Drill baby drill - a second reality check

[Javaman]

(cross posted from environmental/energy forum)

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52299

Last week President Obama announced that he would open federal waters off the Atlantic coast from Delaware south, portions of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska to oil and gas exploration and development.

>snip<

The eastern GOM is slightly more favorable for oil compared to federal waters off the east coast but not a whole lot more favorable. According to the government, that region has 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. With luck, it may produce a billion barrels of oil.
A billion barrels sounds like a lot of oil, but if it is produced over the course of 30 years, the average production rate is only a bit over 90,000 b/d. In a country that presently consumes around 19 mb/d of liquid hydrocarbons, 90,000 b/d is less than 0.5%.

>snip<

Another issue to consider is that offshore oil development, particularly far offshore, can be very expensive. Oil companies probably aren’t going to consider developing fields off the Atlantic coast or in the eastern GOM unless a field is at least 25 million barrels in size. In the Arctic Ocean, it may require a field 100 million barrels or more in size if the field is far offshore. Oil that is in many small and widely distributed fields may never be developed.

[Robb]

1. Heh. K&R. nt

[RedCloud]

2. US Navy will oppose Mid Atlantic drilling

[FarCenter]

5. Oil is found only in sedimentary rock

It derives from the mixture of sediment and organic material which settled out of shallow seas in the distant past and solidified into rock.

Therefore, oil is only found in the continental shelf, and not in the Atlantic ocean floor farther out.

[NNN0LHI]

3. Republicans depend on short idiotic slogans like "Drill, baby, drill", for their ignorant base

Anything more than a few syllables and they forget their lines.

Taking that off the table was a smart move.

Don

[waiting for hope]

4. Doesn't matter - we should be spending the

time and money on renewable energy and finding other ways .. this is never acceptable:

Grounded Ship: 3km Oil Spill on Great Barrier Reef

by Marissa Calligeros
Published on Sunday, April 4, 2010 by The Sydney Morning Herald


Maritime authorities are racing to disperse an oil spill stretching three kilometres along the Great Barrier Reef.

The Chinese-owned, 230 metre-long bulk coal carrier Shen Neng 1, ran aground about 70 kilometres east of Great Keppel Island shortly after 5pm on Saturday, sparking a national oil spill response plan.

A second dose of chemical dispersants was to be sprayed over the spill, which measures 3000 metres by 100 metres, Maritime Safety Queensland has confirmed.

"One set of dispersants were deployed by light aircraft earlier today and a second spray has been scheduled for this afternoon to manage a 'ribbon' of oil," Maritime Safety Queensland said in a statement.

~Snip~

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/04-0

You can spin it all you want, deflect it's impact and say it's really no big deal, the reality is, if the republicans were doing this, everyone here would be screaming bloody murder and calls for moving away from our dependence for oil would be made.

On edit - provided link

[Javaman]

6. I'm not spinning anything.

And neither is this article. If you choose not to stay on top of the oil industry so you can know what we (who want alt energy) are up against, that is up to you.

Me, I like to keep tabs on the industry that is basically running this country by energy blackmail.

The point of the article is that it's not worth drilling out there. Obama called their bluff and they blinked.

Now he can push for alt energy with the argument that there isn't enough oil out there to put a dent in anything, so therefore was must develop alternative energy.