Saudi Size oil field Claim

[UncleAl]

When they hit an elephant, Uncle Al will profusely apologise.

[37fingers]

To Uncle Al:

I was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, and remember the American Petroleum Geological "EXPERT" brought up there to assess the hydrocarbon potential of Alberta....he emphatically stated that there was oil potential in the east of the Province but NO OIL WOULD BE FOUND WEST OF THE FIFTH MERIDIAN.

In fact, he offered to DRINK ANY BARREL OF OIL FOUND WEST OF THE FIFTH MERIDIAN. Of course, the Leduc Discovery well, which subsequently caught fire and pictures of which were featured in newspapers all over the world, WAS LOCATED WEST OF THE FIFTH MERIDIAN! Most high production fields in Alberta are reefs, rather than sand, and they predominantly exist WEST of the fifth Meridian.

My point of course is that those closeminded jerks who claim "it can't be done!" are usually knocked on their butts by people doing it!!

[biochemrex]

What I find mysterious is that the Media remains silent of the fact that it is possible to make petrol out of coal, natural gas and shale oil and that the breakeven price is oil at $35 USA a barrel. In 1976 the USA Gov set up contingency plans to do this if the Saudis got too greedy. There is also Dr Gold's theory of deep oil and in 20 years we will have space elevators and be able to mine space and control climate from space if we need to.

Despite all the panic mongering we have the prospect of petrol much cheaper than we are currently paying for countless 1,000s of years.

China is spending $16 billion to make coal petrol plants. Gulf oil is already running small ones, but why is the Media so silent? Keith

[damocles]

What I find mysterious is that the Media remains silent of the fact that it is possible to make petrol out of coal, natural gas and shale oil and that the breakeven price is oil at $35 USA a barrel. In 1976 the USA Gov set up contingency plans to do this if the Saudis got too greedy. There is also Dr Gold's theory of deep oil and in 20 years we will have space elevators and be able to mine space and control climate from space if we need to.

Despite all the panic mongering we have the prospect of petrol much cheaper than we are currently paying for countless 1,000s of years.

China is spending $16 billion to make coal petrol plants. Gulf oil is already running small ones, but why is the Media so silent? Keith

 

Politics. We want to pump the Arabs dry before we touch our own.

[biochemrex]

Politics. We want to pump the Arabs dry before we touch our own.

But surely this would be very weird politics? Paying top dollar for Saudi Petrol when we can make our own at half the price? Keith

[Buffy]

I'd love to see where the $35/barrel came from. I'd suspect that that is long term cost: as with anything like this, the infrastructure does not exist to process this goop yet, and I suspect that even if $35 average over 50 years was true, The first year of production would cost you $200/barrel...

 

The oil folks can be evil dudes, but they ain't stupid: if there was money to be made here, they'd be after it at the drop of a 15-gallon gas tank...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[biochemrex]

The USA currently does produce some synthetic petrol which goes into the system. It is a good earner for the companies making it. In South Africa due to the embargo synthetic petrol from coal plants were set up and they are still in production so South Africa now enjoys some of the cheapest petrol in the world. Keith

[Qfwfq]

But surely this would be very weird politics? Paying top dollar for Saudi Petrol when we can make our own at half the price?

I've always heard that this is US gov't policy Keith.

 

I'm sure the guys in Texas are smart as Buffy says, but the gov't is smart too. I disagree about her infrastructure argument. If the figures were quite like that, how could fuels have been so cheap before the early '70s...? ;)

[Buffy]

Bah!

 

Gov't conspiracy? Most oil produced in the US is now pumped from offshore or up in Alaska,if it was really just as easy to refine these tar-oil sources, we'd do it here because it would be cheaper to get to. But...

 

No infrastructure costs? My understanding is that this stuff (along with gas from coal) requires much more complex and costly refining using processes that are very different than current refineries. Sure we produce some synthentic fuels (heck I refuse to put dino-oil in my Camaro--synthetic only for me!), but the issue is ramping up to replace a major chunk of today's consumption. So...

 

I still stand by my numbers in the previous post! ;)

 

Jiffy-Lubed,

Buffy

[Qfwfq]

Gov't conspiracy?

Who, me? ;)

 

I said policy, not conspiracy! ;)

[Buffy]

Who, me? ;) I said policy, not conspiracy! ;)

Oh! Haha! Another fine distinction out of that magnificent mind of yours Q!

 

Certainly yes its been "policy" to help the Saudi royal family off and on for the past 60 years, but the conclusion--which you don't necessarily support I see--is the notion that we're happily paying twice what we have to to get oil... The reason we pump our oil out of offshore and Alaska is that we pumped all the easy stuff out of the ground in the first hundred years of oil exploration.

 

BTW: This find is an important example of the arguement that we "won't really *run out* of oil": There's lots of oil and coal, its just that it gets *much* harder and more expensive to get at this low-quality stuff, so yes, we'll eventually get to $100/barrel oil, but there will still be oil to be gotten. Eventually it will no longer make economic sense to use oil, and we'd better start working now on alternatives though....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Qfwfq]

Oh! Haha! Another fine distinction out of that magnificent mind of yours Q!

;) ;) ;) ;) :D ;) ;) :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

 

You must admit, there's a slight difference between the meaning of the two words. Anyway, it ain't from my magnificent mind ;) it's something I've heard said and that does make some sense, and it isn't to help the Saudi royal family.

[Buffy]

Anyway, it ain't from my magnificent mind :hihi: it's something I've heard said and that does make some sense, and it isn't to help the Saudi royal family.

Those silly neocons! Who knows what convoluted train of logic will spill next from their addled minds! :rolleyes:

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[erich]

Politics. We want to pump the Arabs dry before we touch our own.

Oil is a fungible commodity now, we will get it from the cheapest source period.

[damocles]

Oil is a fungible commodity now, we will get it from the cheapest source period.

 

True, but think geo-politically for a minute.

 

If you find yourself in 1973, so dependent on foreign oil, that you have to modify what would otherwise be sensible national policy to accommodate foreign interests just to keep the wheels of industry turning, what would you do?

 

Eliminate the foreigners' hold over you of course.

 

Now in the great game, the easiest way to get rid of that foreign oil influence is to get rid of that foreign oil.

 

So you pump it out as fast as you can purchase it.

 

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html

 

Bearing in mind that the United States still pays much less for its oil than Europe at the pump(policy of taxation), it makes business sense for us to pump the Arabs dry. It costs us $4-$5 a to pump a barrel there, and almost twice to three times that here(depending on the field) to extract it as crude out of the ground, here.

 

We refine most of the imported oil here to suit ourselves; so it isn't the refinery costs we face. The Saudi stuff that reaches us for example the most part of that is crude.

 

There is this....

 

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9072-1782657,00.html.

 

Isn't that strange? We reject a lot of it because of the sulphur content.(Sulphur wrecks havoc on refinery infrastructure.)

 

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894.htm

 

Still, despite that, we buy the oil in such quantitry that the Arabs are looking at the same slope the United States faced in 1972 when we peaked production.

 

Unfortunately unlike us, they have no where to go.

 

They don't have fusion in their future.

They don't have solar.

They don't have fuel cells.

They don't have thermocouple heat chips.

They don't even have nuclear fission.

 

They are in a very bad way.

They've squandered their chance.

 

That doesn't mean we are exactly sitting pretty or very smart either. There nare things we should have done

 

In 1973 we should have;

-been scouring our schools for future potential physicists and trained up a generation of engineers to work on every conceivable kind of heat engine we could imagine.

 

-created tax incentives for energy production investment.(Yes that includes renewables. I could just imagine what kind of geothermal plants we could have built in the Yosemite.)

 

-started spheromak and tokomak production reactors(even though we weren't ready) just to get the practice. "You can crunch numbers for decades and build all the prototypes and study models you want; but sooner or later, you have to grit your teeth and bend metal." quoting me.)

 

It is thirty-three years we have wasted. We still have maybe another thirty years oil to make the transistion to a mixed-energy production economy.

 

I want to save the POL possible strike in Nevada for the usual selfish purposes-lubrication, plastics, jet fuel......

 

Coal to oil synthetic plants, while expensive and environmentally hideous in operation, gives us in America, the energy cushion we need to go on fusion generated electrical production(assuming we bungle the effort completely and need fifty years to attain proficiency and deploy.) after the oil goes to prices uneconomically extractable to make it viable as as fuel.

 

Just food for thought.

[Buffy]

All I can say is, if we're so cunningly tricking the Arabs into pumping themselves dry, why is it that not only did we, as you say, waste the last 33 years, but we're *still* wasting it now! Most of the money in the latest "energy" bill is subsidies to oil companies to keep pumping oil, with only token amounts to invest in all those lost opportunities that the arabs supposedly will miss out on.

 

Sounds like we're going to miss out on them too (actually the Chinese will get there first). So who is the brilliant geopolitical strategist that came up with this idea? We should give him a Medal of Honor! :rolleyes:

 

As erich sez, Oil *is* fungible, although you have to take into account the initial investments in infrastructure that are a significant barrier to entry. Honest, with the data in the articles you've cited you've got:

• Sulfurous yucky Arabian crude that spurts out of the ground and hops on its own into supertankers: $50/bbl, infrastructure in place, although it takes a bit more scrubbing.
  
• Texas light sweet crude that's got to be pumped from expensive oil rigs in the middle of the ocean cuz we've already pumped our own land wells dry: $65/bbl, but no scrubbing!
  
• Canadian oil tar: $35/bbl, but there's no infrastructure yet, so its really $100/bbl for the next 10 years.

Is this *really* a devious conspiracy?

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[biochemrex]

Food for thought. Mining is a big gamble - all forms, and a big con job. From the early days they were predicting that oil was soon to run out like they were predicting environmental doom in the Middle Ages - and in the Bible, and in the 19th Cent they predicted that by 1950 the air of the planet would be unbreathable due to the use of coal.

But while we are not exploiting our talent near as much as we could, we still have lots more talent on line than Islam. In another generation we will have Space Elevators and then we can mine space etc and as they say, the sky will be the limit. Keith