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Posted on 11/23/2009 7:06:23 AM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
About half of the oil in the ocean bubbles up naturally from the seafloor, with Earth giving it up freely like it was of no value. Likewise, NASA satellites collect thousands of images every year, but some of them get passed over because no one thinks there is a use for them.
Scientists recently found black gold bubbling up from an otherwise undistinguished mass of ocean imagery. Chuanmin Hu, an optical oceanographer at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, and colleagues from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth (UMass), found that they could detect oil seeping naturally from the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico by examining streaks amid the reflected sunlight on the ocean's surface.
“Nature’s salad dressing...”
Only if large deposits of vinegar are also located! :)
Thank you for the precise numbers, these FACTS are hard to run across - FACTS which are hidden behind the miasma of Green Propaganda.
About “collateral”...consider everyone to be covered by the healthcare (PC health-management bill) legislation to be part of the “collateral”...everything and everybody in the US is included, especially private property being gobbled up for redistribution. The Ob administration has just ‘overtured’ China to “invest” in our smaller banks..perhaps at 51%? Good point made about collateral.
ping for later
Marked.
Not really, economics has a lot to do with scarcity and allocation of what is available. Peak oil is about maximum optimal flow rates, not running out in an absolute sense.
You don’t ever really “run out” of any resource or commodity. It just gets more expensive to extract. As the prices go up, previously unattainable deposits become financially viable. At some point, the costs & prices lead the consumer to choose an “alternative”."
True ... but the problem is scale [think 85 million barrels a day or one thousand barrels a second] and the resulting difficulties in developing enough of the more expensive oil and the oil substitutes quickly enough and at prices consumers can afford to pay.
With oil, the price signals are such that a few percent of over supply is a truly a glut. A few percent of under supply can push prices through the roof, because the alternatives are expensive and don't happen overnight.
As a rational person, you can take the word of OPEC [which doubled its "proven reserves" in the 1980s without finding additional oil for the most part has been reporting the same numbers ever since] or the US energy information agency [whose model forecasts demand and plugs in supply to match] --- or you can do your own research.
What will you find? What I found is that the information is lacking to really know. What is known is that wells peak, fields peak and countries peak. After peak, the decline can be slow or fast depending on the field or region, but the initial peak is rarely exceed and when this occurs, the decline resumes. We are currently drilling in some pretty hostile environments e.g. 7,000 feet of water, 250 miles offshore and 17,000 feet below the seabed about as deep as commercial oil --- but not natural gas --- has ever been found.
Consider the US. Current production is about half of the 1970 peak. We would need to more than triple current production to supply our current needs. With a couple million wells already drilled, I think the chances of this happening are remote.
Are there new oil provinces yet to be developed? "Yes." Can they make up for the likely peaking of existing fields. "Maybe" but if so for how long?
Think about it. Reach your own conclusions, but examine your assumptions carefully.
Drill for oil so that we can stop the polluting of the oceans!
We are currently drilling in some pretty hostile environments e.g. 7,000 feet of water, 250 miles offshore and 17,000 feet below the seabed about as deep as commercial oil -— but not natural gas -— has ever been found.
We are not drilling in those conditions because oil can’t be found in easier, closer more hospitable conditions
but because of political concerns, NIMBYs etc.
Think about it, though: How many trillions of dollars will need to be spent to develop and deploy the technology to seal the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, which I must point out is next to Texas, from where the Bushes hail? Coincidence? Hmph - just another failure that this administration will need to clean up, so a little less smugness, please, thank-you-very-much.
;)
If you go to Galveston beaches, you’ll find tar and other oil residues on the beaches. Envirowhackos and other newcomers assume it is because of the rigs out in the gulf, wreaking environmental damage. Unfortunately, history is (again) not on the side of the Gaia-worshipping whack jobs. Jean LaFitte noted it in his diaries in the early 1800s. Exxon musta really been getting a jump on the refining business.
Your response: "We are not drilling in those conditions because oil can’t be found in easier, closer more hospitable conditions but because of political concerns, NIMBYs etc."
True about offshore Southern & Central California which are quite prospective but well enough understood that the probability of finding a Saudi Arabia are wildly unlikely. Florida [except for parts of the panhandle not so much in terms of being all that prospective from what I have read -- no sources]. The remainder of the Eastern Seaboard [a question mark.]
Not true of almost all of the remainder of the globe, which is more open than you believe -- even places where national oil companies are in charge have been subject to extensive exploration -- one of the scariest aspects of the whole "plenty of oil" story is the history of exploration in Saudi Arabia -- they have been drilling for a long time and their list of new discoveries is not impressive.
There is plenty of unexplored territory in the Arctic, but that won't be cheap and it will be extremely hostile.
My conclusion: Most of the low hanging fruit has been discovered. We are looking for oil in very remote and technically challenging environments because those are likely to be the only places where giant oilfields are likely going be found in the future. Plenty of small discoveries are still to made in places like TX and OK but although a small operator can do very well, the elephants have been hunted to [near] extinction.
Remember, this is about flow rates and the scale of world consumption [84 million barrels a day.] The world needs elephant sized oilfields or something newer and better in place of oil, and we need it soon.
Funny.. when they were still drilling and pumping off of the CA coast, the amount of natural oil seepage decreased. Now that they are shut down, it’s going again. The environuts are once again, dead wrong.
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Whoops, and thanks hennie pennie!
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