The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

mm loves controversy and all the attention he gets by posting bull shite. I put him on Ignore; he isn't worth the time or effort. Palin isn't a public figure?

ROFLMAO

I 100% agree.
But she isnt the only "former" to add that to their introductions.

I do think its wrong, but so many politicians do it that it has become almost accepted.

Newt is talking about oil in North Dakota - information that the US had for several decades. He's now blaming Obama for not mining that oil.

What's wrong with this picture? One guess.

Michael Moore ran this piece from Crystal Zevon, widow of Warren (if you don't know who Warren was, I won't bother talking to you) which has soooo much to say. This is a must read:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/bail-out-america

Yeah right, Sarah. That is so fuckin' hilarious. You go Girl, you get out there and debate anyone, even a chimpanzee, and I'll pay 20 bucks to see you "debate".

Speaking of oil, I saw this today and cant help but wonder why we arent exploiting this...

http://news.investors.com/article/604303/201203141303/oil-abundant-in-the-united-states.htm




So, assuming this article is correct, I do wonder what the politicians are thinking by not allowing us to get this oil.

There is a difference between technically recoverable and economically feasible.

Politicians aren't preventing us from getting the oil in ND and Wyoming. The cost is.

Un huh. The cheapest and easiest oil to extract has already been produced. That's why it was exploited first.

I recall some numbers from the OPEC embargo of 1973. On average, U.S. oil cost $12.00/bbl to raise to the well head. In Saudi Arabia, the number was .50/bbl. At least at that time, there were simply no pumps needed to lift the oil.

By the way, my own little area has more oil and gas wells than the entire Persian Gulf region, but the Gulf has some really good wells.

The windfall profits tax of the 1970s--it taxed domestically produced petroleum because it was being priced at world oil prices, even though it obviously was much cheaper for the oil companies to produce. Thanks to the effect of unintended consequences, it meant that oil companies increasingly purchased foreign oil, and spent less on exploration and exploitation of domestic sources. The tax was repealed in 1988, but the Alaskan north slope oil fields are the only large scale domestic petroleum project in the U.S.--largely because so much had already been invested in the project, including the pipeline. The oil industry just lost interest in exploration and exploitation of new sources in the United States.

I suspect the American energy industry is happy to sit on thie resource, because they can still import oil, and they have no incentive to start a project with very high capital investment requirements. If foreign, imported oil starts to get really, really expensive, and with the windfall profits tax replealed, i suspect we will then see the exploitation of these sources.

It struck me..

It's "technically feasible" for everyone in the US to own an electric car which would mean we wouldn't have to drill any more oil.

when I was a wee rock, there were pumpers everywhere. we even knew a guy that had one in his back yard with a fence around it...

I was surprised to actually see one moving up and down the other day out here near the farm. it's that rare now...

Commie

Not only are the above posters correct regarding the price, but I should also point out that extracting shale oil is incredibly environmentally destructive. Much more so than traditional wells. It's a nightmare for the surrounding area and the resulting oil is of poor quality compared to the 'good stuff.' It's hard to transport (one of the big problems with the Keystone pipeline is the constant breakdowns and spills they have had occur) and spills are very destructive to the area they occur.

See here:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aswift/the_first_keystone_tar_sands_p.html

Cycloptichorn

The tar sands and shale in Canada are also (alleged) to be big producers of CO2.

Be very suspicious of pump jacks in operation. As I said, this area is predominately a gas field, yet there are lots of pump jacks rocking away every day - and they don't pump natural gas out of the hole.

What happens is that some of our formations hold so much water that the wellbores become flooded. When the water pressure is greater than the gas pressure, the gas doesn't come up. They tell me that sometimes a newly drilled well just sits there, being purged of water for a year or more before they can start production.

CO2 is a valuable commodity, if you can get it where you need it. Kinder Morgan used to be very big in transporting CO2.

The CO2 is produced when the petroleum is separated from the sand or shale. I have no idea whether or not the CO2 could be harvested.

But if it is "recovered" the price of oil goes down because the Saudis only need turn the taps open more and if it is the price of oil now that is too low for production to be worthwhile then it is obvious that the oil is only recoverable by people who are looking to go bankrupt.

I know it isn't the American way but it might be better left for future generations when the easy-to-get stuff runs out.

The thing is that it's actually free. The crude oil. The dirt. The cost is entirely wages. The Saudis and others could under-cut it all the way.

Then you support using coal to generate the electricity needed to power those electric cars?

I think parados was taking the piss. I hope so.