Thanx for the ping Ernest_at_the_Beach !
Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/19/2011 7:22:36 PM PDT by Clive
An OPEC billionaire has publicly said what everyone long suspected, but just hadn’t heard out loud before: Saudi Arabia doesn’t want the world to develop unconventional sources of oil, like Canada’s oilsands.
Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the world’s 26th richest man, worth more than $19 billion, told CNN he’s worried if oil prices stay around $100 a barrel, the West will look for other sources of oil and Saudi Arabia would lose its dominant position.
“We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives,” he said, “because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives.” Give the sheik full marks for honesty. Saudi Arabia has the West just where they want us. They don’t want us getting any big ideas that would reduce our dependence on his dictatorship, and terrorist states like Iran.
It’s like when the head of Russia’s state-controlled natural gas company, Gazprom, denounced new technologies to produce shale gas, saying he was worried about the safety of “American housewives.” No, Gazprom executives and Vladimir Putin are not concerned about human rights and environmentalism in Russia, let alone the West. They’re concerned about competition that would free America and Europe from reliance on Putin’s natural gas.
The Saudi sheik didn’t condemn the oilsands by name — he just condemned what he called “alternative” sources of oil. But he couldn’t have been talking about anyone else. There are more than 170 billion barrels of oil in the oilsands we can recover with today’s technology. That’s 300 years worth at the rate we’re producing it. It’s the world’s second largest oil reserves, after Saudi Arabia.
But there are another 1.7 trillion barrels in place in the oilsands that we don’t yet have the technology to get out economically. That’s what this Saudi sheik is worried about. If oil stays at $100 a barrel, it’s worth it for Canadian scientists to invest in new technologies to get at that 1.7 trillion barrels.
It’s pretty tough to like Saudi sheiks, Iranian ayatollahs and Russian former KGB agents. Which is why you don’t usually see those folks attacking the oilsands in public. Prince Al-Waleed’s comments were a rare Saudi public criticism of the West. Normally, they leave that sort of thing to their allies — professional environmental lobbyists.
There are about 100 professional anti-oilsands activists in Canada, who do nothing but attack Canada’s oil industry. Typically they pose as grassroots environmentalists. But the facts are different.
Most environmental activists are actually paid professionals. And most work for foreign lobbyists.
Greenpeace, for example, is a $200-million multinational corporation based in Europe. If they don’t raise a million bucks a day in fundraising, they’d have to shut down.
As Vivian Krause has documented, the U.S. Tides Foundation, their Canadian arm Tides Canada and other foreign foundations have pumped about $200 million into Canada to fight development of the oilsands and forestry, among other causes. Imagine if Canadian lobbyists pumped $200 million into the U.S. to meddle in their political decisions: Congress would hold hearings and the Pentagon would go to Defcon 1.
The professional environmentalist movement is neither Canadian nor grassroots. It’s foreign, professional and well funded.
It may not be funded directly by Saudi Arabia — we have no evidence of that.
But every time a Canadian oil company is slowed down or our pipeline projects are delayed, it is another day the OPEC near-monopoly continues.
Canada’s environmental extremists might not be working directly for Sheik Al-Waleed, but they’re doing his bidding.
If he could send a message to Greenpeace, it would be one word: Shokran — thank you, in Arabic.
-
-
Were SA to find an alternative to Wahabbist Islam (like (Zoroastrianism or Buddhism), I might be a little more sympathetic.
The Saudi's no longer have anyone over a barrel.
Historically, when we got to a point where the Saudi's were concerned that the West would take more aggressive steps to expand energy access and they wanted to increase production to limit action, they told OPEC to increase or they (the Saudi's) would increase. They can't do that any more.
The Saudi's no longer have the reserve capacity to increase production by significant amounts to affect the market. When OPEC is no longer willing to go along, it isn't going to happen.
Further, the relevant issue is not the oil sands--the reserves they are concerned about are in shale oil in the US. It costs about $1.6mm to drill a shale oil well with a horizontal gathering leg. The well will produce about 100 bbls a day. So there is a large capital cost in getting enough shale oil out to affect the price.
It is that capital the Saudi's want to threaten. It takes $70 oil to make that a no capital risk proposition. Looks to me as though the Saudi's lose this leg of the negotiation.
If odumbass his wild eye crazy lib buddies and the tree huggers would get out of our way we could make a major dent in the Saudis Oil.
I just read an article about a little field in Califorina that was opened in about 1930, production peaked in ‘39 at about 9,000 bopd and fell to less than 1,000 bopd in 2000. Steam flooding helped boost production to about 4,000 bopd up until about 2009 then horizontals were drilled and production in the old field rose to 8,000 bopd and is still rising. Not every field could do this but a lot could.
It won’t deliver energy independence to the U.S. but it will help balance the market. Offshore makes bigger dents faster. Exxon just announced another 700,000,000 bbl discovery in the Gulf. We have drilled to “only” 35,000 feet and the hydrocarbon window probably goes all the way to 50,000 feet. We are developing the technology to get there right now.
We can produce hydrocarbons for a long time if government will clear their obstacles.
That's ridiculous. The Congresscritters would demand their share of the loot.
I well remember when OPEC got spooked over the Colony Shale Oil Project at the Piceance Basin near Parachute Creek, Colorado in late 1980s. They were afraid we had finally gotten serious about developing our own domestic energy and dropped the price of oil to around $9.00 a barrel almost overnight, BLAM, even with billions of $ invested, walked away and that was the end of the oil shale project.
Obama is going to make sure the US stays dependent on his master’s (the king of Saudi Arabia) oil.
Exactly. All this Green Jobs b*llshite is just a ruse to keep us from developing our own source, while the politician reap millions or more in bribes in offshore accounts.
And they can do the same thing now..
And they can do the same thing now..
The same enviromentalists pushing the Global Warming Hoax...
Thanx for the ping Ernest_at_the_Beach !
Thanks Ernest. But the real problems? Being forced to stop using incandescent bulbs and have ethanol in our gas. Oh, and foreign aid to Israel, paying for NASA, helmet laws...
Notice how the Tides Foundation always pops up in reference to things directly assaulting the sovereign nature of the United States of America. Putin must be very proud of how all those Communist implants have made out over the years.
We also have lots of natural gas. You can get dual-fuel trucks running off either liquified natural gas or diesel. We just need to have some LNG refueling capabilities at major truck stops along major highways.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.