Why ARE gas prices rising?

[Jim O'Bryan]

Not drilling for oil on this continent also impacts the amount of oil supply available to us here in North America... just sayin....

Stephen/Others

ANWAR is so overblown it is not even really worth talking about. In the best case scenario ANWAR would provide oil for the USA for about 1 month, maybe 2. I say best case because while I was at BP back in the 90s they were already attempting to side drill into it.

From what I can remember there was more oil in the oil sands of Canada than ANWAR.

Oil is based on many things, amount available, amount that can be processed, demand, speculation and the fact that oil companies are not regulated as other "utilities" are. Greed is a huge part as they tend to price at what they "think" oil will be worth months down the road. The price is then based on "restocking" not stocking.

The fact remains, we are on the back of the oil bell curve. Prices will continue to climb rapidly. Most OPEC countries no longer allow "outside/independent" auditors for the last 5 years or more. So no one really knows just how bad it might be.

That said, I think we should cap every well in the USA, and stop drilling. As long as we can buy oil, let's buy it. Years from now when you can no longer buy it mostly for strategic reasons, then we can go and drill. By then the cost of oil will be through the roof, and the cost of finding and refining will be way down, as they must get better at both in the next couple years.

FWIW


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[ryan costa]

is Russia's oil abiotic or deep crust? Maybe there oil is cheaper because...they have much lower demand, a higher supply, and Putin arrested most of the oil oligarchs.

The same guys making money off oil today would be making money off deep abiotic oil tomorrow. The hypothetical free market piles hundreds of billions of dollars into trivial and frivolous stuff like myspace, windows vista, youtube, America Online, the companies of Oprah and martha stewart, etc. Surely there would be 30 billion laying around for deep coast drilling. I'm sure the big bankers and oil companies could get the necessary drilling permits with a fraction of the propaganda it took to invade Iraq.

[Stephen Eisel]

Stephen/Others

ANWAR is so overblown it is not even really worth talking about. In the best case scenario ANWAR would provide oil for the USA for about 1 month, maybe 2. I say best case because while I was at BP back in the 90s they were already attempting to side drill into it.

If ANWR produced 1 million bbl / day (like Prudhoe Bay) then ANWR could last up to 30 years (Most scientist estimate the amount of recoverable oil at 10 billion barrels .) Prudhoe Bay has produced over 13 billion barrels of oil since coming online in 1977. Also, the natural gas reserves could top over 40 trillion cubic feet.

[Stephen Eisel]

is Russia's oil abiotic or deep crust? Maybe there oil is cheaper because...they have much lower demand, a higher supply, and Putin arrested most of the oil oligarchs.

Russia is the world's 2nd largets oil producer and the world's 4th largest consumer.


http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1130.html

There is an alternative theory about the formation of oil and gas deposits that could change estimates of potential future oil reserves. According to this theory, oil is not a fossil fuel at all, but was formed deep in the Earth's crust from inorganic materials. The theory was first proposed in the 1950s by Russian and Ukranian scientists. Based on the theory, successful exploratory drilling has been undertaken in the Caspian Sea region, Western Siberia, and the Dneiper-Donets Basin.

The prevailing explanation for the formation of oil and gas deposits is that they are the remains of plant and animal life that died millions of years ago and were compressed by heat and pressure over the years. Russian and Ukranian geologists argue that formation of oil deposits requires the high pressures only found in the deep mantle and that the hydrocarbon contents in sediments do not exhibit sufficient organic material to supply the enormous amounts of petroleum found in supergiant oil fields.

[ryan costa]

the capital required to get that deep oil(in North America) is enormous. the same guys making money now would be making money then. and controlling market share, which is often more important than revenue(something about the stock market) and have more control of their supply. yet it ain't happening. I'm guessing none of them have high expectations of it.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Stephen/Others

ANWAR is so overblown it is not even really worth talking about. In the best case scenario ANWAR would provide oil for the USA for about 1 month, maybe 2. I say best case because while I was at BP back in the 90s they were already attempting to side drill into it.

If ANWR produced 1 million bbl / day (like Prudhoe Bay) then ANWR could last up to 30 years (Most scientist estimate the amount of recoverable oil at 10 billion barrels .) Prudhoe Bay has produced over 13 billion barrels of oil since coming online in 1977. Also, the natural gas reserves could top over 40 trillion cubic feet.

Most scientist! I would like to see this report. While it might take 30 years to get oil out of ANWAR I think the number is closer to 10-20, the fact remains it is a drop in the bucket to what we need. Enough to power the USA for one or two months tops. ANWAR is not Prudoe Bay and no one has ever claimed it to be with any credibility. It is an oil find, not a large one and not a small one. It is not Prudhoe Bay.

As far as the Natural Gas, the production is full off of the North Slope, I have never heard of large numbers for Natural Gas with ANWAR. On the North Slope and in the rest of America Natural Gas is not just plentiful but should be looked at as a way to power things in the near term.

Let's also remember the term recoverable oil refers to getting it out anyway possible which would include propents, and steam cleaning. Both extremely expensive, but in the cards. Some of these techniques are in full use at Prudhoe Bay, which is very much emptying. However as mentioned it wold be easier and cheaper to get oil from the shale of Colorado or the Black Sands of Canada than out of steam cleaning the earth inside out.

We are on the back of the bell curve, plain and simple and have been for some time. It makes all the sense in the world to buy, buy, buy oil from others willing to sell and save ours until there is none or we have strategic needs. Do we really want to pump ours dry so that China can drive SUVS at a fair price?!

The oil wars will come soon enough.

FWIW

[Stephen Eisel]

the fact remains it is a drop in the bucket to what we need.

That drop in the bucket could reduce the amount of oil that we import from the Middle East by 6% or possibly reduce our imports by $1 trillion dollars a year..

[Jim O'Bryan]

the fact remains it is a drop in the bucket to what we need.

That drop in the bucket could reduce the amount of oil that we import from the Middle East by 6% or possibly reduce our imports by $1 trillion dollars a year..

Stephen

Let me try this one more time.

Let's pretend this is all true.

$1 trillion today, is $2 trillion down the road. With the falling dollar that could equal $3 - $4 trillion. Now if we are to use that for the National Surplus, we are talking a huge savings and added security.

Even if every scenario you laid out is true, which I am not agreeing to. The fact remains we would all win bigger and better dividends buying/importing all the oil we can now while saving ours.

Best case is world runs out about 2025, anyway.


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[Stephen Eisel]

http://www.anwr.org/backgrnd/potent.html

U.S. Geological Survey - 1980. In 1980, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the Coastal Plain could contain up to 17 billion barrels of oil and 34 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

vs.

US. Department of Interior - 1987. After several years of surface geological investigations, aeromagnetic surveys, and two winter seismic surveys (in 1983-84 and 1984-85), the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), in its April, 1987 report on the oil and gas potential of the Coastal Plain, estimated that there are billions of barrels of oil to be discovered in the area. DOI estimates that "in-place resources" range from 4.8 billion to 29.4 billion barrels of oil. Recoverable oil estimates ranges from 600 million barrels at the low end to 9.2 billion barrels at the high end. They also reported identifying 26 separate oil and gas prospects in the Coastal Plain that could each contain "super giant" fields (500 million barrels or more).

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB ... 87683.html

How much oil is there in ANWR?

A frequently cited number is 10.4 billion barrels. That represents the amount of oil that is technically recoverable; other deposits aren't reachable by current drilling technology.

To put that in context: The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of petroleum a day, or 7.32 billion barrels per year, according to 2003 figures from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, or EIA. The U.S. produces 5.7 million barrels of crude oil a day, and imports a net of 11.2 million barrels a day. (The rest of the petroleum comes from natural gas liquids, refinery gains, and other factors.)

Proven domestic reserves -- or known sources that oil companies report in their financial statements and are, for the most part, already tapping -- total 21.89 billion barrels, mostly in Alaska, Texas, California and offshore. The total oil in so-called undiscovered resources, which include as-yet-undrilled areas like ANWR, is believed to be about 15 times greater.

But 10.4 billion barrels is just a best guess. The USGS prefers to say the total is somewhere between 5.7 billion and 16 billion barrels, based on a 1998 study republished in 2001. (See the study here, and a fact sheet about it here.) Drilling proponents sometimes use the higher number, while opponents sometimes use the lower one. (The Wall Street Journal recently has been citing the range of estimates.)

Why such a wide range? Because the estimate is based on seismic data from two decades ago. The USGS used dynamite and vibrational machines in two separate studies in 1984 and 1985 to shake the surface of ANWR, then measured resulting seismic activity. The data yield a fuzzy picture of what lies beneath.

[Stephen Eisel]

the fact remains it is a drop in the bucket to what we need.

That drop in the bucket could reduce the amount of oil that we import from the Middle East by 6% or possibly reduce our imports by $1 trillion dollars a year..

Stephen

Let me try this one more time.

Let's pretend this is all true.

$1 trillion today, is $2 trillion down the road. With the falling dollar that could equal $3 - $4 trillion. Now if we are to use that for the National Surplus, we are talking a huge savings and added security.

Even if every scenario you laid out is true, which I am not agreeing to. The fact remains we would all win bigger and better dividends buying/importing all the oil we can now while saving ours.

Best case is world runs out about 2025, anyway.


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We have already waited 20 years... What is another 20???


PS Who is now drilling off the coast of Flordia?

[Jim O'Bryan]

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We have already waited 20 years... What is another 20???


PS Who is now drilling off the coast of Flordia?[/quote]

Well the answer is still $$$$$ and security.

I am not sure but would think Royal Dutch Shell I do not remember any BP interests worth speaking of down there. Their strongest alliance is with StatOil/the Russians.

Prudhoe was basically played out in 1995, Colombia was a bust, they got nothing from their allotments in the Gulf. They have spent billions on ways to rehab wells as this can also be used for oil sand, oil shale, and the massive oil spills in Siberia, which is supposedly a huge find, many say much larger than ANWAR and it is sitting on the surface.

Party is over no matter what.

FWIW


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[Jim DeVito]

Party is over no matter what.

FWIW


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Very True. It is time to get our heads out of the sand (hehe) and think about what happens after oil.

[ryan costa]

it is good to try pacing things with the goal that they don't fall apart until after we die of old age.

An energy policy has to be broad. It has to ask questions other than how to get more energy all the time.

A good thing to do would be getting the railroads going again. We don't need the bullet trains of Japan. The bullet trains of Japan cross much shorter distances. And the population there is much better at dealing with them. Americans wouldn't be able to cope with that. Dozens of Americans would be hit by trains every day. Even though most people who get hit by trains deserve it, it is still not good that people get hit by trains.

In America trains travel much greater distances that are mostly sparsely populated. Trains have to be more reliable than fast. They are more reliable when they don't have to stop because of hitting a pedestrian or car every twenty miles.

[Jim DeVito]

Click Here Please

[ryan costa]

that is a good article Jim Devito.

He may be fudging the numbers a bit with increases in global production of oil. The world is a big place, and production going up in places like indochina and Russia kind of skews the numbers against decreases in production or exports in places that export to U.S.markets.

reserves may be slightly up, but it only took a 500% jump in price to achieve that. instead of a 2 week supply of bread in the freezer, there is a 3 week supply of bread in the freezer.

It suggests oil prices have only spiked because of the top guys in the Free Market trading it back and forth. There must be concerns about supply somewhere though, cuz an awful lot of influence was used to spend the military on Iraq.