Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
You know that's one well in a potentially huge field, right?
Though 11 days of worldwide energy from one well is impressive in it's own right........
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!