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Exxon and Russian Operation Discovers Oil Field Larger Than the Gulf of Mexico
An anonymous reader writes The state-run OAO Rosneft has discovered a vast pool of crude in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean, arguably bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. From the article: "The discovery sharpens the dispute between Russia and the U.S. over President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine. The well was drilled before the Oct. 10 deadline Exxon was granted by the U.S. government under sanctions barring American companies from working in Russia’s Arctic offshore. Rosneft and Exxon won’t be able to do more drilling, putting the exploration and development of the area on hold despite the find announced today."
Oil's well that ends well
Russians dont have more oil...no problem with that.The nice thing about that oil is that it will still be there 5 years from now.
"This is our united victory - it was achieved thanks to our friends and partners from Exxon Mobil, Nord Atlantic Drilling, Schlumberger, Halliburton..."
Time until Republicans start saying "Lift sanctions" 5...4..3..2...1
Last night I watched There Will Be Blood. I drink your milkshake!
This is bad news for alt fuels, because it could lower oil prices. But it's good news for weakening the OPEC block further. The only reason the world tolerates the Middle East crazies is cuz of the oil.
"The well found about 1 billion barrels of oil..."
The world uses 86 million barrels per day, so this buys us about 11 extra days. Whoopee Do...
because it could lower oil prices.
This is exactly what we need right now in the short term until alt fuels get cheaper. Its going to be decades before all the gas cars are off the roads, poor people cant afford new cars so they buy used, there isnt much of a used electric market out there right now. It has the added benefit of not being in the middle east like you said. To me this is a win-win-win, except for that pesky russian thing that we need to resolve.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's not so much oil running out. It is the easy oil running out, i.e. oil which has a high energy return on energy input. As humans we like to pick the low hanging fruit first. Coal mining is a good example, we go for the stuff on the surface, then open cast, then dig shafts. Ghawar field in Saudi is an excellent example, it is 150 or so metres down on dry land. You can shift big machines on dry land. Deep water horizon gulf of Mexico is an excellent example too the oil was in deep water, which presents logistical challenges and deeper down meaning more work is required to get it to the surface. The Russian find is 300 or so metres down and thus it is easy oil.
Even the shale gas estimates and the Canadian tar sands estimate etc are being revised downwards. They drill a few test wells, and interpolate and "guestimate" what lies in between. Let us see how this estimate holds up once the investment needed to further develop them are all reeled in and the time pay dividends come up.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
9 billion barrels was the optimistic estimate of oil field . World oil consumption is about 88 million barrels per day.
"Peak oil" just pushed out about 3 months...sorry.
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Wray, a chemist who was in the "bombs and rockets" business for 20 years, was working on the shuttle's cooling system when life took a surprising turn.
"I was trying to remove the oil from anhydrous ammonia and I ended up with this substance," he said.
You're going to suck until you stop making up stuff that can be checked withing ten seconds.
Ezekiel 23:20
Of course we're still discovering it. The problem is that we've been consuming it faster than we're discovering more since the mid 80's.
In the Kara Sea? That is a much rougher place to work than in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure they will eventually manage, but I wouldn't call it easy.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
it also doesn't contain any oil, but it does contain propylene glycol which is derived from petroleum (or other fossil fuels).
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
And on top of that, if you made oil (or any other energy in general) cost half as much, most consumers and industries would instantly respond by wasting twice as much.
Global Warming might make it an easier place to work.
years later and we're still finding the stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Propylene Glycol is an organic chemical product that can also be derived from Palm Oil
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Last time it was your boy-wonder, who lifted the sanctions against Russia... Abandoning American ally Georgia for the sake of Putin's help against Iran. Ha-ha — much good did it do then...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is why you don't do drugs, kids.
Most oil company people don't see it that way, or course. I'm not an oil co. employee, but I sympathize much more with their position than yours. Most of the oil people I've encountered were extremely concerned about the well-being of the planet. But even more significant was the fact that they understood that civilization was riding on their backs, and so they were doing a job that must be done lest we descend into literal darkness.
Producing oil is extremely difficult. Most people simply have no idea. They may look at offshore oil platforms (only when they are undergoing a rare catastrophe, on the news), but not even remotely grasp just how expensive and difficult it is, and how many hard working people it takes to supply the consumers of 88Mbbl/day with the oil that they DEMAND.
Some oil folks with high calibre intellects, have gone off to try to help the process of developing viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Others are just doing their jobs. And the executives are just fulfilling their obligations to their shareholders. They don't make particularly high profit margins. The largest companies do make remarkably large profits on an absolute basis, which people like you think should simply be confiscated from them.
Maybe you and your ilk should just go ahead and try it. And then maybe those oil workers should just stop pumping the oil (not that they'd have much choice, as their company would go bankrupt shortly after becoming not profitable. Then we'll see if you can live in the world that results.
The fact of the matter is that WE buy the oil and WE burn it. No oil company forces us to do so. If you really care so much about the planet, stop buying and burning petroleum, or any utility supplied electricity or natural gas for that matter.
It is actually WE who should be made to pay higher taxes for burning the crap and putting the CO2 into the atmosphere. Or royalties that would get paid back to us creating a much higher REAL MARKET PRICE for oil while not significantly increasing our cost or allowing the money to get wasted by bureaucrats--a concept people might wake up to if only they had the ability to climb out of thier conditioning for even a second to envision some other approaches to price the commons that don't involve the currently failing model of government regulation/corruption and artificial, legislatively created "markets."
Until you do that, STFU!
Have you noticed at all that these new finds are in areas where it is more expensive to extract the oil? Underwater is a lot more expensive than on land. Under the Arctic Ocean? Well, waiting 5 years will probably make it cheaper, as ice heaves are terrible to construct around. Of course, 5 years may not be long enough to clear the ice.
FWIW, I'd bet that there are lots of undiscovered oil fields under deep ocean, or perhaps that you need to access by drilling sideways into the continental shelf. But that's expensive even compared to working in the Arctic Ocean.
Additionally, of course, every gallon of oil we burn increases our CO2 level. That's not just greenhouse, that's also ocean acidification. But you can't measure the damage that is done in any one day...so you don't need to worry about that, right?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you think that Artic or deep ocean oil is expensive, try going completely without and let us know how expensive that is. Which economy will you ruin, who will you starve, to do without?
Every tree planted reduced CO2. Are you advocating the planting trees, or just cutting off oil?
Alternative energy sources and new technology can decrease our dependency on oil, do you back them?
What is your concern?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Now we can rest assured that our extinction will happen by the continuous burning of fossil fuels, not by the lack of it!
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Last time it was your boy-wonder, who lifted the sanctions against Russia [nytimes.com]...
Yeah.... but sanctions really only send a message in the moment you apply them... After that they're just blocking economic growth in both countries.
So slowing removing them when nobody is looking is smart move... Then you can reapply them, if it should ever come to that.
As long as Putin is around, it's probably not the last time.
Also it doesn't make sense to carry a grudge forever... Sometimes it's better to just move along.
But right now, Cuba, Iran and North Korea doesn't really care much about what the US says.... because sort of armed conflict (in violation of the UN charter) the US can't really impose further sanctions. Cuba is pretty much the US holding an old grudge, lifting those sanctions ought to be a no-brainer... As for Iran and North Korea who both does have nuclear programs, there are pros/cons to maintaining and lifting sanctions. Maintaining them on North Korea, keeps the country crushed. Whereas Iran has oil that we'll buy either way, so maybe lifting sanctions on Iran would be worthwhile. Just maybe.
Yeah. You know it's almost as if the Russians didn't get a copy of the memo that says we are only permitted to use about 1/3 of the current known reserves.
You know, the memo that notes that if we don't leave the other 2/3 in the ground, we are COMPLETELY SCREWING OURSELVES and our little dogs too, on the climate front.
You know, sooner or later, our current "leaders" are going to be held liable for this criminally insane path they are steering us down with a greed-twisted grin on their faces. I can only hope it is sooner.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
there isnt much of a used electric market out there right now.
You know, I was thinking about this lately, and tbh, I don't think there will ever be a used market for electric cars. Not with current technology at least.
A used IC car can generally keep running with standard maintenance for about 20-30 years. Engines are ruggedly simple. especially the old ones, and while the total HP may go down with time (unless the engine is rebuilt, which isn't too expensive in my experience). The range will stay more or less the same. Essentially engines are not consumable, the fuel is.
Not so with the electric cars. In a nutshell, an electric car is nothing more than some motors, attached to a battery pack via some electronics. The battery pack is essentially a consumable item, and makes up the bulk of the cost of the car.
While the motors should last as long as the engine, and the electronics can be replaced with second-hand working ones, chances are the original battery won't hold much charge 5-10 years down the line, and while when new, the manufacturer can do things like offer battery swaps as a part of the warranty, that rarely applies to second hand cars.
Buying a second hand electric car that needs 70% of its original value spent on a new battery makes no sense economically. The car would only be only 30% cheaper than new, but with worn out interior, body, etc...
I suspect that cars will become luxury items in the future. The rich will own cars, be it new electrics or classic IC exotics. Everyone else will not have a car at all, and will rent one by the hour when needed.
Peak oil WAS in 2008. It's a technical term for the maximum bump on the consumption graph. People like to pretend it's something else or that coal, shale oil, gas, biodiesel, whatever should be included but that's something else. Whether we get another peak with a sharp dropoff or a slow slide down as consumption drops due to replacement with other energy sources is something that's still being guessed at.
yep, the old stand by: if you really care you would cease all interaction with fossil fuels. hence, no one really cares and your argument in favor of the tough, hard-working, minimal profit collecting oil executives is somehow justified.
Yes, thank goodness the stupid Russians are so inept when it comes to technology and heavy engineering. Remind me, how do you Yanks get up the ISS these days? Some of the stupid Russians have been suggesting you try using a trampoline, since you don't want their rockets.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
when the US petrodollar is completely decoupled from oil it loses about 5/6ths of its value intrinsically. The subsequent run on the currency could be an order of magnitude higher. Putin knows this and so do the Chinese but don't look to the Chinese to suddenly weeken its largest single purchasing market. The IMF will likely try to float SDRs to replace FRNs as the world currency but Russia and China stand to gain little by supporting it. Don't keep your long term wealth in current financial instruments.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Maybe by "exxon" the OP was referring to the shareholders (owners)? No one's saying we should confiscate their profits, just limit the destruction they can cause in the pursuit of. You say WE should limit our own consumption of oil, but what you might not have noticed is that WE are trying on certain fronts to do just that. However, companies like exxon invest some of that large profit in preventing government (OUR) action on this front.
And that's where it breaks down. Firstly, the surrounding islands and mainland are already occupied - in many cases by Russian nuclear missile bases, supported by Russian regular army, navy and special forces. So, you're going to move in without being spotted and having to fight?
Secondly - you did notice that the country you're planning to invade has nuclear weapons, didn't you?
People like you, even the neo-Cons keep out of the War Room. Too likely to start a fight by shooting yourself in the head.
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