Doug from Upland will be interviewing David Schippers tonight on Radio FreeRepublic! This is a DON'T MISS SHOW!
A lot of us have been saying that there is no shortage of oil. If there was a genuine shortage of oil, OPEC would not be a necessity of the Opecker Princes.
The day that we become independent of Opecker Oil is the day that Islamic Terrorism will start to shrivle up and die without the financing the terrorists get from the Opecker Princes thanks to our petro $'s.
Maybe there will be enough extra oil for the Axis of Whining Weasels , the Euro Trash countries. Then, they can lick our boots instead of the Opecker Princes's slippers.
Abort the Opecker Princes by aborting Opec!
What's that? Oh. Never mind.
See http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/ and then decide how many SUVs you should buy.
This is a key, and very false statement, but it's critical for those making this argument.
In almost every case, geologists and petrophysicists believe that oil is formed in shales or other source rock, and has migrated upward until it reaches a trap or seal which it cannot penetrate. That is almost NEVER where the oil itself was formed.
It leaks upward, just like an air bubble trying surface from underwater. Subtle things, like deep earthquakes, far too mild to be felt at the surface, can fracture rock and permit oil or gas to migrate upward from where it is currently trapped.
I wish I had a dollar for every well I've been involved with that tested rock where it's obvious oil used to be.
Some fields will refill, simply because a new migration path for oil has been opened. It does not imply in any way that the supply of oil is limitless.
Could somebody kindly explain to me why natural oil spills that make the Exxon Valdez seem like chump change are apparently no big deal to the environment when done in the fish-rich, heavily populated Gulf of Mexico; yet, our nations' huge energy reserves in places like a few thousand acres in remotest-corner-of-the-earth ANWR can't be expoited because of "pollution" and environmental concerns?
Am I missing something here?
The world has more oil not less
The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth
Thomas Gold
U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 1570, The Future of Energy Gases, 1993
Doug from Upland will be interviewing David Schippers tonight on Radio FreeRepublic! This is a DON'T MISS SHOW!
There was an interesting study I read a few years ago. The were many smallish oil fields discovered on Texas railroad lands in the decades prior to the 1930's. When the big discovery made in East Texas drove the prices down, many of these older, small fields were shut in. Some of them sat for decades. Others had sporatic re-development. In a few wells, there were recorded reservoir pressure measurements prior to long shut in intervals. When prices spiked in the late 1970's, a few of these wells were re-entered and re-logged (primarily looking for bypassed, or behind pipe reserves). But lo! and behold!, reservoir pressures were found to be much higher than when shut in, and some almost back to original (estimated) pressures. There were only a couple of possibilities, of which natural recharge was one.
I'm not a petroleum engineer, but the geolgical concepts behind recharge are sound. It is however, a dynamic equation. Time is the crucial factor. Also, proximity to an active petroleum system (in oil field lingo - how close you are to the "kitchen") is essential.
This is in my "back yard." The offshore seeps at Coal Oil Point (so named because the early settlers thought the tars seeps were coming from underground coal beds) generally leak tarry oil at the rate of 100-150 barrels per day, depending on weather and temperature (1 barrel = 42 gallons). This area has been leaking at this rate for thousands of years. The seeps also emit a huge amount of natural gas. Back in the early 1980's, ARCO place two steel pyramids on the ocean floor over 20,000 sq feet of prolific gas seepage. The amount of gas collected was enough to supply the domestic gas consumption of a small city (25,000 people) - each and every day! This was the equivalent of several tons of reactive hydrocarbon pollutants. It kept the City of Santa Barbara in compliance with EPA requirements!
The environmentalists in the area still mislead the public by claiming that much of the natural seepage is coming from those "bad old offshore rigs." I have spent over 20 years of my career fighting such non-sense, but to little effect.