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Oil Deposit Could Increase US Reserves 10x
HighWizard notes the upcoming release, on Thursday, of a report by the US Geological Survey on the Bakken Formation. This is an oil field covering 200,000 square miles and underlying parts of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. A geologist who began surveying the field, before dying in 2000, believed it may hold as much as 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Later estimates have ranged to the hundreds of billions of barrels. Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence.
Too bad oil is fungible, so OPEC can still hurt us monetarily.
So, how far back does this push "peak oil"?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I wouldn't. Even with that much oil it still is going to run out someday. If anything we should leave it alone for now to ensure that we don't end up with massive shortages as we transition to alternative fuel sources.
Even if the field is as productive as the summary makes it sound, it should be treated as a reprieve, not as an absolute solution.
Absolutely nothing!
This is inaccurate:
"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence."
This is correct:
"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy dependency on oil."
Even if we all decide today that we're going to swear off fossil fuels, the process of converting our society to the alternatives will take decades, decades in which we will still rely on millions of barrels of oil every day.
Which is why that decision should've been made decades ago. The switch will never be painless, just like switching from MS Office or Windows to the competition will never be painless.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You, sir, are a complete fucking moron.
The big oil companies haven't been making their profit by virtue of artificially controlling the supply, they've been doing it by selling more than they've ever sold before. The profits reaped last year and the year previous wasn't because of raising their profit margins (I.E. raising prices to increase their profit margin), they've been doing it by selling more petrol than in any years previous.
Big Oil has has the same business infrastructure, organizational structure, and sales methods as they've had for 50 fucking years. They held a razor thin profit margin on gasoline for going on 25 years now. For every dollar on gas, you spend maybe 3 pennies giving them profit. So quit bitching about oil companies gouging the public, because they aren't. You want to know the real culprit for gas prices these days? Our own fucking government, they make about a dollar per gallon on taxes.
Where does that money go? Who knows any more. Just quit bitching about a company actually doing good business, because for the most part the petrol companies are. They have to deal with literally thousands of different mixtures of gasoline being shipped among this country, the different ways to refine them, and finally the shipping, and they're only pulling 3% profit. Fuck you for thinking that's out of line. Learn your economics, and then learn how the real world works. The price of gas being as high as it is is MORE the gov's fault for spending so much money on pork that it has to rape us on gas to compensate. Bitch at your governments for taxing gas so much, then bitch at them for making good companies spend twice as much as they have to for making a good product, THEN bitch at the gas companies for not making things cheap enough when they're only pulling a 3% margin.
This is a capitalist economy, damnit, it's what is responsible for this country's well-being. Think about the business first, then bitch.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
There really is incredible amounts of energy wastage we can target first with nothing but behavioural issues and political stubbonness in the way. Airconditioning, transport and lighting are handled in very inefficient ways in a lot of situations and there are many industrial situations optimised for energy pricing that has very little to do with actual energy usage. In a lot of cases there is no incentive at all to use less energy when the sane situation would be to give those that cut their usage a discount. Where the climate change argument got weird and partisan political was when economic penalties and the prospect of a new artificial market to make money in appeared. There is also an overemphasis on penalties which is just making enemies of those that could be using less (but don't use less because they get no saving at all on their energy bills) and just stretches out the time before any action is taken by a few more years. We need to avoid what is really fairytale bullshit from many (not the above poster but often economists) and get back to the idea of actually doing what we can to burn less stuff instead. We're seeing things like traffic lights getting replaced by an array of LED's, streetlights with reflectors so that lower power bulbs do the same job and other measures that cut power consumption in places where the power bill for a city is actually lower if they use less electricity - and no effort at all in places that just face the threat of some sort of carbon tax in the future. To get large savings we need large organisations to make major efforts. It costs a lot to put in a railway line between two areas that a lot of people want to move between but it cuts down the daily energy use by a large amount.
Well of course we should use it.
We're going to need every drop of it to invade all the other oil producing nations so we'll have even more oil. All sarcasm aside, this is a really going to be a set back to the American economy in the long run.
While we are spending our time and money pulling oil out of the ground we are not going to be making any effort to develop alternatives, while the rest of the world (except China) is actually going to work on developing alternative energies.
At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.
1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Go to a pool.
3) Start sucking the water out of the pool as fast as you can with that straw. (You probably should not swallow the water)
4) Go to the ocean.
5) Start sucking the water out of the ocean as fast as you can with the same straw. (You definitely should not swallow the water)
6) Now explain to us all how the amount of water that you sucked through the straw was dictated by reserve you are pulling from. Or try this experiment:
1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Get a really big sponge really soaking wet.
3) Start sucking the water out of the sponge as fast as you can with that straw.
4) If you start getting less water, try a different spot on the sponge.
5) Marvel at how thought experiments can prove anything you want if they are divorced enough from the phenomenon of interest, but note that mine is probably closer to the reality of oil extraction than yours is.
Why do you think planning things decades ahead works? Why do you think we'd make better decisions than the ones we did make? For example, fifty years ago, we had a good idea about the extent of Middle East oil (it was starting to be exploited), but no idea about how unstable the region was going to be. Nuclear power looked huge (they were planning at one point to have 40-50 nuclear plants lining just the California coast to exploit the Pacific Ocean as a heat sink). Solar and wind power (for electricity generation) weren't developed yet. They still had some places to put in hydroelectric plants in the developed world. Computers and space technology were very crude. We just found out about DNA. The greenhouse effect was just a vague theory. The economic surge of the Third World wasn't expected.
I guess my point here is that any energy-based plans in the late 50's would be completely obselete by now. You seem to imply that we should have decided to shift away from oil a few decades ago. But what would have been the basis of such a decision? That there were only a few decades of oil production (which incidentally, we're in the process of blowing past)? That fossil fuel burning causes air pollution? Those have been addressed. What we think of as problems now, will be dealt with. It might mean that we move away in the near future from burning fossil fuels, or not. But in fifty years, what we see as problems now, will change. Old problems may vanish while new ones take their place.
Ok, so you are saying that we didn't know decades ago that being dependent on oil might be a bad idea and that we should try to get off it?
--
Simon
Invest in decent public transport. There should be no _need_ for anyone living within 10-20km of the centre of any reasonably large city (few hundred thousand people and up) to own a car.
When was the last time gas taxes were raised? 1996? Oh... So that means that the tripling in gas prices since year 2000 was due to something other than government?
Just read the numbers. Canada and Mexico account for 35% of our oil imports. Is that a lot, sure it is. But is it anywhere near most of our oil? No. What's more, the GP was making this point to support his idea that events in the Middle East do not affect our oil supply. But the #2 provider of US oil imports is Saudi Arabia at 17%.
I can actually *remember* the lines to fill up . All the arguments about energy policy here are bunk except for one; cost, pure and simple. With oil, you stick a big straw in the ground and suck it out, then boil it to break it down into gas and stuff. Then you put it in your car and burn it. Nothing else is that cheap or simple and has as much energy per gallon.
The hidden advantage of the current prices is that other technologies become economically viable for development. Besides, there's plenty of OIL right now - current high gas prices are due to a relative lack of refining capacity. I'd bet that when gas hits $5 a gallon in the US, suddenly new refineries will spring up, but also more alternate energy sources will become competitive. THIS IS THE KEY. Once it's really worth it to try out new technologies (a prius does not yet save you money in terms of total cost of ownership), we hit critical mass for research and funding and the market takes care of the rest. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and after a while oil isn't all that profitable, especially when the easily pumped deposits dwindle and it's more expensive to suck it out of the ground.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Or just bring your own bag(s).
I've done this for just about every grocery trip for the past two or three years (except for maybe once a month or two when I actually want a few bags for household garbage cans).
You don't have to be an ecowarrior to think that the number of bags that we use (and throw away) is ridiculous. Here in Canada it's something like 10 billion a year (!).
But the 'environmental' aspect of it is only part of it. Frankly, I stopped taking bags from the grocery store mostly just because I was sick of having so many of the damn things that I would never use. But once I started, I realized just how more convenient it is to have a larger sturdy bag (or bags, usually) that I can throw over my shoulder instead of a dozen or so flimsy plastic ones that are uncomfortable to carry.
Even when I'm doing a larger shopping run with a car (about half the time over the winter) it's still a hell of a lot easier to carry two big blue ikea bags to the kitchen.
Over these past 3 years I've noticed a huge shift in attitudes about the whole thing. It used to be that I'd have to practically shove the grocery bagboy out of the way and get into a discussion about why I didn't want their bags. Now it seems like at least a third of people bring their own bags, and most stores give a 5 cent discount for it (yay. 5 cents).
You might want to replace that gasket.
I think he has a valid point; and all it takes is a little "back of the envelope" calculations:
- I burn about 1500 gallons of gasoline per year, which is around 7500 pounds of oil-based product.
- I use about 250 bags per year, which is perhaps 10 pounds of oil-based product.
Clearly the majority of my oil usage goes towards gasoline, and the plastic bag impact is negligible... just as the other guy was telling us.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.