Posted on 08/13/2012 12:36:37 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Forget America’s fiscal cliff, Europe’s currency troubles or the emerging-markets slowdown. The most important story in the global economy today may well be some good news that isn’t yet making as many headlines – the coming surge in oil production around the world.
Until very recently, our collective assumption was that oil was running out. That was partly a matter of what seemed like geological common sense. It took millions of years for the earth to crush plankton into fossil fuels; it is logical to think that it would take millions of years to create more. The rise of the emerging markets, with their energy-hungry billions, was a further reason it seemed obvious we would have less oil and gas in 2020 than we do today.
Obvious – but wrong. Thanks in part to technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are entering a new age of abundant oil. As the energy expert Leonardo Maugeri contends in a recent report published by the Belfer Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, “contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption.”
Maugeri, a research fellow at the Belfer Center and a former oil industry executive, bases that assertion on a field-by-field analysis of most of the major oil exploration and development projects in the world. He concludes that “by 2020, the world’s oil production capacity could be more than 110 million_barrels per day, an increase of almost 20 percent.” Four countries will lead the coming oil boom: Iraq, the United States, Canada and Brazil.
Much of the “new” oil is coming on-stream thanks to a technology revolution that has put hard-to-extract deposits within reach: Canadian oil sands, U.S. shale oil, Brazilian presalt oil...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...
I would make this observation. If the Keystone oil was pumped through the US and stayed in the US (that’s likely not the real plan), then it would have a serious affect on world oil prices. I’d be guessing a barrel would be no more than $60 if the US suddenly had a ample supply. The Saudis would be very unhappy.
but, but, but we’ve already reached PEAK OIL!!!
1. New extraction technologies are reviving supposedly "tapped out" oilfields.
2. Canada has only begun to really expand production from the oil tar sands in Alberta.
3. We're perfecting technology to extract oil from oil shale rocks without having to mine out the shale rock, which means over a trillion barrels of oil could be extracted from North America alone.
4. We've barely explored the gigantic amount of oil beneath the continental shelves of the USA.
5. Venezuela has yet to exploit their gigantic oil tar sand field in the Orinocco River region.
6. Who knows how much oil Brazil has off its own coastline.
7. The oilfields in Iran and Iraq have been way underexploited for political reasons.
8. Russia is about to start exploiting its potential oil resources in northeastern Siberia--something that could be bigger than the entire Persian Gulf combined.
9. China knows that the undersea oilfields around the Spratly Islands could be gigantic--maybe as much as 200 billion barrels.
10. Scientists are working on evolving the Fischer-Tropsch process to extract oil from coal in a more efficient manner.
11. Scientists are also working on using renewable oil-laden algae as a base to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and kerosene.
In short, the whole idea of Peak Oil is baloney--they've been saying this doomsday scenario for over 100 years!
Just like the assumptions about global warming, Freon R12 and so many more, it all started as so called studies by effected industries, especially Dupont, who also created the so-called environmentalist groups to raise our awareness to each new cataclysmic human production.
We know that AGW is a bunch of bull generated by money grabbing governments and socially inept "scientists" incapable of sustaining a lifestyle they chose by its commensurate market worth.
Dupont was losing its worldwide patent on R12 and some evidence is at hand about how they funded the initial "ozone hole" studies and created a worldwide panic over something that has been occurring naturally at the poles during the respective winter months at each since the dawn of time. The result was to outlaw R12 and those set to compete against Dupont and usher in the new "greener" R134a as the approved refrigerant which is not nearly as efficient as R12. Is it not amazing how the Ozone hole issue went away almost overnight?
As for the oil situation, just as the AGW zealots purposefully disregard the Sun as a controlling factor of our climate, another crowd conveniently disregards the natural smelter boiling miles below our feet as having anything to do with the pressures of gas and oil fields but are quick to herald its presence to explain Iceland and Yosemite. Add my contention about the myth of oil production foisted by the "Dupont" industrial factor and the world would be a different place altogether. The sands of the Arabian desert just might become more valuable to them for the silica industry than is the extraction of oil beneath it.
I got your peak oil right here....
P4L
Great post!
If we keep having conveniently timed refinery “maintenance” every time the price of gas falls, we’ll never see the effect of any crude glut at the pump.
RE post 1, first thing I thought of.
The plan is to refine the heavy oil in Texas/Louisiana where the refineries are already buying and refining heavy oil from Venezuela. That will compete with/displace the Venezuelan oil, putting downward pressure on world oil prices.
Another bonus for the US is that Keystone will pass the Bakken field, picking up domestic production that is shut in now from lack of transportation.
Of course, the REAL strategy is not to use these “enhanced recovery” methods in any OPEC Nation. Screw ‘em. . .
He can keep making the effort, but he can’t stop it forever.
I had never heard of the Monterey Shale, which is rich in natural gas as well as oil, until I started researching the possibility some land my father owns may be drilled.
http://www.oilshalegas.com/montereyshale.html
This is a huge field. The problem with it is the petroleum is thick and viscous, has very low pressure underneath and is difficult to extract. It is under a strata of chert, chystalline quartz, a substance extremely difficult to drill.
There is an estimated 300+ billion barrels in the field, and some geologists speculate as much as 680 billion barrels.
The U.S. is not running out of energy anytime soon.
Maybe it is time to revisit the scientific dogma that oil is exclusively biogenic in origin, i.e., whether it really is a fossil fuel. (Not only is there more than previously thought but aren’t there fossil fuels on other planets in the solar system that presumably never had fossils?)
Nonsense. The US is still the world's largest importer of oil. We import more crude oil than we produce ourselves.
Delivering crude oil to markets farther away would only reduce their profits by increasing the transportation cost of a globally fungible commodity. We pay market prices. That is why OPEC nations sell us as much oil as we produce in Texas, North Dakota, Alaska, California, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Colorado combined.
US Crude Oil Production by State: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_m.htm
U.S. Crude Oil Imports by Country of Origin
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbblpd_m.htm
Take a look at the Green River formation...weighs in at over 3Trillion barrels....
The in-place oil shale resources in the Eocene Green River Formation of the Piceance Basin of western Colorado and the Uinta Basin of western Colorado and eastern Utah are estimated at 1.53 trillion barrels and 1.32 trillion barrels, respectively. The oil shale strata were deposited in a single large saline lake,
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