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geezerbob
Guest
Not to worry. The USGS just announced there are 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in North Dakota and Montana that is profitable at $50/bbl. foxnews.com/story/0,2933,349728,00.html
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Doug50
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The Bakken Shale has been hyped up. But be that as it may, 4.3 billion would only supply the US’s consumption for less than a year. The US uses 7-8 billion barrels per year.
Consider what was Shell’s president reported to the Congressional hearings on April 1st.
The US economy uses:
- 10,000 gallons of oil every second of every day
- 60 billion cubic feet of natrual gas every day. If you stacked those cubic feet on top of each other they’d reach from here to the moon and back (a round trip) 25 times every day.
- 20 railcars of coal are burned for electricity every minute. Put another way, a 100 railcars train of coal is burned evey 5 minutes.
bakkenshale.blogspot.com/2007…lity-rant.html
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Time For A Reality Rant
You know, I get just a little tired of companies trolling for investors and general media reports that keep bringing up the hundreds of billions of barrels that supposedly exist in the Bakken everytime the formation is mentioned. My question to them is “so what?” Instead, why not tell me what percentage of that figure is recoverable, as isn’t that what’s really important? For the ignorant, these reports make it sounds like all that previously unknown oil is just waiting down there for whomever wants to put a straw into this vast underground pool like Spindletop and then just let it flow. That is hardly the case.
These enormous estimates are generated by calculating the oil in place on a section basis times the areal extent of the Bakken. Most companies are estimating about 3-5 MM bbls/section, which is open to debate, but is certainly reasonable. Now the tricky part comes in calculating what percentage of that amount is recoverable. A ten percent recovery rate would yield between 300-500K bbls/section. This certainly appears to be a reasonable rate in areas of exceptional formation quality, such as in the Parshall area, although the jury is still out as to the long term producibility of those wells. But again, it is certainly not an unreasonable calculation for that area based on the scant production history that exists. In other areas currently being developed with less favorable geology, perhaps half that, or five percent, is a reasonable recovery rate, as 300K is an often used estimate for 1280 acre units. However, in some fringe areas, the recovery rate with current technology is only a fraction of one percent, and a number of those wells will be hard pressed to ever make 100K, or even 50K, even after twenty years of production.
So what’s the point here, you may ask. The point is: how much of the Bakken acreage being used to calculate hundreds of billions of bbls has poor geologic factors that has a recovery rate with current technology of less than one percent? My guess is a lot of it. Consequently, the hundreds of billions suddenly become hundreds of millions in relevant terms. Marathon and EOG both guess that they have recoverable reserves of roughly 100 MM bbls on their acreage. New technology in the next ten years could double or triple that, who knows. Now, is a couple hundred million bbls that nobody thought could be produced five years ago something to take lightly? Of course not. It’s the equivalent of finding new Billings Nose, Little Knife, and MonDak Fields. It is hardly hundreds of billions of bbls though.
So if anybody tells me they think there are 800 trillion bbls down there, I really don’t care. Tell me how many of those bbls you can economically put in a tank, then I’ll care.
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Doug50
Guest
The world is going to be what it will be. How we respond to it as a people of God is what’s really at stake. It’s well within the possiblities that the 21st century will see an economic collapse do to over extended energy demands. God didn’t prevent Catholic chistian Europe’s economic/social collapse (aka the Dark Ages) because the Roman empire over extended itself leaving it open to the Barbarian invasion.
As modern life has made life easier in the 1st world it has also made it easier to move away from God.
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drpmjhess
Guest
Ribozyme, I am optimistic because I have children with hopes and dreams. I’m optimistic in the way Christians were in the face of the Black Death. I’m optimistic as I pray like the Jews did in Auschwitz. I’m optimistic like my Catholic friend who married a man knowing he had ALS, and who for eight years cared for him through the end last year. I’m optimistic because the alternative is unthinkable.
My optimism is not from ignorance of the serious state of the world, or through foolhardy confidence in technofix solutions. But I do think even small things can be done to mitigate the consequences. If we have time and the political will, we should work collectively
(1) to convert agriculture to a post-fossil fuel model
(2) to restructure our living patterns so that people live close to where they work, and no longer make costly commutes
(3) to build safe nuclear power plants as fast as we can as a stopgap measure to prevent people from freezing in the winter and dying of heat stroke in the summer
(4) to commit ourselves to electric high-speed inter-city rail, and intra-city light rail networks
(5) to bring down the population gradually to solar carrying capacity through smaller families, until we reach a level where billions won’t needlessly starve to death.
As Catholics (and others), I think we ought to begin to regard these five points as essential to the project of saving civilization. That’s why I’m guardedly optimistic.
Prayerfully yours,
Petrus
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peregrinus_WA
Guest
And your source for this dire prediction? Ted Turner does not count.
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peregrinus_WA
Guest
And how do you propose that? Contraception(forced or not)? Abortion (forced or not)? Euthanasia (Forced or not)?
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drpmjhess
Guest
Is this the extent of your imagination?
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peregrinus_WA
Guest
Just want to know how you are gonna accomplish population control without them?
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drpmjhess
Guest
Have you heard of education? Abstinence? NFP?
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ribozyme
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Doug50
Guest
If you’d rather listen and watch
Prof Rick Smalley - Our Energy Challenge
Columbia University Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center presents “Our Energy Challenge” by Nobel laureate Professor Richard Smalley of Rice University.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4626573768558163231
Power point presentation Smalley is using in the above lecture
smalley.rice.edu/emplibrary/columbia20030923.pdf
Caltech
Dr David Goodstein: Running out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
today.caltech.edu/theater/5602_bb.ram
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Al_Masetti
Guest
There is one population control method not previously mentioned:
The Internet.
Get everyone totally addicted to the internet and they will spend ALL of their time surfing and NONE of their time procreating.
In fact, some fellow was reported to have spent 36 hours straight on the internet and then he DIED.
So, population reduction could also be implemented via the internet.
Folks could also watch a lot of television. I was watching the History channel and they were demonstrating how Egypt collapsed about 3000 years ago. [Hmmm. They are making a lot of babies nowadays … although they also are being subsidized by the United States with foreign aid.]
There is an interesting program called “The Naked Archeologist” [a Canadian production] and it’s about archeology in the Holy Land. Gets into very interesting aspects … including how the various tribes in and around Israel thrived and died out. The narrator was standing at the border with Gaza as some Israeli Apache helicopter gunships returned from a mission and flew over his head; he said that on one side of him were the camps of the Israelites and on the other side were the camps of the Philistines … from 3000 years ago. They are still fighting over the exact same territorial boundaries. 3000 years later.
Apparently the Philistines were from Greece or some such … illegal aliens of a sort.
ETWN should cut a deal with the producers of “The Naked Archeologist” and run the series on ETWN. Fabulous.
Back to the thread here: nothing changes.
And then there is some natural catastrophe that changes everything.
A gamma ray burst.
A meteorite hit.
A huge volcanic eruption.
Giant earthquake.
The magnetic poles change polarity suddenly [which by the way is now seriously overdue … and may be starting to take place … based on some trends]
Or, the dissolved methane gas (now below 500 meters) in the ocean suddenly pops to the surface … caused by an earthquake. And is ignited by lightning and shazam, all life on the planet goes away in a cataclysmic fireball.
On the other hand, maybe some Tesla-like genius will figure out some 29 cent fix … it’s happened before that some very smart fellow came up with an ingenious idea that costs almost nothing but that no one else had every considered.
So, maybe the answer is prayer.
Also pray that among the 100 million or so people we have aborted or the 200 million or so people killed in WW2 and killed by the Communists in Europe and Asia, that they didn’t also kill that singular genius who we really needed.
The Internet.
Get everyone totally addicted to the internet and they will spend ALL of their time surfing and NONE of their time procreating.
In fact, some fellow was reported to have spent 36 hours straight on the internet and then he DIED.
So, population reduction could also be implemented via the internet.
Folks could also watch a lot of television. I was watching the History channel and they were demonstrating how Egypt collapsed about 3000 years ago. [Hmmm. They are making a lot of babies nowadays … although they also are being subsidized by the United States with foreign aid.]
There is an interesting program called “The Naked Archeologist” [a Canadian production] and it’s about archeology in the Holy Land. Gets into very interesting aspects … including how the various tribes in and around Israel thrived and died out. The narrator was standing at the border with Gaza as some Israeli Apache helicopter gunships returned from a mission and flew over his head; he said that on one side of him were the camps of the Israelites and on the other side were the camps of the Philistines … from 3000 years ago. They are still fighting over the exact same territorial boundaries. 3000 years later.
Apparently the Philistines were from Greece or some such … illegal aliens of a sort.
ETWN should cut a deal with the producers of “The Naked Archeologist” and run the series on ETWN. Fabulous.
Back to the thread here: nothing changes.
And then there is some natural catastrophe that changes everything.
A gamma ray burst.
A meteorite hit.
A huge volcanic eruption.
Giant earthquake.
The magnetic poles change polarity suddenly [which by the way is now seriously overdue … and may be starting to take place … based on some trends]
Or, the dissolved methane gas (now below 500 meters) in the ocean suddenly pops to the surface … caused by an earthquake. And is ignited by lightning and shazam, all life on the planet goes away in a cataclysmic fireball.
On the other hand, maybe some Tesla-like genius will figure out some 29 cent fix … it’s happened before that some very smart fellow came up with an ingenious idea that costs almost nothing but that no one else had every considered.
So, maybe the answer is prayer.
Also pray that among the 100 million or so people we have aborted or the 200 million or so people killed in WW2 and killed by the Communists in Europe and Asia, that they didn’t also kill that singular genius who we really needed.
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ribozyme
Guest
Are you being serious or are you joking? But giving people welfare and free access to the internet is a nice way for keeping poor people from reproducing. Costs states less money in the long run. What a wonderful example of libertarian paternalism to promote population control.
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ribozyme
Guest
But on a more serious note, increase access to the Internet will help people learn and knowledge could be acquired in an extremely facile fashion.
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Doug50
Guest
You don’t know Al do you?
Al has the habbit of being very polyannish…to the point that if you attempt giving him a link that you’re referencing, it doesn’t matter how athoritative that link might be he still won’t make the effort to open it.
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ribozyme
Guest
Yes, Al is rather a panglossian regarding these issues. (He is very biased in other respects.) Although I think a die off scenario is a realistic possibility, I also think that a technological solution is also realistic too. It just seems to be a toss up. However, if the worst case scenario happens, I have a plan to deal evade misery and suffering. I hope I do not have enact it out though.You don’t know Al do you?
Al has the habbit of being very polyannish…to the point that if you attempt giving him a link that you’re referencing, it doesn’t matter how athoritative that link might be he still won’t make the effort to open it.
But if the die off scenarios happen, why should I care about “social justice?” Why should Catholics care about the Gospel’s directive to feed the poor when the means for doing that no longer exist? Why should a liberal like myself care about providing for the vulnerable of society (and the world) if we lack the capability to feed a majority of the world’s population? The material written by John Rawls and John Stuart Mill will simply be pablum in such a scenario. Survivial becomes a zero-sum game - a game that I refuse to play in such a scenario.
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drpmjhess
Guest
Ribozyme, I hate to imagine what your plan involves. I have kids, so I couldn’t. I would be more confident about technolgoical solutions – such as brewing oil in vast oceanic algae cages – if I saw people generally getting it about oil. But I saw some suburban woman next to me at the filling station yesterday, with a Ford F350 so new it still had dealer plates. She was grimacing at the $82 tab. Some people still don’t get it.
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ribozyme
Guest
shudders with the picture of that Ford F350. My mother drives an SUV too (I speculate she bought it as a positional good), but she bought it ten years ago when oil prices were low.
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drpmjhess
Guest
And then there is some natural catastrophe that changes everything.
A gamma ray burst.
A meteorite hit.
A huge volcanic eruption.
Giant earthquake.
The magnetic poles change polarity suddenly [which by the way is now seriously overdue … and may be starting to take place … based on some trends]
Or, the dissolved methane gas (now below 500 meters) in the ocean suddenly pops to the surface … caused by an earthquake. And is ignited by lightning and shazam, all life on the planet goes away in a cataclysmic fireball./QUOTE]
Al, what a litany – I’ll sleep well tonight!If there’s a gamma ray burst I want to be on the exposed side of the planet, please – no lingering for me.
I know about the methane hydrate burst scenario; is there any way we could harvest all that methane hydrate before it pops to the surface? Use it as fuel rather than witness a life-destroying catastrophic global explosion?
Petrus
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