Drill Baby Drill!!! 74 miles to the Pipeline

Google shale.

How about the Bakken formation? Mean estimates for the recoverable oil with current technology is above 3.5 Billion barrels of oil and the total oil reserves at anywhere from 150 Billion barrels to 300 billion barrels of oil. That's just the oil from the formation, it doesn't include the natural gas. Leigh Price, who spent a lot of his career as a USGS geochemist studying the Bakken, estimated its reserves anywhere between 250 Billion and 500 Billion barrels of oil. Now, most of that is not recoverable with current technology but one never knows what the technology for recovery is going to be 10, 20 or 50 years from now either. The 2010 U.S. daily consumption was under 19 million barrels a day, down from over 20 million a day for the previous 4 years. That represents a 5% drop in daily consumption nationally. At 20 million barrels a day of consumption, and assuming we could get that much daily out of the formation, it alone holds reserves that would supply 100% of our current use for the next 30 to 60 years. And we haven't even started talking about the oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico or ANWAR yet, nor have we accounted for the natural gas that will be found along with the oil, nor have we talked about the shale reserves in Colorado and Utah or the reserves off of the western and eastern coasts of our nation. Natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico leak between 1 and 5 million barrels of oil a year.

That's just here archer, we haven't even gotten into the 513 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil found in Venezuela recently or what current fields might end up being larger than originally anticipated. Up until January of last year, the Orinoco belt was only thought to have half as much as what they now know to be there. It went from somewhere around 250 billion barrels to over 500 billion barrels. That is enough oil for 70 years worth of consumption in this nation at current rates, and we consume more than any other nation in the world. The reserves of Orinoco could supply the entire global demand at current levels for 16 years all by itself if they were able to harvest 90 million barrels a day from it. One well that blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last year was pumping out 50,000 barrels a day. One well.

Think of how much oil lies off the coasts that we might tap into if the techology comes along that allows a drilling rig to be set on the ocean floor instead of on the surface of the water. Deepwater Horizon was drilling 2 miles into the sea bed that was a mile below the surface of the water. Imagine what you could find if you could put a rig on the ocean floors that are 2 miles or 3 miles below the ocean surface. We're not even looking for it there right now because even if we found it there, we couldn't get to it.

So yeah, I would tend to agree with Nmysys here, there is likely enough oil around to last a couple of lifetimes. Oceans cover 2/3 of the planet surface. With current capabilities we are looking at perhaps being able to look for oil on about 40%, maybe a bit more, of the planet at best. No one knows what the other 60% might contain. The question is whether or not we will find another source of inexpensive energy before we need to go looking for it there.

What I read in that post PS is IF we have the technology, and IF we can get to it, and IF the oil is really there.....it sounds expensive and well...."iffy" that we can even get to it, meanwhile the cost to develop the technology, to drill to actually bring that oil to market may make it cost prohibitive.....will Americans stand for $10/gallon gasoline just because it was produced domestically? Not if they can get $3/gallon gasoline by using middle eastern oil. Alternative fuels may actually be cheaper in the long run, and cleaner, and less drain on the economy and on our ecology (I didn't even have to hug a tree to post that). It would be very risky of us to bet our economic future on oil we don't know yet if we can even get to.

archer wrote: What I read in that post PS is IF we have the technology, and IF we can get to it, and IF the oil is really there.....it sounds expensive and well...."iffy" that we can even get to it, meanwhile the cost to develop the technology, to drill to actually bring that oil to market may make it cost prohibitive.....will Americans stand for $10/gallon gasoline just because it was produced domestically? Not if they can get $3/gallon gasoline by using middle eastern oil. Alternative fuels may actually be cheaper in the long run, and cleaner, and less drain on the economy and on our ecology (I didn't even have to hug a tree to post that). It would be very risky of us to bet our economic future on oil we don't know yet if we can even get to.

Say what?

When alternative fuels become cheaper they will win.

In the mean time we would not be betting our economic future. The big, greedy oil companies would be betting there's.

If they loose, so what?

In many cases, the technology is there but the permits are not. Ken Salazar is proving to be the worst Secretary of the Interior in recent history.

archer wrote: Alternative fuels may actually be cheaper in the long run

What's your source for this assumption?

Nmysys wrote:

As long as we drive fuel-guzzling vehicles without regard to the oil supply.

There are enough supplies in this country to last lifetimes. The problem is the resistance by the treehuggers to drilling for it. This has been going on since 1973 and we have gotten basically nowhere with alternatives. Meanwhile we are supporting our enemies because we are dependent on them for what we have an abundance of.

To me, the solution is to do both things at the same time. Create alternatives while using our own oil. You can't change the lifestyles of hundreds of millions of people overnight, and you can't force free people to give up choosing what they wish to drive.

Those are wild ass guesses about the volume of hydrocarbons available in the US and Canada. The USGS produces many of those numbers on the basis of some rather invalid assumptions. Certainly, untapped basins in the US with a drilling moratorium in place MAY have untaped reserves, but there is no certainty in that. Our biggest source and focus for HC production is in oil shale. The Marcellus, Utica and Balkan shales are current targets. Here too the USGS has come up with some unbelievable numbers based on the volume of shale in place and the invalid assumption that all of it has commercial possibilities.

While we have gotten nowhere with viable alternatives is not a reason to stop trying to come up with some. What we are learning are the many alternatives that do not yet work. Thomas Edison tried a 1000 different elements before realizing success with a lightbulb.

While the research continues, we simply DO need to be more cognizant of our HC use. Food, pharmaceuticals, clothing ought to rank above burning it in a car.

neptunechimney wrote:

archer wrote: What I read in that post PS is IF we have the technology, and IF we can get to it, and IF the oil is really there.....it sounds expensive and well...."iffy" that we can even get to it, meanwhile the cost to develop the technology, to drill to actually bring that oil to market may make it cost prohibitive.....will Americans stand for $10/gallon gasoline just because it was produced domestically? Not if they can get $3/gallon gasoline by using middle eastern oil. Alternative fuels may actually be cheaper in the long run, and cleaner, and less drain on the economy and on our ecology (I didn't even have to hug a tree to post that). It would be very risky of us to bet our economic future on oil we don't know yet if we can even get to.

Say what?

When alternative fuels become cheaper they will win.

In the mean time we would not be betting our economic future. The big, greedy oil companies would be betting there's.

If they loose, so what?

I see this all the time about "big greedy oil companies". Apparently, you do not research these companies enough to know that those same companies are spending billions on research for viable energy alternatives. The reason is simply. They want to make money and know oil is a limited resource.

Did you ever think that maybe the strategy is to use up all of the rest of the world's supply so that the US will have the only oil in the end? I have.

Here are some facts
The US imports more than 9,013,000 barrels/day ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/ ... _home#tab2 ). The top 4 countries that the US gets its oil from (over 1k barrel per day) are Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/natural_ ... es/cr.html ).
The US already has 22.3B total barrels in proven reserves (these are areas that are already in production) in Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, California, Alaska, and North Dakota, as well as many other smaller leases ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/natural_ ... es/cr.html ).
Estimates of oil deposits in ANWAR are between 5B and 16B total barrels (United States Geological Survey. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment 1998, Including Economic Analysis. USGS Fact Sheet FS-028-01, Apr. 2001).
The US consumes 18,771,000 barrels/day, and exports 2,024,000 barrels/day ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/ ... _home#tab2 ).

If we do the math, we import almost half of the oil we consume. With the proven reserves and the most optimistic numbers from ANWAR, we would use up our domestic supplies in a little over five years. It takes years to develop oil production sites and to get the oil to the pipelines. Oil companies are pounding the drill baby drill drum because they make money off of the speculation from the leases they buy, similar to the way people were packaging and re-selling commercial and domestic mortgages. The real question is not when can the oil companies start drilling in new areas, but why have they not fully exploited the areas they already have rights to. The reason is that it is still more profitable for them to import the crude for their refineries than to pump it out of the ground here, and that they know the supplies just are not there.
Before anyone starts on the whole ''there are too many regulations from the commie liberal environmentalist'' theme, ask this question, "If it is so bad, why have the oil lobbies not spent their record profits on getting them repealed"? Why does Canada, with much stricter regulations, still produce more oil than the US? The formations are just not there. If they were, and the technology to get the oil was available, oil companies would be getting it. They are still trying to find profitable ways to get shale oil, which has very little to do with environmental regulations and very much to do with making the process cheaper to employ.