third world shit hole, and we already export our pollution to those.
A decade to production? (Score:2)
"...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."
Thats the real problem right there. In 10 years it might not even be needed with how fast technology advances.
Politicians... (Score:2)
Obama, the Republican's Democrat...
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One spill wasn't stopped. Therefore, no spill can be stopped.
I applaud your flawless logic.
Clap.
Clap.
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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.
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...or that the first person to call the opposition names in a debate is the first side that loses?
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Go back and look at the causes of that oil spill and why it was unable to be plugged quickly. It was easily preventable, and Shell should be making doubly sure that all of their safety devices work.
If Shell has a spill in the Arctic on the scale of BP's spill in the Gulf then NOBODY will be allowed to drill in the arctic for probably another decade. The environmental groups will go absolutely nuts.
If Shell does not have a spill in the next decade it will be a lot easier for them to convince the environmen
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That implies that either the arctic etc have infinite value, or that the increased supply of oil has zero or negative value. Neither is true, as far as most people are concerned. Consequently,
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You make no sense, can you please pull your head out of your ass explain that random collection of characters you typed?
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No seriously, go back and re-read what you wrote. It only makes sense in your head because there is a lot of context you are not writing out that exists only in your head.
I don't know what is up with you today, but you are being a huge fucking asshole, it is probably best for you to get up and take a little walk and clear your head.
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Congratulations you have managed to write out a complete thought!!!
There should be balloons and cake!
And here is one example of you just being an asshole without adding anything to the discussion.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2942817&cid=40471273 [slashdot.org]
So anyway, in your opinion, what precautionary measures would you like them to implement?
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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
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Oh they knew exactly how to stop it. It's a simple hydrodynamics problem. You need to drill a relief well to inject mud down at the bottom where there's zero ambient pressure, rather than trying to force it down through oil exiting at 10,000 psi at the top. But a relief well would take months to drill, and every day the spill c
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Such an oil spill could be stopped in a matter of days instead of months, if they were required to drill a relief well simultaneously with the main well. Other countries manage to enforce this simple precaution, but the US government is too beholden to the interests of industry.
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Penguins in the Sahara?
Giant electric penguins! When we paint the sand white it looks more like snow then snow.
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Penguins are in the antarctic.
When referencing cute cuddly arctic animals go with Polar Bears and Seals.
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I'll start drilling your mom...
Hi, Eugene! [slashdot.org]
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> Meantime, many major car companies have come out with either EVs or plug-in hybrids.
Which tend to sit on lots unsold even with epic subsidies as customers don't buy them in droves. The only people who do buy them are yuppies with more money than common sense, who also tend to buy them as a second or third vehicle so their range problems aren't much of an issue.
> the oil industry could well find itself in Kodak's shoes
The conversion to digital cameras didn't become game changing until digital was be
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EV isn't better in any way than ICE yet
Except for smoothness, quietness, instant-on torque, direct drive (no gear changes), drivetrain reliability (much fewer moving parts), 'fuel' cost, emissions, energy source independence and a host of other areas. The only areas where ICE is objectively better are refueling time and weight.
Go drive a Tesla Roadster. It's astonishing.
Already Active in the Arctic (Score:3)
As a Norwegian I don't understand your frankly ignorant attack on Arctic resource exploitation. We have been active in this region for a long time, with rapidly increasing activity levels the last two decades.
As an Arctic nation we are very concerned with regards to our environment and safety. We have a proven track record.
May I ask if you have any real knowledge of the region or indeed oil & gas exploration?