Posted on 10/15/2004 9:25:37 PM PDT by datura
Washington has a shortage of political will to let American workers go get it
By the House Committee on Resources
As oil prices climb to record highs above $50 per barrel, some have asserted that we are "running out" of this resource. In truth, we are not running out of oil in America. We can safely increase domestic production by at least 17.2 million barrels per day by 2030.
"America has no shortage of oil for the foreseeable future," House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) said. "Washington has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it. We have not increased domestic supply in thirty years. As a result, our dependence on foreign oil has skyrocketed to the point where we are sending $200 billion dollars overseas to import this resource. At least a fraction of that sum should be spent at home, to increase supply, lower prices, and create jobs."
"Increasing conservation and the use of renewable and alternative fuels must also be part of a balanced energy plan," Pombo continued. "That is why more than one half of the domestic recommendations in the Administration's energy plan - held up in the Senate for the last four years - targeted these goals. But like it or not, the reality is that America runs on oil right now. We cannot conserve our way out of an empty tank of gas. We have to produce more at home, and there is plenty at home to produce."
By combining conservation efforts with additional domestic production, the United States can close the gap between supply and demand to become more energy efficient. With current production and proposed development in North America, the United States could increase its supply by 17.2 million barrels per day by 2030. Click here to see how.
"Contrary to the claims of special interest groups, we can produce more energy to grow our economy, and continue environmental achievements at the same time," Pombo said. "These efforts go hand in hand. They are not mutually exclusive."
"Secure and affordable energy supplies fuel our economy - they are its lifeblood. In turn, a strong economy fuels investment in the research and technology that give us the positive environmental trendlines we see today. We cannot have one, without the other."
"the funny this is that a lot of wells that were "tapped dry" are filling up again... "
I've read that different places-
http://peakoil.com/fortopic1664-0.html
I think Rush mentioned it once too.
Our water well behaves that way. It's a "slow recovery" well. Pump too much water out in a hurry, and pretty soon the pump is sucking air. Shut the pump down for a couple hours and you're back in business. Never goes entirely dry, even in a drought year.
A texas oil man and family friend told pop, that there was PLENTY OF BIG OIL in texas that would be profitable to pump out of the ground... roughly 50-75cents a gallon ago.
Not even close to running out.
I wonder at times, if OUR supply of oil, may not in fact be larger than that of other "big oil" exporters... proven reserves.
And the professionals say ?
"It costs $250,000 to make hole here in Texas."
Meanwhile, in good ol' liberal New York, the environmental nazis are forcing oil producers to not just cap but PLUG WITH CONCRETE "abandoned" wells. They're also going after some for "polluting" the environment- despite the fact that oil still springs up out of the ground on it's own in Western NY (you can visit the Oil Spring and get tax free smokes on the reservation just off exit 28 of I-86.)
I'm going to go buy one of those ... divining sticks and find some of that oil and drill me a well. $2.43 a gallon for regular. Arco.
AND I'M STILL VOTING FOR BUSH!
"Meanwhile, in good ol' liberal New York, the environmental nazis are forcing oil producers to not just cap but PLUG WITH CONCRETE "abandoned" wells."
Concrete is precisely how you abandon a well. That is done, to permanently and to safely close the well.
No conspiracy here. It is the normal and correct method, not an "environmental nazi" imposed method.
"Concrete is precisely how you abandon a well. That is done, to permanently and to safely close the well.
No conspiracy here. It is the normal and correct method, not an "environmental nazi" imposed method."
I was in favor of keeping these wells available in case oil got real scarce. When prices were at rock-bottom, even the folks who pumped the wells themselves couldn't make money. Now that prices have peaked, those folks would probably love to start pumping again- except they were forced to plug rather than cap their wells. Not enough oil there to be worth redrilling at today's costs, so those fields are lost. I imagine it's the same in every state.
No, no "conspiracy." As my Granddad used to say, "There's no conspiracy- those folks are just flat out doin' this stuff. They're not smart enough to have a plan behind it."
I remember as a small boy my Granddad teaching me to recite "Boiled rats and chicken fat are good enough for Democrats." He worked for every penny he ever had, never took a cent in welfare no matter how tight things got (even in the Depression) and was a staunch Republican until his death at age 99.
Thats 17 million a day? You mean nearly 5 and a half billion barrels a year? What in Hades are they thinking in DC and the oil headquarters?
BP got another American oil company before Amoco. I think it was Sohio.
Dalereed makes a good point. The downside is that the typical California crude tends to be heavy (viscous), asphaltic, and "sour" (contains hydrogen sulfide). This makes it more expensive to develop and refine that your basic West Texas Intermediate.
I worked on several projects insouthern California that, combined, could produce well in excess of 2 billion barrels, plus lots of associated natural gas.
I would imagine that most people do not know that the single most prolific oil well ever drilled in the history of the United States was in the Santa Barbara Channel. To date, it has produced over 30 million barrels of oil (by way of comparison, a "good" well might produce 1 million barrels).
Your chart makes no mention of the California Offshore - a proven area with abundant undeveloped reserves and undiscovered resources.
Concrete plugs are pretty much standard practice today. Are you talking about "re-abandonment"?
A little concrete is nothing to drill through. Shoot, wells are plugged and sidetracked all the time.
If we could find a way of converting enviromentalsits and conservationists into gasoline this country wouldn't ever run out of oil!
Dang. That's what I get for posting after midnight. Those numbers are backwards. 1 of 3 attempts are successful in an oil field, 2 of 3 come up dry. And 1 of 10 wildcat wells stike oil, 9 of 10 come up dry.
LOL!
Thanks, y'all, for your confidence!
Some points:
(1) Unless America is planning on a mega paving project, forget the tar sands and the shale oils, at least for our lifetimes. We don't need them.
They crack into less useable fuel, and the cost of extraction is prohibitive at the present time.
(2) We must concentrate on areas which environmentalists have declared off limits for drilling. We have the seismic data. We need the political will to explore.
(3) Don't expect the major oil companies to be behind any push for more domestic oil production. They are NOT U.S. companies. They are world companies.
They have a win-win situation.
(4) We desparately need more refining capacity, and, again, this is being stalled by environmental concerns. No one realizes how much it adds to the cost at the pump for tankers from Saudi to sit offshore waiting to unload because the refineries are running at capacity.
That said, there is no reason why we couldn't shift from refining Saudi oil to refining our own if we had the political will to find it.
(5) Oil wells are either gas driven or water driven. This means that there is some push toward the producing well bore.
If the push is not strong enough to keep the oil flowing into the well bore, the production will fall off in that well.
This doesn't mean, necessarily, that the well is "dry". It can mean that over a period of time the well will replenish it's supply if the porosity and permeability are sufficient to allow it to do so.
If the well is water driven, the water can overtake the oil, plug the porosity, and the well will dry up, unless someone can invent a way to turn salt water into oil.
(6) I don't know where the idea came from that drilling costs are cheap today. Everything we do today costs much more than it did twenty years ago, even allowing for inflation.
There are many reasons for this, including environmental and safety costs, but a big reason, which seems to get overlooked, is the lack of incentive to find more oil on the domestic front.
Without this incentive, the service companies lack the confidence to expand, and investors lack the motive to invest in the service sector.
This leads to a shortage of everything we use, and this shortage leads to higher prices.
If this seems illogical, try to find a 10,000' to 30,000' rig to drill a well these days.
(7) Wells are plugged with concrete because at some point the casing in those wells will develop holes allowing formation fluids to enter fresh water stratas, not to mention the possibility of having a blowout in a water well close by.
(8) I don't know where this figure of a quarter of a million to drill a well in Texas came from, but I just finished a medium depth well in South Texas which exceeded three million dollars. It will be a gas and condensate well, but the point is that there is no rule of thumb for the cost per foot of a well unless it's in a proven field.
Even then, the cost can vary many hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same depth well.
When GW is reelected, his best approach to this problem is to drill where ever there is indication of an oil trap from the seismic - even if we have to build a location next to Old Faithful.
Aside from that, we have enough natural gas reserves in the continental United States to be energy sufficient if we can get past the same old problems of political inertia.
You have some good info there. I meant to ping you.
I remember reading somewhere that only a small portion of our oil imports comes from the ME......the major sources are Mexico and Canada ?
Is that true ??
STAY SAFE COB1
Thanks Brother!
A fully understandable explanation that even a layman like me could understand.
PS I'm sure you gave the facts to Texas Termite when he visited you on the rig.
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