Posted on 05/19/2008 8:08:02 PM PDT by Fred
You make some very valid points regarding the Saudi’s future prospects to export oil.
The President brilliantly used the trip to beat up on the Democrats for making the problems worse by NOT agreeing to domestic drilling and further exploration.
You claim oil is in decline, but I’ve read about at least three large ‘finds’ in recent years. One is the Bakken area, straddling Canada and the US, which was already known, but not the volume available from it, a huge area off the coasts of Alaska and Canada, and conveniently OUTSIDE the area claimed by Russia, and another area off the coast of Brazil.
What is this with people fixated on the President holding hands with the Saudi leader? I’ve seen him do that with several older folks. Looks like gentlemanly behavior to me; nothing ‘weak’ about it.
Thus, it is not the hold handing or the kiss but rather that due to our dependence on foreign oil Our President had to abide by the traditions of the Rat Bastards that supply our oil.
BTW-I have spent my fair share of time in the Kingdom and it is by far the most oppressive Third World S4ithold I have ever been, and I have been to more than 40 nations most of which are in the Third World.
The Saudis raised production earlier this month by 300,000 barrels per day which accounts for .0036% of the worlds daily consumption or around six minutes.
The problem is one of scale and flow rates.
The Bakken has a very large areal extent. Elm Coulee in MT, and the Parsol region and a few other areas in ND have produced some very nice wells. However, my point is that to achieve energy independence, we would need twice our 1971 U.S. production, which is about 4 times our current production. The Bakken will help. The Bakken is not a cure.
I believe the Arctic oil you are referring to is purely conjectural. It may be there in vast quantities but then again maybe not. And after that? Prudoe Bay peaked at well over a million barrels a day. Today? Four hundred thousand and sliding.
Brazil looks promising, but the oil that is being touted is in 7,000 feet of water and a further 16,000 feet below the sea bed including a long interval of salt that will require some interesting technology to handle. And to exploit it, Petrobas has tied up 85 percent of the rigs capable of this sort of deep water work.
The point is that none of the discoveries you have pointed to would have been of interest if better prospects in less hostile and less expense locals had been available.
The world will find more oil. Half of the readily recoverable stuff is still in the ground. The key is peak extraction rates and the challenge of offsetting the 4 to 8 percent decline curves of existing production.
Think of the scale. One thousand barrels a second. Thirty billion barrels a year. And rising. And the world has never found that much new oil in any year ... and has not replaced reserves in any year since 1985 when consumption was thirty percent lower. What else? Well pretty much all of the large high flow reservoirs in the U.S, North Sea, Russian [probably], Mexico, Kuwait, ... and probably Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are in decline.
Watch Ghawar. One field — five million barrels a day — that was thoroughly explored before the western oil companies were booted out of AARAMCO ... and has produced well over half of its reserves since. When Ghawar goes into decline watch out. That one field produces as much as the entire U.S. and unless the western majors missed the boat, it is getting old and tired.
If you want to believe the latest press release from the oil minister of Saudi Arabia or Iraq, you are free to do so, but see no basis for betting my future on those people.
Oil is in decline. Each day the earth contains 82,000,000 less barrels of oil than it did the day before.
Saudis Increase Oil Production
The Washington Times | May 17, 2008 | Patrice Hill
Posted on 05/17/2008 7:12:14 AM PDT by kellynla
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017346/posts
Bush: Saudi Oil Boost ‘Doesn’t Solve Our Problem’
(Pelosi, where’s my lower gas prices?)
fox news | 5/17/2008 | AP
Posted on 05/17/2008 7:40:39 AM PDT by tobyhill
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017355/posts
Saudi oil output hike would not solve US problems: Bush (W tells it like it is)
Breitbart.com | 5/17/08 | Breitbart
Posted on 05/17/2008 7:42:43 AM PDT by zeebee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017360/posts
Gulf states may soon need coal imports to keep the lights on
Times Online | May 19, 2008 | Carl Mortished
Posted on 05/19/2008 9:23:33 PM PDT by Fred
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2018493/posts
Iraq could have largest oil reserves in the world
Times Online | 5/20/08 | Sonia Verma
Posted on 05/19/2008 3:50:49 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2018325/posts
Mexico’s Oiling Days Are Numbered
IBD | May 16, 2008
Posted on 05/16/2008 6:41:32 PM PDT by Kaslin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017179/posts
Bush Faults Democrats for Gas Prices
The Washington Times | May 18, 2008 | Sean Lengell
Posted on 05/18/2008 6:47:52 AM PDT by kellynla
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017638/posts
Gas Prices Blame Game (”stop stalling...start drilling”)
The Washington Times | May 18, 2008 | Ed Feulner
Posted on 05/19/2008 9:55:47 AM PDT by kellynla
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2018145/posts
Your Energy Future Under the Democrats
American Thinker | May 19, 2008 | Larrey Anderson
Posted on 05/19/2008 5:47:10 PM PDT by kingattax
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2018405/posts
BDS, they have nothing else to contribute.
Why wouldn't they be of interest? The engine of Capitalism is oil, and if we can't get it from the usual suspects, why NOT look any place we can to see if we can find more? Oil Companies are in the business to do just that.
Technology has improved considerably since oil was first discovered, and areas that were thought to be unusable just 20 years ago, can now be tapped.
Right now, I believe most of our oil comes from allies like Canada and Mexico, NOT Saudi Arabia, or anyone else in the Middle East. That being said it would still be good to try for energy independence, and I believe we will be better served developing a safer nuclear power system to complement our oil exploration and discovery. Wind and solar have not yet proven themselves for large scale delivery, but could be used in small applications. Who knows? Maybe the technology for those will present more opportunities for their use in the future.
How do you know there isn't any more? There's a LOT of land and ocean that remains untapped.
As I said before, he was just acting gentlemanly by going along with their cultural traditions. Nothing weak about it, and I don't believe it has anything to do with our needing their oil, since I don't think we don't get most of ours from them, anyway.
4 billion barrels: a little over a 6 month supply for the US. Woopty do. It just might reduce OPEC market share by 0.1%. Yeah, that's sure going to make a dent in oil prices./sarcasm
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for domestic drilling. There's a valuable resource under our soil and we would be stupid not to use it. Drilling rights should be auctioned off to the highest bidder and the proceeds returned to the taxpayers as a refund.
But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that domestic drilling is somehow going to make a difference in what we pay at the pump. Oil prices are set in a global market by global supply and demand; the increase in supply we will get from more domestic drilling is just plain too small to make a difference in the price. Econ 101.
Without question, there is oil that we have not yet discovered. However, the earth has 82,000,000 less barrels of oil today as it had yesterday. In other words the earth is not making more oil.
It does not matter how much oil We get from Saudi Arabia however, it does matter how much oil Saudi Arabia puts on the World market each day.
Exactly. It amazes me how many people forget that the price of oil is set by global supply and demand. How much we import, or not, is immaterial. The only thing that can bring down what we pay at the pump is a significant expansion in global production, and it's highly doubtful that any amount of domestic drilling is going to amount to more than a drop in the bucket.
First, it is one of the best summations of the Bakken situation I have seen.
The first wave of Bakken Horizontal wells were drilled in the Shale.
Depending on where in the Williston Basin you are, there is one shale or two, within the areal extent of the Bakken; the formation does not outcrop.
In between the shales lie the layers of current interest, known as the Middle Bakken.(It is still called the Middle Bakken if the Lower Shale is not present, as in Elm Coulee.
The difference is significant when comparing the performance of the first horizontal drilling wave to the second, because the rock types are different.
The Middle Bakken is a silty, siliceous dolomite with stringers of sand and siltstone in the Elm Coulee Field, and in North Dakota along the Nesson Anticline is composed of interbedded/interlaminated sand, silt, granular/peloidal carbonates, locally dolomitized, and with chalky/shaly interbeds. North Dakota Geological Survey page with far more data than I care to summarize here, in case you are interested.
Even comparing the wells in just the two different field areas with which I am most familliar, the lithologies vary considerably, as do the reservoir characteristics, and neither of these equate to the dense highly carbonaceous organic shale of the overlying and underlying shales, believed to be the primary petroleum source strata for the formation.
For that reason, it is difficult to compare the performance of the horizontal wells from the '80s with the current crop, except in the most general terms.
Generally, there seems to be a fairly consistent and steep rate of decline in production during the first six months, fairly normal for most horizontal wells. The best wells will reach or come close to reaching payout in that period, and did so even with $25 oil (and cheaper drilling costs), at least in Elm Coulee early on. (I do not recall hearing anything about Ryland Oil Corp., BTW, but people move and the ones I knew of from out here may have and not be mentioned in their report).
They will show a sharp initial (first year) decline, then level off to a fairly steady but lower rate of production with a much slower decline rate.
For the few I have been able to follow, that is about 1/5-1/6 of the IP, but that is not a statistically significant sample.
(My primary business is in drilling new wells, and while I would love to have unfettered access to production data, I do not).
Naturally, as more wells come on line, the ability of new production to affect the production per well average decreases, unless there are more new wells than existing wells, which won't happen, there are just not enough rigs.
These wells will perform somewhat differently, in that the strata drilled have better porosity and permeability than the initial wave of horizontals drilled in the shale, and are more amenable to hydraulic fracturing than the shale was, and both drilling and frac technology has advanced considerably.
As for frac technique, that is currently undergoing ongoing research and has been improving fairly steadily, so overall recoverable oil may outperform estimates, at least in some wells or field areas.
Although this is a 'hot' play, and probably will be for years, we are aware that it will not keep the country running. Still, every little bit helps, and it is nice to be involved in the development from the early days of one more domestic source of oil.
The answer to replacing foreign oil with our own remains one of a balanced, multifaceted solution, involving different energy sources where they can be appropriately utilized, and finding some more large oil plays (offshore?) which are likely to be in areas we are currently forbidden to drill in. No single field will supply all our needs, but many will each contribute what they can, if we can get the Congressional dog out of the proverbial manger.
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