[thackney]

Working in the Oil & Gas Industry, I am just amazed at the opinion that "only" a million and a half barrels per day isn't worth producing. Just how many places in the world can produce that? If this was the criteria, we would need to have cars that run on coal or natural gas because we would never have the gasoline.

[NYorkerInHouston]

The tricky part that I can't figure out yet is this:

What would the impact in prices be of placing 1.5 million bbl/day on the market, not today but say 10 years from now after the field is developed and production ramped up?

Where will daily production be at both domestically and abroad? And what of demand? If demand exceeds supply in the interim that could trigger a recession leading to decreased demand and sharply reduced oil prices. Or perhaps demand will be constantly bumping into supply.

And then there is the issue of other sites of domestic drilling. What are the estimates for the eastern gulf of Mexico? Off shore California? The east coast? I've seen no hard figures (though that's just with Internet searching- I not in the business). Are there any?

What about the capped marginal wells? How many are there? What could they be expected to produce? 2000 each producing 20 bbl a day is a drop in the bucket. 10000 each producing 100 bbl a day is a significant impact.

I'm learning more about this subject but for every answer I find, I seem to come up with two more questions.