Posted on 03/25/2013 9:51:40 AM PDT by thackney
And they did.
Can’t see why the Earth would not be able to create petroleum, too!
The math works out to cost of production alone in optimal conditions at $40 per barrel. Crude Oil is at $95 today.
South Africa did coal-to-liquids when apartheid Soviet dreams of a nuke base in Capetown (which the Evil Empire sadly did not survive to see) resulted in not enough countries willing to trade with them.
That is the only the equipment cost of drilling. They are not in production and it certainly isn’t the only cost to bring oil to production. They spent $10s of millions before this point and will spend billions more before they have a drop of production when the build and install the production platform.
Thanks reed13k —
I’ve never priced or done anything offshore. My “deep” experience is a 12,000 ft that produced so much water that we had to come uphole to the Hart. Logs showed 40 ft of pay zone. We have continued having issues with it. Our original AFE was $3 Million to completion. We are over that now. We will probably sell part of it to a horizontal player.
It would take way more than oil to lubricate millions of tons of rock. Just squirt a little WD-40 on a couple of jagged rocks and rub them together and see how much good that does. Then multiply the weight of the rocks by the highest number you can think of and that will get you closer to what kind of pressures are involved. Oil only has a shear strength rated in thousands of pounds, not millions.
Thanks Sequoyah —
I’m grateful for your geology knowledge and ability to express it.
Even with the Deepwater Horizon, I did not realize the depth of the Gulf. BTW, do you know if DH was at a similar depth?
Gwjack
Thanks Rusty —
Amen. At those depths, and even at at ones closer to the surface, drilling is rocket science. If it was easy Obama would be doing it!
Gwjack
Similar but less.
The well into the Macondo field by the Deepwater Horizon Rig was in 5,023 feet of water and drilled to below 18,000 feet depth.
http://www.subseaiq.com/data/Project.aspx?project_id=562
Good grief! My happy hour makes me see ink blot stuff on that bottom one.
“Earthquakes have happened since time immemorial.”
Oh yeh, like you were there.
Oil is usually found under and around the bases of salt domes and/or sand domes. It is not everywhere.
Flying high over the Gulf and looking down upon some of the oil platforms out there, one can see that the platforms are in a circular pattern with one platfrom being directly in the middle of the circular pattern/dome.
That is the same pattern that exists on shore-based wells but are not readily visible because of topography.
Just always thought it interesting..........
Good thing cause your cousin is an idiot.
He's not...but that was funny.
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