Posted on 05/21/2008 10:25:36 AM PDT by Red Badger
Ping!....
Been hearing it for decades that $50 was the break even point for most of these methods to pan out profitably.
Been three years now and they still haven’t bothered to start, they must know something we don’t I guess.
Nothing here that the greenest Roustabout on a South Texas rig does not know.
When you have politicians making the investment decisions, they ignore the advice on how to make their wells more productive. Instead they spend the money on things that get them votes..even though the long term outlook gets worse.
Pemex in Mexico is a good example,,Venezeula,,Iran,,etc. etc. India has somewhat seen the light..Brazil decided to take a new path and has done very well..going after the deep water oil with private company technology.
Actually, Directional Drilling has been done much longer than 15-20 years.
That $50 figure is probably if all other things remain the same. Only they don’t. Everything else is tied up in the price of oil. So, as oil goes up, the $50 figure goes up, too. Like the carrot on the stick, just out of the donkey’s reach........forever......
If I succeed, won't the price go down, because I've just added to the supply?
Won't the sheiks decide they can undercut my price?
So I have a hard time justifying that investment.
Whadda you expect? These are MIT types, not history professors!............
Therein lies the biggest key to all of this, not speculators. Look at the member nations of OPEC, almost if not all, are American/freedom hating countries with heavy marxist influences.
Add that the the ding-dongs in Washington, state officials, and yes, the IDIOT in the voting booth next to you, and you have a VERY VERY bad combination.
If the oil companies can’t utilize some of their mass, windfall profits to at least build additional refineries, we need to ‘redistribute’ their ill-gotten gains to the industrial base, and individual taxpayers, of this country to offset the damage. With extreme riches comes sizeable responsibilities.
When the day comes that they can't (because of the added demand), that removes one threat to such an investment.
The threat from Congress still remains.
NYMEX crude index 132.25 up 3.27
RBOB gasoline up considerably
Fuel oil up even more
This is no fluke although it might be panic. The recent June contract has just expired and we are now using July as the index.
It was sobering.
Yeah, but that day is highly unpredictable, isn't it?
In the meantime, knowing that my competition can undercut me SEVERELY (Oil was $25/bbl about 5 years ago) makes me think twice about jumping in.
It takes years to build a refinery. It takes years to get a permit to build a refinery. It takes years to fight a court battle with the environmentalists' "cease and desist" court orders in order to even start building a refinery. It takes years to fight the NIMBY crowds local government zoning edicts in order to even get a site to build a refinery.........We haven't built any refineries in the US in 30+ years. I wonder why?................
What they know is that if supplies increase then prices will fall. That would be highly unacceptable to the stockholders. Heads would surely roll.
Big oil does not view themselves as "Americans." They see themselves as citizens of the world. The oil companies are ground zero for the implementation of the New World Order and they are willing to accept the short term destruction of the USA in favor of long term prosperity in a world with no borders and therefore no currency exchange rates. In fact, this strategy is forging ahead right on schedule.
Karl Marx would be SO proud of you.
I worked for Shell for 30 years, most of it in exploration and production.
Actually, a lot of the new technique applicability depends on the nature of the field as well the the return on investment. For example, horizontal drilling makes a lot of sense when the field is full of fractures resulting in many, many small “pockets” of oil, each of which would require a separate well to produce via conventional drilling.
I think that whoever wrote this piece for MIT unintentionally obfuscated the distinction between “International” oil companies (which tend to be more technologically advanced) and “National” oil companies which can be advanced but are more often that not really behind technologically -— sometimes astoundingly so (e.g., Russia under the reds).
How exciting! Who are the Shell people who are “ground zero for the implementation of the New World Order and ... willing to accept the short term destruction of the USA in favor of long term prosperity in a world with no borders and therefore no currency exchange rates” -— maybe I know them and get in on it (I haven’t been retired all that long)?
I never dreamed when I was a U.S. soldier that someday I would give up my citizenship and become a “citizen of the world” by virtue of working for a company, but if you say it is so...
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