Why do oil companies drill through thousands of feet of water into

[Subdivisions]

thousands and thousands of feet of crust? Why go to all that trouble instead of just drill on land?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. How does one drill through water?

And in answer to your question, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they do it to extract oil.

[Subdivisions]

2. It figures that would be the focus. Do you truly need an answer to that question? n/t

[Oregone]

7. Sorta is a good question actually

They are always drilling the land actually. It just happens to be covered with water where the oil is

[Cant trust em]

hahahahaha.

ha.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. Carefully? Nope, guess not.

[spanone]

3. m.o.n.e.y.

[Ptah]

4. Mr Dillinger, why do you rob banks…?

“Because”, Dillinger replied “that is where the money is.”

[taterguy]

8. Oh FFS

Willie Sutton said that.

Stop blaming every damn bank robbery on John Dillinger.

People that are lazy about history bug the shit out of me.

[whyverne]

21. Sutton claims he never said it either.

I will now confess, by the fact that I never said it. The credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy...

"If anybody had asked me, I'd have probably said it. That's what almost anybody would say. ...it couldn't be more obvious.

[Ptah]

23. Hey, Dilinger is famous here in Tucson.

That's all I need.

[Oregone]

5. Because God put our land-drillable oil under Mideast sand

So this has to suffice in the meantime

[BrklynLiberal]

6. They do both. They just cannot let any oil go undrilled and not make a profit from it.

[Subdivisions]

14. That's my point though - we always hear how there is plenty of oil

yet they fail to think about why it's necessary to go to all the trouble to drill under thousands of feet of water, especially considering it's smack-dab in the center of Hurricane Alley. The reason they have to drill offshore is because oil is, in fact, NOT plentiful. And anyone who says it is isn't taking into consideration the extremes oil companies will go to get at economically accessable oil. But, once all that oil is gone, then what?

[IDemo]

9. Because most of the sweet light crude has been tapped out on the mainland

It has only been with much better technology and much higher oil prices that taking the risk on deepwater exploration has been worth it.

If you're not part of the Gulf ecosystem, that is.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Have they considered shoving Don Blankenship's ass into that hole to stop the oil leak?

[Lucian]

11. It all depends where oil is.

You can't just find oil anywhere. It's located in traps beneath the crust.

There's a lot of oil located under the Gulf of Mexico.

[yodoobo]

12. because thats where the oil is.

[Subdivisions]

15. But we always hear that oil is plenitful and we have enough to last hundreds of years!

However, if it were so plentiful, why not just take the cheapest, easiest route and drill out all that plentative landlocked oil?

I'm trying to get people to realize and think about the very grave situation with oil. They're going offshore because there is nowhere else to go. People are complaining (right so) about the Gulf oil spill but are unwilling to acknowledge that without those rigs out there on the water our lives may not be as comfortable or mobile as they have been. Don't get me wrong, though. I am 100% against offshore drilling as recently proposed by President Obama. It's a boondoggle. Whatever oil might be found will eventually be used up and then what? Instead, I think we must begin to get serious about transitiioning to a less fossil-fuel intensive future.

[stray cat]

13. A key point of drilling for oil is there must be oil there for it to work

[TransitJohn]

17. Do you know anything about petroleum geology?

Do you know the difference between source rock and reservoir rock? Do you know what kerogen and the 'oil window' are? Do you know much about the concept of 'facies' as it pertains to sedimentary petrology? I ask because basic understanding of these things would help me explain it to you.

[Subdivisions]

20. My questions were rhetorical. No explanation is necessary. n/t

[Motown_Johnny]

18. We have been drilling for oil for about a century now, all the "low hanging fruit" is gone

[AnArmyVeteran]

19. There is oil throughout the US that is capped and left alone. It happened to my family...

Our family had a lot of land in central Texas. It has vast amounts of oil under it. But it remained capped for 70 years. Oil companies discovered the oil and the capped it off and because my Dad's family was going through rough times, like the rest of the country, they leased almost all of the mineral rights. When gas was selling at $4 a gallon the caps were taken off and oil derricks went up. They finally started to extract the oil. It wasn't expensive drilling. The oil wasn't very deep. But the oil companies know where oil is all over the US. Like vultures they wait for rough times, like they did to my family and preyed upon them to get the rights to a great deal of oil for pennies. I'm sure this situation is being played out all across the US.

I don't remember all the details, but I remember a leading geologist in the 70s say we had enough oil in the US to last 400 years, even with an anticipated increase in use of oil. Oil companies make fortunes off of the resources right below our feet. And the owners of property usually buy land with minimal or no property rights. They were gobbled up long, long ago, just as what happened to my family's farm. But oil companies have what we don't have. They are big enough to wait until hard times and then send their predators out to basically steal the oil rights from people who need quick money for food. If my family hadn't gone through that hard time and were able to keep the mineral rights we all would be worth millions. But now, the oil companies and their vulturous side companies own the rights.

Side Note: Tesoro Oil is one of the biggest oil companies but they aren't well known. They have a huge presence in Hawaii as well as other parts of the US and world. In the summer of 2002 their stock was selling for less than 2 bucks a share. Then Cheney gave his first war against Iraq speech and within 3-4 years Tesoro Oil stock rose from $2 a share to almost $140 a share. Did they discover a new oil field? No. Did they invent a new process that is more efficient? No. Did they do anything to merit an increase in stock price? No, nothing, nada. They just exploited the market and the uncertainties deliberately caused by the war. In effect, they increased their share value from $2 to $140 a share off of the blood of our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. But the people at Tesoro don't give a damn about human beings. They only care about making as much money in any way they can. Some call it capitalism at its best. I call it corrupt and soulless. But conservatives love people who make lots of money and they believe anyone who makes a lot of money is somehow brilliant or has been blessed by god.

[Subdivisions]

22. That's very interesting and thanks for posting. I truly hope there's alot of

"hidden" oil out there being held by oil companies waiting for the most profitable opportunity to put in on the market. On the other hand, currently oil is ~$86 per barrel. At that price you'd think oil would be flying out of those holes and into the production databases. How high does the price of a barrel have to get before that oil starts showing up in the data?

[AnArmyVeteran]

25. I forgot to add about how Middle East oil only profits the few, while people starve.

It's a shame how just a few families of thugs own almost all the oil in each Middle East country. All the millions of people who live in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and the rest get nothing but poverty, even though they are sitting on a sea of wealth beneath their feet. But there isn't much difference in this country either. The rich (oil companies) use own most of the rights to oil that is beneath our very feet. Why should an oil company make a 60 billion dollar profit when the oil is coming from American soil? They should be entitled to some profit, but the rest should go to the people who built this country. And face it, the poor and middle classes built the country. The rich just used them to enrich themselves.

Natural resources should belong to the country and its people. It's ironic that Palin presided over the most socialistic state in the country where some of the oil revenues are given back to the citizens of the state. Hell, they get a couple of thousand dollars a year just for being a resident of Alaska. So what makes Alaska so special? Why don't all the people in the country benefit from the resources that come from OUR country? I know it takes equipment and an investment for private enterprises to get the coal, oil or other natural resource from the ground and that they should be entitled so some profit. But they should not be able to take ALL the profits from their ventures.

Greed is going to destroy this country. And soon the US will be like Middle Eastern countries where just a handful of people basically steal all of the wealth from the millions of people who are citizens and work to build those countries. The gap keeps widening in the US until there will only be the super rich and the very poor, if we let it happen.

[phaseolus]

26. Next chapter: Lithium mining?

I've been reading a little about this lately -- demand is going to grow because of hybrid vehicle batteries, Bolivia has about half the world's known reserves, so far they haven't been negotiating with any U.S. mining companies, and the president leans left.

Imagine what Bolivia's fate would be if there's a perfect storm of skyrocketing demand for lithium, vastly reduced worldwide oil reserves, and an American president & congress way too close to corporate interests a la Bush/Cheney...
:scared:

[Phoonzang]

24. I still find it amazing that we have the technology to do that. nt

[kiers]

27. excellent explanation here

http://www.pe.tamu.edu/schubert/public_html/Pemex%20Offshore%20Drilling/

and here:

http://www.pe.tamu.edu/schubert/public_html/Blowout/

[Hekate]

28. Psst. We've hit "peak oil." In fact we are past that point. From now on...

... it's going to get much harder for us to feed our petroleum habit, because the easy pickings are pretty much gone, from what I've read.

Hekate