Posted on 05/04/2005 6:52:14 PM PDT by kellynla
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A tiny oil company has snapped up leasing rights to a half-million acres in central Utah that it says could yield a billion barrels or more of oil.
Geologists are calling it a spectacular find the largest onshore discovery in at least 30 years, located in a region of complex geology long abandoned for exploration by major oil companies. Its turning out to contain high-quality oil already commanding a premium at Salt Lake refineries.
With the secret out, industry players expect a bidding war to break out at the next Utah leasing auction, set for May 17 in Salt Lake City.
At todays prices the oil reserve could bring Utah $5.6 billion in royalties, state auditors conservatively estimate. Although the discovery is still playing out, the oil will take years to recover and some skeptics question the companys projections for a region yet to be fully surveyed.
Its just very highly unlikely because the U.S. onshore has been picked clean, if you will, said Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at spokesmanreview.com ...
that's already being done. can it handle the new find ?
it appears so...
Actually, Gheit knows what he is talking about and is well (no pun intended) respected.
Question is: what quality of oil? It's been well-known for years that the western U.S. and Canada have gigantic oil reserves -- making Saudi Arabia look like Israel in terms of oil wealth. Problem is that it's horrifically low quality -- tar sands and oil shale. It would cost more to produce most of it than it's worth at today's prices (although some tar sands are now profitable thanks to the price hikes of the past few years).
A billion barrels of crap is still crap.
All I know is what's in the article I posted.
"Its turning out to contain high-quality oil already commanding a premium at Salt Lake refineries."
Then the geologist plunged to his death from a helicopter. I'm not sure if it was murder or suicide, but it turned out the samplings in his report were "salted" with gold.
Shortly thereafter, the whole thing collapsed. I believe the shareholders lost all their money.
Vaguely. I used to know a group a "businessmen" who were always in one scam or another. Gold was one of those but it was using a new arsnic extraction method for removing the gold fines from the dirt in and around old gold mines. Fortunately, I was always smart enough to withstand the hype and promises of instant riches.
Char :)
...I imagine that made "Roasting Hot Dogs/Toasting Marshmallows" quite exciting...adding to the "POP" in campfire stories. :)
Will the majority of Americans ever realize what this man did to our country?
Mark Twain always said a mine was a hole in the ground owned by a liar.
Utah penny stocks are even worse!
No they won't until we develop new refineries. Thats the problem the ecoterrorist (Sierra Club et al) have blocked any attempt to build new refineries.
Utahns would welcome this find, if it proves to be more than smoke and mirrors. We'll see when the leases go up for bid on May 17th, the big boys don't often get fooled as much as the ordinary folk the hucksters go after in a scam.
This guy needs his logic chip replaced.
I think it may be due to seepage from extant oil pools into the well area.
If it's in Utah, it's got to be a scam.
BTW, 1 billion=1000 million, which would light the east coast for about 3 years.
Good for them, but we'll keep drilling.
That is only part of the problem. The major problem is that Saudi Arabia in at 99% of production capacity and has no incentive whatsoever to increase capacity. The same can be said for the rest of OPEC who are either all at capacity or purposefully holding back on production in order to keep the price of oil high.
In other words: If they cannot produce it, we cannot refine it.
For about a week, until OPEC got its stuff together and cut production. While this might shift the trade balance a tad, I do not expect a major impact on prices.
One well is a long was from a field at peak production, complete with the transportation infrastructure to get that oil to refineries which are working at 98% now.
Besides, I have worked on a few 15-20 well programs where we drilled the last well first.
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