Posted on 03/27/2015 6:31:32 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
The U.S. should immediately begin a push to exploit its enormous trove of oil in the Arctic waters off of Alaska, or risk a renewed reliance on imported oil in the future, an Energy Department advisory council says in a study to be released Friday.
The U.S. has drastically cut imports and transformed itself into the world's biggest producer of oil and natural gas by tapping huge reserves in shale rock formations. But the government predicts that the shale boom won't last much beyond the next decade.
In order for the U.S. to keep domestic production high and imports low, oil companies should start probing the Artic now because it takes 10 to 30 years of preparation and drilling to bring oil to market, according to a draft of the study's executive summary obtained by the Associated Press.
"To remain globally competitive and to be positioned to provide global leadership and influence in the Arctic, the U.S. should facilitate exploration in the offshore Alaskan Arctic now," the study's authors wrote.
The study, produced by the National Petroleum Council at the request of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, comes at a time when many argue the world needs less oil, not more. U.S. oil storage facilities are filling up, the price of oil has collapsed from over $100 a barrel to around $50, and prices are expected to stay relatively low for years to come. At the same time, scientists say the world needs to drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuels it is burning in order to avoid catastrophic changes to the earth's climate.
The push to make the Arctic waters off of Alaska more accessible to drillers comes just as Royal Dutch Shell is poised to restart its troubled drilling program there.
(Excerpt) Read more at cachevalleydaily.com ...
Ping.
Liberals prefer that the U.S. buys oil from Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Mexico.
You can guarantee that the libs will do their best to block energy independence while insisting that wind and solar farms powered by unicorn farts will power the USA.
We already have oil production from Offshore North Slope Alaska. More leases have been sold, even under the Obama Administration.
funny how any oil WE have always seems to be on the verge of running out, while Muslims seem to be able to dig limitless wells.
And most of the voters will be too stupid to know the difference.... until they can’t afford to heat their homes or fill up their cars.
There is far more oil in shale than there ever was that is easy to get. The overused iceberg metaphor applies.
Extracting oil from shale was a common dinner topic at extended family get togethers when I was a kid back in the sixties.
“The government predicts”
Ya lose the argument righr there. There’s lots of oil shale.
Small Point - I don’t believe the broad time horizons that are always given for Arctic oil, such as ‘10-30 years’.
30 years?
I think 10 years is a long time.
If there’s alloy of $ per barrel to be made, oil companies will find a way to get more barrels out of the ground quickly.
Alah’s kid and goat-daters gotta have something going for them.....
No...because the current decline in ANWAR production transported in the great Alaska Pipeline will eventually be to low for its operation.
That is the Alaska pipeline has to SHUT DOWN.
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