Oil Reserves Are Increasing

educateyourself.org ^ | April 6, 2005 | George Crispin

[gathersnomoss]

...."which leads to the speculation that the world has limitless supplies of petroleum."

Would God place a limit on oil? Water? Heat from the Sun? Food? Clean air?

If you believe that there is no God, as some believe, then you can see how humanity is in danger. Keep the faith!

[Smokin' Joe]

I have worked as a wellsite geologist on close to 150 wellsites (including numerous wildcat ventures, and multilateral horizontal wells) in 7 states in the US over 25 years, and not one of those wells blew out. One rig had a small fire in the pumphouse, which was extinguished by rig crews with a minimum of damage (mostly wiring and paint).

Fewer than 10% of those wells were 'dry' holes (economically infeasible).

At any given time there are roughly 2200 rigs drilling in the world, and drill rates have increased phenomenally since I started (wells which used to take 5 months to drill now take 6 weeks or less.)

While blowouts make spectacular news footage, so do school slaughters.

Similarly, the vast number of oil wells are drilled with nothing approaching a blowout, just like millions of children going to school daily, more endangered by the curriculum or the contents of their lunch than a lunatic gunman.

Unfortunately, both accidents and lunatics have a tremendous media impact. Both are usually aimed at the wrong people.

Most of the oil well fires in the last two decades were deliberately set (Kuwait), and those were extinguished far faster than anyone initially thought possible.

While the industry has always been safety concious to some degree, the last twenty years have seen sweeping changes in safety programs which actively do post-accident analysis and take preventive measures to prevent recurrences.

When no two wells are exactly the same, even in the same field, there are nearly infinite oportunities for problems or improvement, but the major problems have been mostly covered. The remainder has been the continuing education of highly capable personnel and an enhanced sense of professionalism on the part of rig crews.

Gone are the days of "wooden derricks and iron men", replaced by highly efficient and educated personnel, computer monitoring systems, and very well developed blowout prevention science applied onsite to catch situations long before they become critical.

Drilling has become far safer than it was when I started in the oil patch, because it is clearly economically advantageous to not burn down multimillion dollar oil rigs and kill off the hired help. Good hands take time to train.

As for people not being able to drive the boat, or some nitwit digging a hole through a well marked pipeline, the oil drilling industry gets blamed for what are essentially transportation accidents. When you consider the millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas transported daily in the US, the safety record is far more impressive than that of people driving their kids home from school.

That said, sure, accidents have brought pressure on the industry, but there really are no instances in this day and age where it is not economically advantageous to get it right, environmentally speaking. A load of oil delivered has profit potential, one spilled is a huge liability. Although public pressure has helped enhance awareness in the industry, the fact remains that no credit is given by the environmental groups or the MSM for progress along safety or environmental lines. Ironically, most of the crews working on domestic land rigs live somewhere near the wellsite, and have an interest in not soiling thier own back yard.

There exist a substantially vocal group, though, for whom good is never enough, whose raison d'etre is to prevent any drilling, either from NIMBY or alleged environmental concerns. Some of the hype they muster is similar to the Brady Bunch in re firearms. (Overblown, overplayed, and overhyped.)

When you consider all the 'extra' oil I have found in my career that clients did not anticipate (several million barrels) only adds up to lighting the East Coast for a few weeks, (if that), it might put things in perspective as to just how much oil is moving around out there.

When there is a transportation accident, it tends to be big, even though it is just a drop in the proverbial bucket. I am not making excuses, because I wouldn't want a tanker load of crude washing up on my beach either, just saying the safety record is actually pretty darned good.

Note, too that lately there has been a trend to label anything 'eeevil' as "Big" --Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big everything but Smiling Enzyte Bob is supposed to be 'eeeevil'.

While there are numerous smaller oil companies, we never hear about the evils of 'small' oil...

[Captain Rhino]

When there is a transportation accident, it tends to be big, even though it is just a drop in the proverbial bucket. I am not making excuses, because I wouldn't want a tanker load of crude washing up on my beach either, just saying the safety record is actually pretty darned good.

Thanks for your informative reply.

Your comment makes me think of the similar statements that are inevitably made after a major airline crash. "The most dangerous part of the trip is driving to the airport...safest mode of transportation...blah, blah, blah." Unfortunately, when things do go wrong, they usually are spectacular.

If the public would just stop and think about it, they too would realize that a lot of smart, well-educated, and dedicated people work in the oil industry (and many others) and they have a vested and really personal interest in ensuring their operations are safe, efficient, economical, and environmentally sound.

But, like a lot of other parts of the infrastructure people build their lives upon, they don't think about it until something really spectacularly negative occurs.

Then they are feed with the hysterical, anti-business, pro-radical environmentalism line by the MSM because, quite frankly, that's all they learned in journalism school and in the generally hysterical, liberal, anti-business, pro-radical environmentalism atmosphere that exists on most college campuses these days.

(I sometimes think that undergraduate degrees in journalism should be discontinued and applicants for the journalism certificate/advanced degree must first have attained BAs/BSs in a field they want to report on. Then they might actually know how the industry is organized and works as opposed to buying the critics' propaganda hook, line, and sinker.)

[Smokin' Joe]

(I sometimes think that undergraduate degrees in journalism should be discontinued and applicants for the journalism certificate/advanced degree must first have attained BAs/BSs in a field they want to report on. Then they might actually know how the industry is organized and works as opposed to buying the critics' propaganda hook, line, and sinker.)

While I agree in principle, I am afraid I would get really bored watching stories about dime store sociology and the latest psychobabble. (8^D)

OTOH, I could go back for a couple of journalism courses and make far better money than I do currently as one of the rare science writers out there....I'd write a tighter bit than these late-night ramblings..

[hripka]

I have heard that there was:

Oil, Oil Everywhere
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | Sunday, January 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST | PETER HUBER AND MARK MILLS
Posted on 01/30/2005 10:24:37 AM CST by Woodworker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1331914/posts

Also, another solution:

Anything into Oil(solution to dependence on foregn oil?)
DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 ^ | May 2003 | Brad Lemley
Posted on 04/21/2003 7:57:41 AM CDT by honway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897232/posts

[jackbill]

The ConAgra plant in Carthage, MO is either shut down or is in very limited production, and the cost of the end product is much higher than originally estimated.

One major problem - a horrendous odor.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/archives/story.php?story_id=92685

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/articles/0,15114,1018747,00.html

[RightWhale]

The oil deposits can probably never be pumped dry as if they were gas tanks. It might be that if oil production is stopped for a few [million] years that many of the fields would regenerate to a degree. So, in the long term, which probably is something greater than the expected lifetime of civilization, oil would be available to the next sentient lifeform to dominate the planet.

[ckilmer]

the problem was more than just the odor. that will be fixed. the problem is that the US government did not ban meat products from animal food supplies. the plant was built on the assumption that because of mad cow disease the government would disallow meat products from animal feed. that didn't happen so now they have to buy the turkey offals for the same price that feed producers buy it for. the second thing that didn't happen that was susposed to happen was that the government was susposed to give them tax credits. as a result, in order to make a profit oil has to be up around $80@ barrel.

changing world technologies as a result will open a bunch of plants in europe where they can get better tax breaks--and the meat byproducts are banned so they can get the feed stock free.