Quote:
Originally Posted by sailaway21
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You crazy Republican!! (smile)
And here, for all three of those people still following this thread, is the article that SWay does not want you to see...
The Oil Drum | The Bakken Formation: How Much Will It Help?
For those with a short attention span, that was the original article he posted. Sway, God love you, did you even read it!!??? Quit screwing around looking for tape measures and read your own articles!!!! You nutty Republican.
Ohhh, I got a laugh out of that.
I have no agenda here, contrary to what anyone might perceive. I do not own a solar company (just a solar farm boat... smile). If I find information that helps in the discussion and appears reliable (from either point of view), I have no issue presenting it. I would have no issue presenting this. Again, no hidden agendas for me. However, I think we dissagree on the direction.
Now, using your article, the United States has:
21.4 billion barrells of reserves. This, of course, is not exactly precise. I will also suggest that the number is higher than that. This was a 2006 article. THe Bakken formation numbers were revised in April to about an additional 3.5 Billion barrels of reserves.
I am not sure why you threw Canada and Mexico in there. I don't remember the part of our constitution, signed by Canada, that allows us to go take their oil. That they have it seems irrelevant to our conversation. What is also unknown about their reserves is how much of that is recoverable and how much they will let you recover. They may not appreciate a pumper in everybodys backyard up there. The amount of reserves is irrelevant. How much you can get is.
Now, the key question in all of this is not HOW MUCH oil reserves you have. The question is HOW MUCH you will actually get out of it. Am I wrong? Again, I quote your own article:
The Pittman/Price/LeFever study cited above reports a wide range of measured permeabilities and porosities in the Bakken, but the average is low. One part of the report gives the average porosity and permeability for the middle Bakken as being 5% and 0.04 millidarcies.
So, that billions of barrels isn't quite as high now. Of course, we will never know until we drill, drill, drill... but if you read the article that I presented earlier you will realize that the time to drill to gas
pump is a very long, very expensive time. It takes millions simply to drop a hole at some question of return. Also, I would like to quote another piece of your article:
If we could actually produce 3.6 billion barrels of undiscovered oil forecast at the P50 level by USGS, how much would this equate to? The US uses about 7.6 billion barrels of oil products a year, according to EIA data. This is equivalent to just under six month's US oil use, spread over a very long period, probably 20 years or more. If total production amounts to only 500 million barrels, as I have suggested, this would equate to about 23 days worth of United States oil usage, spread over many, many years.
First of all (after you read your own article you will understand... smile) the author does not believe that is even reality or possible due to the permeability factor presented by previous studies. He feels, even in the best of estimates, that the true recoverable percentage of that reserve is considrably less (at best). But what I find intersting is that even if we hit what is felt as a highly unrealistic number of recovery, it could take twenty years to get 6 months of oil use. 20 years drilling and expending that energy for 6 months of United States use (at todays useage... surely we won't increase our useage over time). And that is the unrealistic numbers. So what is the reality? Probably 20 years for much less than that.
This same logic can be applied to the other reserves you have mentioned - and I will say this again: How much you have is in some ways irrelevant. How much you can (AND WHEN) actually get is what is relevant.
Drilling there is like I said, spending energy to tighten a
shaft seal on the Titanic after she hit the Ice Berg. It makes such a very small difference it is rediculous. What would 20 years of investment to get us off of that oil get us?
Also of note, if you will read the article I presented:
http://www.pppl.gov/polImage.cfm?doc...&size_code=Doc
PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:
IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT
If you don't want to read 80 something pages of information, I will summarize it for you. Peak Production is most likely coming fairly soon. The impact on our economy will be considerable. It takes 10-20 years (with the emphasis on 20) for any meaningful changes to take effect.
Incidently, which you will be happy to read, the author (though he does not discount the use of non-hydrocarbon based technologies) feels that they are not the best solution to answering our problem at todays technology. He implies though that their use could improve the outlook and reduce the impact. However, he is clearly an oil man... so don't be scared to read it (smile).
- CD