Oil at $87 and rising - still no alternative energy

the achilles heel imo :



from a report by the university of nebraska at omaha - see full report at link .

UNITED STATES OIL CONSUMPTION

the achilles heel imo :



from a report by the university of nebraska at omaha - see full report at link .

UNITED STATES OIL CONSUMPTION

There are a few points that the official statistics dont reveal.

Its not all the same stuff. Canadian tar sands in Alberta are extensive, but very expensive in terms of water, resources and above all energy itself to convert into useful energy fuels.

The OPEC countries stick to a production quota based on their estimated reserves. The more they have, the more they produce. So if they want more money and thus want to produce more, they announce they have more. This has been done several times.

Production in non OPEC countries is generally accepted to be past peak.

The easy oil is nearly gone. That why companies are spending vast sums in extracting it from inhospitable localities, in deep water or in the polar regions for example.

The remaining easy oil is concentrated in just 5 countries... Iran Iraq Saudi Arabia United arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The new oil bonanza (yet to be proved) lies around the Caspian but most of those countries are land locked or require passage through Iran or Russia, hence the interest in Afghanistan.

Eliminating the hostile regime in Iraq and making that the focus of American attention not only secures Iraq's unexploited reserves but takes the pressure off the Saudi regime in its battle with the militants.

China is desperate to secure oil. Off the coast of Angola, where exploration rights would normally cost $100m dollars, the Chinese are willing to pay $1bn. They are also doing deals with Sudan because in the Darfur region...guess what there's oil.

steve wrote :



surely they are not so desparate that they now want to build powerplants in iraq - together with iran ? :wink:
they just want to show the iraqis what great friends they have - and if the iraqis want to sell their oil to the chinese ? what's the old saying :
"you scratch my back , i'll scratch your back " .
there'll be a lot of scratching going on .
hbg

see :
CHINA AND IRAN TO BUILD IRAQ POWERPLANT

BLOOMBERG SPOTPRICE
-----------------------------


up , up and away !

ANWR would help us a little. A nice million or 1.5 million barrels per day for a long time, as I recall.

US oil consumption per day: 20.73 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

(The CIA World Factbook)

some interesting information by the : U.S. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION

Nice graphic, Walt. That puts production at around 60 million a day. A lot less than the 87 million I noted. Is the problem worse than I thought or is one (or both) sources in error?

Halfback

Statistics confirm need to replace decline of North Slope with possible ANWR production. ANWR could be one of the major, if not the leading area of supply for domestic U.S. oil, with projected production coming from a very, very small percentage or area within ANWR. I will predict that after years of kicking and screaming by the naysayers, that finally logic will kick in, and we will produce the area. How many years this will take who knows, but it will probably eventually happen.

you have a simple choice okie

1. develop the ANWR and let the wildlife suffer
2. carry on guzzling gas and let the planet suffer
3. significantly reduce consumption, and pray its not too late.

(I know #3 is quite preposterous, but it is an alternative)

More than anything else we need to eliminate half the commuting. Neighborhood work sites are the biggest part of the answer. Other than that there's more oil under the rockies and offshore from Ca. and Fla. than there is in the middle east; we should be exporting oil and not importing it.

Oh, yeah, "Neighborhood Work Sites"; what's that?

Logically, in most of our metro areas, there can't really be more than about 20% of anybody who needs to be at one physical site five days a week. Most people are not organized enough to work from home but they could damned well be working from some local work site four days out of the week and THAT would empty our roads to the point we could tell OPEC to screw off.

That could be implemented in a year or so if we put our minds to it. I.E use electrons instead of all the oil and rubber.

I mean, in the DC region where I live we now have people spending three and four hours a day in traffic as a normal part of their lives; that's simply wrong. God could come down out of the sky and give us all the gasoline we'd need for the rest of our lives for free and it would not fix the problem.

When you tell Bush that he's going to be really pissed off.

Another question for you then, should we shut down all the production in Texas, after all maybe it would help the wildlife and it would make the price of gasoline go up and force us to use other alternatives if there are any that could even do the job right now, so we could "save the planet?" And if that is also a very good move, why not shut down a few more states? If its good in one place, it must be good in other places, right? Why not go further and simply shut down some of the refineries, as that would even make things move faster?

my italics

This is my whole point. There aren't any alternatives. And thats why you are desperately seeking more of the same.

But dont worry, Gunga has the answer. Apparantly there is more oil under the Rockies than in the middle east. Just a matter of telling Cheney and Bush.
Boy will they be embarrassed over Iraq now.

Gunga's answer is not accurate. There is not enough oil that can be practically discovered in an all out effort to much change our situation. Technically, there are zillions of barrels of oil in oil shale, but not very practically recoverable with current technology at todays prices. There are not that many elephants lurking in terms of oil fields in the continental U.S., and that is why ANWR is unique and crucial to us if we want to help ourselves somewhat. It is not the total answer either, but it is stupid to sit here and not do what we can to soften the blow, when the environmental impacts are minimal, all the while complaining about oil prices, etc.

That's a pretty poor point.

BMW makes a hydrogen powered car, the hybrids have yet to hit their stride, nuclear, wind and solar power are constantly being refined and made more efficient.

We use oil because it is there, it's cheap, it's plentiful and we can. When it is no longer there, cheap or plentiful, the world will move on sparing reserves for important uses. I don't foresee a hydrogen powered airline in our near future, but tankers, cruise ships and cargo ships could have very well protected nuclear reactors someday, who knows.

ANWR will not help us in the slightest.

Imagine a patient who is dying, and needs 4 pints of blood immediately. How much effort would you put into securing 4 spoonfuls? That's what ANWR represents. A drop in the bucket.

One of our major problems is a lack of advances in battery storage technology. Oil/gasoline isn't even really a good fuel source at all; compared to others, it is deficient in every fashion except for one, which trumps the others currently: portability.

Cycloptichorn

You might not have been keeping up totally. The discovery of oil under the Rockies is new and does not involve shale oil, and the quantities are gigantic.