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Oil: The Real Green Fuel (It's counter-intuitive, but oil is greener than “green” fuels)
National Review ^ | 06/16/2010 | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 06/16/2010 6:31:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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The one question I have is this --- WILL THE WORLD EVENTUALLY RUN OUT OF OIL ? Or is the earth continually giving it out, meaning, it will last indefinitely as long as this planet survives ?
1 posted on 06/16/2010 6:31:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s not about “green” anyway, it’s about “red”.

They, the elitist ruling class, don’t want the hoi-polloi using energy and living a lifestyle close to that which the ruling class lives.


2 posted on 06/16/2010 6:33:34 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Remember in Dancing w/Wolves when the Indian ax'd "How many white man come?"

And Kevin just looked up at the stars and pointed.

That's how much oil.

3 posted on 06/16/2010 6:35:30 AM PDT by norraad ("What light!">Blues Brothers)
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To: SeekAndFind
You could quintuple and then quintuple again the output of wind and solar and it wouldn’t reduce our dependence on oil. Why? Because we use oil for transportation, not for electricity.

Pigressive lib lurkers, I hope this statement makes sense to you...but somehow I doubt it.

4 posted on 06/16/2010 6:37:29 AM PDT by ILS21R (A 200 year supply of oil... in Alaska....right now)
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To: SeekAndFind

We already have the greenest fuel available to us- Trees.

Burning trees for fuel would not add any additional CO2 to the above ground environment, and as long as you plant more than you harvest it is a limitless source of energy.


5 posted on 06/16/2010 6:38:42 AM PDT by WackySam (To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Considering the future, ask yourself this. In 50, 100, 200 years, will we still need gas? Especially looking at the advancements that civilization has made in the last 100 years. Things will be completely different and our dependence on oil will, most likely, be minimal.


6 posted on 06/16/2010 6:41:22 AM PDT by RC2
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To: WackySam
and as long as you plant more than you harvest it is a limitless source of energy.

Is that possible ? Can we plant more than we consume if we use that asa huge energy source?
7 posted on 06/16/2010 6:42:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: RC2
Things will be completely different and our dependence on oil will, most likely, be minimal.

And what do you think will take its place to power transportation ?
8 posted on 06/16/2010 6:43:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: norraad

RE: Kevin just looked up at the stars and pointed. That’s how much oil.

So, you don’t believe in PEAK OIL then ?


9 posted on 06/16/2010 6:44:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be working today. Look......people never thought the car would take the place of the horse and look what happened. Someone will come up with something, bet on it. There’s another Henry Ford out there some place. We already have the introduction of electric cars, hydrogen cars and so forth. People will keep trying until a new idea hits the road.


10 posted on 06/16/2010 6:48:35 AM PDT by RC2
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To: SeekAndFind

I don’t think Mr. Skittles will like this news. Maybe Mr. Skittles needs to step on Jonah’s neck or something?


11 posted on 06/16/2010 6:48:56 AM PDT by equalitybeforethelaw
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To: SeekAndFind

It depends on how the stuff is made. One theory is that it really is “rock-oil.”


12 posted on 06/16/2010 6:50:09 AM PDT by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
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To: RobbyS
One theory is that it really is “rock-oil.”

How about the Dead Dinosaurs theory? THAT is what got me thinking about its eventually running out.
13 posted on 06/16/2010 6:52:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

I do not think that oil will run out any time soon. They keep exploring and finding more. There are vast reserves of oil that haven’t been tapped. Look at this Deepwater well — it is gushing like there is no tomorrow. Look at Alaska, the ‘forbidden’ oil fields; there is plenty available that hasn’t even been assessed.

I think it is all hype designed to create hysteria and panic, which in turn give the government ‘frightened sheep’ which are easier to control.

Plus, France decided, after the oil embargo in 1974, to disengage from the Middle East and control their own energy supplies. They have invested heavily in nuclear power plants; the technology has advanced tremendously since that time, and they are way less dependent on foreign oil than WE are.

There are ways that make sense, but one must use logic, common sense, the latest technology, and top engineers to implement them.


14 posted on 06/16/2010 7:00:08 AM PDT by bboop (We don't need no stinkin' VAT)
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To: MrB

Please don’t lose sight of the fact that this is about control. It doesn’t matter if the fuel comes from worn out baseballs, porcupine needles, or a particle beam from the planet Zeephar, the fight is about who controls the money.


15 posted on 06/16/2010 7:04:21 AM PDT by Williford
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To: Williford

You’re right, it’s about control,
but I believe it’s more about the POWER than the money.
Granted, the two go hand in hand,
but I’d bet the house that if you gave these people the choice between limitless money in a free society and the power to control every person in a police state, they’d choose the latter.


16 posted on 06/16/2010 7:06:18 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Nobody should believe it - ‘Peak oil’ is a myth. It’s just not happening. In fact proven, viable reserves of Oil are growing year by year.

While many major fields - notably Mexico’s colossal Cantarell field - are hitting the limits of secondary production (the stage where water or gas is used to extract the 11 to 25% of the oil field that could not be reached by primary ‘gusher’ type production) there are enormous new finds every year.

For instance:

Brazilian state oil company Petrobras recently made what may be the world’s largest single proven oil discovery in 30 years. A deep-water exploration area is believed to contain as much as 33 billion barrels of oil, an amount that would nearly triple Brazil’s reserves and make the offshore find the world’s third-largest known oil reserve.

Chevron Corp has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that could boost U.S. reserves by more than 50 percent. A test well indicates it could be the biggest new domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay a generation ago. Chevron estimated the 300-square-mile region where its test well sits could hold up to 15 billion barrels of oil and natural gas

Shell is currently analyzing and evaluating the well data of their own recent find in the Gulf of Mexico. This find is rumored to be capable of producing 100 billion barrels from ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. If proven it will eclipse the Petrobas find.

In Iraq, excavators have struck three oil fields with reserves estimated at about 2 billion barrels. I’m glad to say I myself had shares in Addax, one of the companies involved - who have now been taken over by Chinese company Sinopec.

Iraq is officially credited with about 115 billion barrels of proven reserves along the Zagros mountains, which are the second-largest reserves in the world. As remarkable as that sounds, that analysis is almost 10 years old and based on 30-year-old data. Recent review of that data by consultants for the new Iraqi government indicates another 45 billion to 100 billion barrels exist under the western and southern deserts.

Iran has discovered an oil field within its southwest Jofeir oilfield that is expected to boost Jofeir’s oil output to 33,000 barrels per day. Iran’s new discovery is estimated to have reserves of 750 million barrels.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has an estimated 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

In western North Dakota there is a formation known as the Bakken Shale. The formation extends into Montana and Canada. Geologists have estimated the area holds hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. With todays technology, about 4 billion barrels of oil can be pumped from the Bakken formation.

The United States also holds significant oil shale resources underlying a total area of 16,000 square miles. This represents the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world and holds an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil with 800 billion recoverable barrels – enough to meet U.S. demand for oil at current levels for 110 years. For many years the high cost of extracting oil from shale exceeded the benefit. But the extraction costs get cheaper all the time.

And not forgetting Canadian tar sands. The fraction of proven Canadian tar sands that are easily minable come to 2.1 billion barrels, which is only about the same as the total reserves of Argentina. The rest has to be pumped out - and bitumen is not easy to pump. You need to use natural gas to steam it out.

But with asphalt waste gasification the gas costs of this process plummet - and you begin to economically unlock the tremendous bulk of the tar sand reserves - at least 150 billion barrels, and very possibly twice this.

The story here is that state and private oil companies are constantly finding and proving new oil finds, or extracting larger fractions of known finds with better technology.

Furthermore: mature fields that have produced minimal oil for years are now - with the arrival of new technology - moving into tertiary production.

Oil recovery comes in three stages: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The early part of oil production flows under the natural pressure of the field – the iconic ‘gusher’. Oil escapes into the oil well, where it can be pumped to the surface. That’s easy work, but primary production will only get about 10% of the oil in the field to the surface.

Eventually, oil extraction exhausts the natural pressure of the oil field. Then the engineers begin to replace the natural pressure by pumping water or natural gas into the field. That allows the companies to recover 20% to 40% of the oil in the field. This is called secondary recovery.

After secondary recovery, some 60% to 80% of the oil remains trapped underground in so-called “depleted” fields. Tertiary recovery or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) employs more sophisticated techniques* to recover another 25% of the original oil in place.

This EOR market has barely been scratched, but in principle there are billions of barrels of oil available from left-for-dead fields the world over. Everyone knows where this oil is, it has just not been either economically nor technologically viable before. Flagship projects in Illinois will show the state of EOR technology as early as next year.

* I’m referring here to the alkali surfactant polymer technique (ASP). ASP injects an alkali which combines with natural acids in the rock to create a surfactant in the oil field itself. So when water is pumped into the field, it mixes better with the oil. As a result, the water pushes out more oil than it could do without the surfactant.

Hope this was helpful.


17 posted on 06/16/2010 7:11:53 AM PDT by agere_contra (Obama did more damage to the Gulf economy in one day than Pemex/Ixtoc did in nine months)
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To: SeekAndFind
"Belief is the enemy"

Title of the first chapter in the CIA handbook.

18 posted on 06/16/2010 7:14:58 AM PDT by norraad ("What light!">Blues Brothers)
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To: SeekAndFind
We are consuming it faster than the rate it is being formed within the Earth so eventually, it will become pretty scarce. As infinitesimal as the flow from the BP well seems, it represents about 0.01% of our daily usage of crude oil. The field that it is tapped into (let's say roughly 125 million barrels) represent about 24 days of supply for the entire United States. I grow weary of pundits saying the reason that BP and others are drilling in 5,000’ feet of water is due to environmental regulations. That is totally false. The reason that they are in the deep water is because the shelf has been heavily exploited for over 50 years and all of the large fields have been discovered. A company the size of BP, ExxonMobil, etc. has to find very large fields to feed the bureaucracies that they have become.
19 posted on 06/16/2010 7:22:09 AM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: MrB

The communists did not just go away with the fall of the Soviet Union. They couldn’t beat us economically or by force without destroying the world. Now they are the new environmentalists who still hope to do us in - this time by forcing us to commit national suicide - and doing so while saying it’s for our own good.

Everything they do - everything - is to our detriment for the sole purpose of taking us down.


20 posted on 06/16/2010 7:50:25 AM PDT by Personal Responsibility (Memo to Sharron Angle: STAY AWAY FROM JOHN MCCAIN!)
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