Offshore drilling finally

Obama gets one right finally. Like it or not we need to be less dependent on other countries for oil. Offshore drilling is a must. Let us not forget however this was an ignored Republican playbook item that Democrats scorned in the house and senate when Bush was president.

 

hey... i produce lots of natural gas. prime, strong virgin stuff i tell you. never been tapped, and ain't gonna be. my worries are that they will decide my carbon footprint needs serious taxing for the good of humankind, and the taxes will bankrupt me... alas ... woe is me.

 

yes, finally we get to postpone our ultimate fate of having to actually solve our energy problems, at the cost of raping one of the last pristine places on earth. Great idea. Do you actually believe that our gas prices have anything to do with our dependence on foreign oil? Please, do some actual research. Exxon and the rest charge whatever they want because they own enough politicians to get away with it - that simple. You just made it a little easier for them to keep doing business as usual. The problem is not foreign oil; it is domestic bribery, and the politicians taking the biggest bribes are the same ones spouting this foreign oil crap, because that is what they are paid to do by their real employers (hint: not the people). Same problem with our banking and financial systems. So, let's give away one of our last priceless natural treasures to them so they can use it to continue robbing us, for a few more years until that oil runs out and they leave the place ruined forever.

 

Oh the irony.

I am sure this will end up being some kind of taxing scheme to pay for something else.

I want to see cheap (low tax) off shore drilling and a real energy plan to wean us all off oil in the next 10-15 years. Overnight, our international problems will disappear.

 

You probably believe global warming is primarily caused by human interaction here on earth as well. I don't! I am not saying man does not have some effect on the health of the earth, and I think we should take common sense measures to reduce that damage, but I think with regard to global warming mans effect is minimal in the grand scheme of things. Todays hybrid vehicles and their gas mileage figures are a joke. America has very little sense of history or desire to reduce gas useage by driving smaller more efficient cars. Anybody remember the Geo Metro? It wasn't even a hybrid. It got 54 mpg routinely. Look at the figures for todays hybids. How many of you drive big V6 or V8 pickups and SUV's? My pickup is a mini pickup with a 4 cylinder engine, 24 to 26 mpg. My car is a Toyota Corrola 4 cylinder, 33 to 36 mpg. I do not have an incandescent light in my house. Nor a halogen. My new house which I am building is designed to be very low in energy consumption. In many ways I have turned the clock backwards to pre air conditioning times in its design. It is meant to be primarily passive heated and cooled. I could go on and on about all this, but will cut it a little shorter. I respect and do what I can to nurture mother earth. Most of you will not unless forced to. I am a realist. I think offshore gas drilling and production can be done safely with regard to the environment. Ditto Nuke power. I would like to see USA become a leader, and producer of many things and not so much just a consumer. I would like us to be energy independent of other countries. We can't do it without drilling for oil and building new nuke reactors. Believe what you want. Your rant seemed a little short sighted to me. Thus ends my sermon.

 

Don't see this as anything except another stalling scheme to attempt to improve poll ratings without actually doing anything.

 

Yep, even though he's said he's opened all this area for drilling, how long before we can actually start drilling. Gotta wait for the environmental impact studies, water study, coral reef study, sea plankton study, etc. etc.

 

Don't get me wrong in all this folks. I am no fan or cheerleader for Lord Obama. Much the opposite. This is about an issue, and the recent news worthy reversal on an issue. Lets see if it goes anywhere and not be so pessimistic. It couldn't go anywhere at all with the moritorium in place. For whatever reason he did this, and I can't see much in it that helps him (in fact it shows him again the liar he is). It might just be a needed open door.

 

What you're not accounting for is that oil prices are set on the international market. Dutch Shell and British Petroleum are two of the largest producers. To have a conspiracy of the type you are speaking would require almost all major politicians throughout the world to be on the take.

Now as far as THIS country is concerned, I believe there IS a conspiracy. In a country with supposedly free markets, you should have more than one choice of fuel when you buy a vehicle. In this country, you can buy a car that runs on anything, so long as it's gasoline. I find that suspicious. Especially considering that in Argentina, you can buy a dual fuel natural gas car, and fuel it in your own garage. Most US purchasers would love to have that option, and in a free market, someone meets those wants because it means profits! Two of the largest producers of natural gas cars are ironically Ford and GM. They work and they're efficient, and they've been making them for years, but they only produce those for fleets. Can't find them in the showroom.

Getting back to the first point, I believe that offshore drilling will only add to the international pool of oil, and as such, may reduce prices somewhat. There is no rule saying that the oil produced close to home must be kept here. In fact, with the EPA restrictions being the way they are, most of the high sulfur stuff they extract from Alaska ends up in overseas markets because it's cheaper to sell it than refine the bad stuff out.

IMHO, I think this is a sideways move in a long run over a cliff. It will have little impact in the whole scheme of peak oil. THAT is the real cause of much of the worlds turmoil, and if you want a prime candidate to bring about TEOTWAWKI - That is it!

There's an excellent resource for that right here on SurvivalMonkey:
http://www.survivalmonkey.com/forum/general-survival/52-peak-oil-what-how-will-impact-your-life.html

 

Whatever!!!
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How do you climb a mountain?
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2 possible answers..........
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You can't.... it's to difficult.
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or
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One step at a time.
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Oh well, I bow to the majority. It's not possible. Nothing is possible. Nothing will ever be possible. All is lost. We should just give up and drink the poison Kool-aid.

 

I think most of us are here because we realize that we're screwed.
I have no illusions about that.
False hope in half measures - that's the real Kool-aid.

 

Minuteman, I'll have to take your word on that.
I still find it suspicious however because IMO, enough natural gas infrastructure is present to really get sales going on this type of vehichle.
Here's what I mean:
MotorWeek: Energy Smart Fuels & Vehicles Special

If I could trade my Camry for a dual fuel version AND get one of those installed in my garage at a reasonable price, I'd go out and buy one tomorrow. I'm sure there are plenty of folks that feel the same, but many states will not even allow the product.
Last time I went looking for a NG vehicle, I found a few F150 std. cabs on govt. auction and then there's the Honda Civic GX which I can only get from a dealer 5 states over.
Last time I went looking for a Phill they weren't allowed in my state, but now, I can't even find their website.

Maybe it's just market inertia, but still skeptical...

 

I hardly know where to start with this post. First, I don't think our energy problems can be solved. As the world slowly runs out of oil, water and other resources I believe our lifestyle will regress back toward 1900 in terms of per capita energy use, but with a lot of technology and knowledge we didn't have then. The world's total population will probably undergo a very similar drop. Along the way, mankind will (in desperation) rape every last pristine place if there's food or fuel to be had. Period. Get used to it - it's coming.

Next, since you advise that WE do some research, I'd suggest YOU do the same: Fact is, American oil companies lost control of pricing in the early 1970's when domestic production peaked. Since then we have been at the mercy of foreign suppliers. Corruption is rampant (for sure) but nobody's buying price at this point. Oil trades worldwide at the same price - the only things that meaningfully influence the price at the pump are subsidies, taxes and exchange rates.

You insinuate that our gas prices have nothing to do with our dependence on foreign oil, and that's a ridiculous assertion. Gas prices are determined by supply, demand, production costs and the strength of our currency. We need to refine three times more oil than we produce domestically, and the dollar is losing value all the time. If you're mathematically literate you have the answer already, but if you aren't, well - we're over a barrel and we're clearly not in charge. (If the oil companies were really charging "whatever they want because they own enough politicians to get away with it" then gas would be $5 or $10 per gallon. It's obvious that people wouldn't be buying much at those prices regardless of how many politicians they own.)

And that brings me to production costs: We've picked all the low hanging fruit, if you will, and production costs are now rising rapidly. There comes a point at which this is no longer an economic equation at all - it's best expressed in BTU's, as ER/EI - which is energy returned over energy invested.

Back when we had untapped giant fields, all you had to do was poke a hole in the ground and light sweet crude came at you under pressure. It wasn't unusual to produce 30 units of energy for each unit invested. Those fields are pretty well played out worldwide, so these days we need enhanced extraction techniques to maintain production. It now takes more energy to produce energy!

The Saudi's, for example, pump massive amounts of water into Ghawar (their biggest field) and the output is essentially water, stained with oil. Obviously, there are huge additional costs involved in separating the oil and reclaiming the water. The ER/EI is a state secret, but I'll guarantee you it no longer approaches 30:1 - not even close!

At a 30:1 ER/EI you hardly notice production costs. At 3:1 you use one fourth of the available energy just to produce fuel, before you ever use a drop for agriculture or transportation. This declining rate of return matters even more than the declining rate of production.

Very similar depletion scenarios are playing out in the rest of the true giant fields around the world. Cantarell (Mexico) is in precipitous decline. I won't give you specifics because I want you to google it and figure out for yourself just how bad things are for a nation like Mexico, dependent on oil revenue, when production crashes. I will tell you that this loss of revenue is the primary factor in their increasing inability to control the drug cartels. It's a shift in the balance of power, due purely to economics!

Last year we imported 1.2 million barrels/day from Mexico. Two years from now (probably less) they won't produce enough for their own use. Put another way, they are our number two supplier right now. In less than 24 months they'll be our competitor...

The same holds true for several other countries we now buy oil from.

I'm kinda jumping around, but to the mathematically literate it should be obvious from the above examples that production costs are going through the roof. Sure, the oil companies are profitable, but a big chunk of those "obscene" profits are going right back into exploration and development. And they must. Keep in mind that actual profit is not the difference between what a barrel of oil cost you and what you sold it for. This is a resource in decline, so profit is the difference between what you sold it for and what it costs to REPLACE it. Otherwise, you're out of business. (It really screws this equation up when the government jumps in the middle with a windfall profits tax.)

Another gigantic challenge is rate of flow. Two decades ago there were (worldwide) at least 15 giant fields capable of producing one million barrels a day or more. Thanks to ongoing depletion, there are only 3 "million barrel per day" fields left today.

There are no new giant fields coming online that can pump like that. (Remember, we picked all the low-hanging fruit!) New fields coming online produce at perhaps 1/10 that rate, sometimes only 1/100 that rate, and they aren't coming online nearly fast enough to replace declining production elsewhere.

In fact, there are no new giant fields coming online at all. Sure, there's a lot of oil still in the ground. Heck, there's a LOT of oil in the Williston Basin, which (if you didn't know) is in right here in America. But that's nothing new - it was discovered in the 50's and we're just now figuring out how to exploit it. The GOOD wells only flow in the hundreds or low thousands of barrels a day. Clearly, we can't drill fast enough to replace sources like Cantarell, where production is declining by tens of thousands of barrels EACH MONTH.

Understand too that exploration is less productive today than ever before in your lifetime. Globally, the discovery of new reserves of recoverable oil peaked in the 1960's. Demand continued to rise until the the economic crash two years ago, when it finally leveled out for a bit. Any kind of economic recovery and it will immediately resume it's rise. (Again, do the math...)

Depletion rules the industry. That's why nobody's building new refineries - they're simply not needed. That's why you see mergers and acquisitions - with exploration yielding less and less (at higher and higher costs) acquisition is the cheapest way to replace reserves.

There's more bad news: All the enviro propaganda notwithstanding, there are NO substitutes for oil that can be scaled up to replace it. NONE. You're right back to ER/EI (and the laws of thermodynamics) which in layman's terms is in between a rock and a really hard place.

On this particular topic, I doubt I'm anywhere near the most knowledgeable member here. There's plenty of public data on this, and there's just no excuse to get things as wrong as you did.

Abundant cheap liquid fuel has propelled the global economy for the last 100 years. Now, we're in a deeper economic hole than ever before, just at the moment when the liquid fuel we're utterly dependent on is no longer abundant or cheap. And, it never will be again, as we now compete with 2.5+ billion Chinese and Indians who all want the American lifestyle too. It's literally the end of an era, with dire implications for several billion human beings.

Survival, first and foremost, is about critical thinking. You're new here, and this looks like a quiet little forum. (And it is, but...) I'm fairly new here myself, but I've already figured out that this place is populated with some really sharp people. And we welcome you - just understand that this kind of emotional claptrap falls on deaf ears.

Nothing personal, but I can't let your statements fly. This energy mess is a damn serious problem for survivalists and it would just be wrong to delude people that there's "nothing to see here".

So, again, welcome. Hope this leads to a productive discussion...

FPG

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but here's what happened to the Phill home CNG fueling station:

BREAKING STORY: Honda Suddenly Kills Fuelmaker In Stunning Move That Outrages CNG Movement

Sounds a bit more sinister than just market forces at work.