Posted on 03/09/2012 4:15:57 AM PST by Kaslin
Why don’t we figure out what % of the USA the
Tyrant Emperor and his Marxist Czars and Czarinos
represent, ... and what % of US gasoline consumption
is actually consumed by THEM?
Key key word is proven (actually should be called "proved")
Oil is not allowed in the proved reserves column until it is drilled and flow tested.
By keeping large areas not available from exploration and production, he artificially lowers the amount of the actual oil in the ground to be counted as proved reserves.
Bookmark bump.
Another lefty claim is that ‘big oil’ has many wells that are proven, but capped, sitting on them while the price goes ever upward. Thoughts?
Obama is also parroting Marxist rhetoric about the US using disproportionately too much of the “world’s” resources that must be shared with everyone. What the US does with its use of oil is to quite literally feed the world, serve as the world center for new innovation and invention and give ALL its people the highest standard of living in the world. Obama wants to end all this.
And then there’s the claim that the companies aren’t maintaining their refineries, letting them go, and not building new ones, to keep the price of refined goods up.
Sounds like balderdash to me.
His lips move - you know what that means!
Oil companies don’t make money leaving oil in the ground.
If it is owned by a major oil company, it is either flowing or so new the pipeline is a year away to complete then it flows.
Some old stripper wells producing maybe 2 barrels a day get capped when the price falls. When the price climbs and the drill rigs get busy, you cannot justify tying up a rig to rework an oil well for a few barrels a day versus a new well producing hundreds to maybe even thousands a day at first.
The only wells left capped are the uneconomic ones.
We have spent billions upgrading and expanding our existing refineries. Combined with our falling demand, our refinery capacity is now noticeably larger than our refined product consumption.
Note: our total petroleum usuage is larger than the above graph, but that includes about 2.2 MMBPD of Natural Gas Liquids like propane, ethane, etc.
Click the graphs for the data links.
Either way, coal can be converted to liquid fuels and gas, further enhancing the supply. Clean burning coal-gas can also be used to generate the electricity desperately needed for the liberals' sacred electric cars.
The coal gasification plants should be built at or near the mining sites. Underground pipelines should be run to power-plants near the filthy communist cities where it is used, rather than the inefficient power robbing high tension transmission lines currently in use.
So what do you claim is the efficiency of a gas pipeline versus the efficiency of a high voltage transmission line?
Well, doesn’t all of the gas get to where it’s going?
No. Compressor stations are built along the pipeline consuming a portion of the Gas as fuel to keep pushing it along and overcoming the constant pressure drop created by friction.
Gas and Liquid pipelines have losses due to friction. They require some other form energy to overcome those losses. You either burn the fuel in the pipeline, or consume some other source of energy to drive pumps or compressors.
The total pipeline is miles 1,407 miles long.
It has 18 Compressor Stations.
The total installed Horsepower of those stations equals 517,000.
It can carry up to 2,400 million cubic feet per day. This is a very large pipeline.
Some of these stations are compressors as large as 42,000 Hp aircraft derivative jet engines. Other are smaller 10~15,000 Hp Electric driven variable speed drives.
Nuclear plants are Satan, and for some reason so is hydro, but their "fuel" efficiency is not a factor.
The gasification concept is practically pollution-free other than the dust and exhaust from ground equipment. Plus pipelines generate no electromagnetic induction issues.
Gas and Liquid pipelines have losses due to friction. They require some other form energy to overcome those losses. You either burn the fuel in the pipeline, or consume some other source of energy to drive pumps or compressors.
We also have tons of NG, pipelines already crisscross the US. NG is almost free, and could be used to power the booster pumps...I'm not sure if the two are miscible, but they might be, allowing NG to flow from its source and coal gas to be added where it is produced.
Being sold as a cleaner/safer technology, think of the jobs it would create.
Pull out all the stops!
With the glut of Natural gas out there shouldn't the price of propane go down?
There are plenty of wells that are capped, typically because the yield has dropped off as the oil was depleted. It's not economical to continue trying to pump out the oil at the reduced flow rate. The equipment could be moved to someplace else more productive. Or even if it was left in place, the equipment has to be maintained.
If the price gets high enough, then it can become economical to restart production on marginal oil wells. There's no conspiracy -- it's just supply and demand. What is the point of spending $110 to pump out a barrel of oil that you can only sell for $100?
If the price goes to $120, you can make a profit. However, are you sure that the price will stay at or above $120? Or, will it drop again before you can get production started? Think about it, and you'll understand why it's a risky bet.
A lot of the solar boondoggles (like Solyendra) are because Chinese imports reduced the market price per kilowatt to a point where US manufactures can't compete. And, one of the reasons that solar power is still a niche market is because the cost of producing power is STILL more than just buying it from your local electric utility.
If either of these factors were reversed, there would be a huge market for solar panels, and manufacturers would be cranking up the production lines. But, if you were to apply the same leftist analogy: solar panel manufacturers are holding them off the market to inflate the prices.
One last thing to consider: so many people think that "big oil" is making obscene amounts of money. But, they only consider revenues, and not the costs. What is the actual profit margin? You can get the information here:
That has an entry for a lot of different industries involved in resource recovery. The net profit margin for "Major Integrated Oil and Gas" (like Exxon, BP, etc.) is 7.9%. Compare that to this:
You can click on the header entry for Net Profit Margin and sort by profit margin. Look around and you'll see that a 7.9% profit margin is not outrageous. You can even check individual companies. Check out:
Compare those to Apple, Inc. -- which has a 28.20% profit margin.
Just for grins, check the "Semiconductor - Specialized" industry under the "Technology" sector. You'll find most of the well-known names in the solar panel business in that category. Their profit margins will explain why it's a horrible investment at this time.
I don't know where you came up with that concept, but it is far from true. The same impurities in the coal still exist when you gasify the coal. They same sulfurs and the like still have to be recovered.
Coal Gasification is also VERY energy intensive. You have huge losses of energy, orders of magnitude greater than the transmission line losses you were trying to save.
Plus pipelines generate no electromagnetic induction issues.
No, they produce exhaust along the pipeline at every compressor station. They have EPA monitoring and special NOX limitations. They are far from pollution free. And electromagnetic radiation from transmission lines are only a problem for people wearing tinfoil hats.
We also have tons of NG
Yes, over a 1/3 of it is used to generate electric power in this country.
NG is almost free
Dream on. Although it is far cheaper than petroleum, it is far more expensive than the coal you are trying to replace.
Being sold as a cleaner/safer technology, think of the jobs it would create.
Only to the ignorant. First you waste energy and release the same pollutants in the coal gasification plant.
Then you added more engines at the compressor station spreading them along the pipeline as they approach the population center.
Now you have the power plant burning gas, at the population center (EPA attainment area with greater requirements for pollution controls). Also, since the most efficient thermal power plants (combined cycle gas turbine, using waste heat recover) are around 60% efficient, you have to move far more energy in the pipeline than you would have in the electric transmission line.
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