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Anthony Ferrante · Guest

I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony

DB · Guest

Bob Eld wrote:
[quote]"Anthony Ferrante" <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com...
I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony

It>s partially true. Much of the oil people talk about is in Anwar in
northern Alaska...
[/quote]
Which makes the term 'vast' a canard. 10 billion bl ultimately
recoverable, and that will take decades.

The same amount of oil that the world demands in a little over 100 days.

That we do or don>t drill it will have a meaningless effect.

Bob Eld · Guest

"Anthony Ferrante" <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com...
[quote]I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony
[/quote]
It>s partially true. Much of the oil people talk about is in Anwar in
northern Alaska. It>s an environmentally sensitive area and drilling there
could harm wildlife on the refuge up there, to say nothing of oil spills and
damage to the permafrost, tundra. etc.

Oil companies claim they can drill cleanly, but so did Capt Hazelwood think
he could pilot the Exxon Valdez. The Oil industry does NOT have a very good
record with respect to the environment.

Add to that there is presently no way to get oil out of the Anwar region.
The aging Alaska pipe line is not up to the task and ships can>t operate in
the Arctic ocean so what do you do with the oil if you do drill it?

The oil companies have millions of acres under lease they have NOT drill on
for various reasons one being a shortage of rigs and equipment. Some say
they should exhaust the existing leases before getting new ones.

Then there is refining capacity. The US has done little to expand refining
capacity and new oil may not even find the pipelines, ships and refineries
to handle it.

Then there>s the economics of the situation. The oil companies are making
record profits without new oil, why would they want to increase supply?
They>re better off doing as little as possible and keeping supplies tight.
It>s simple economics. That>s one reason they don>t rush into all of their
present leases to say nothing of new ones.

Then we come to the basic idea that we MUST end the oil age sooner or later.
There>s the CO2 problem, smog and other pollution plus oil is finite.
Drilling may give us a few more years but at higher and higher prices and
our reserves are not nearly enough to keep us from importing all we need.
We really should bite the bullet now and get free of the stuff.

Guest

On Jul 13, 2:45 pm, Anthony Ferrante <ferrante276-ngs...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
[quote]I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony
[/quote]
Federal and states have virtually banned all OS drilling for
environmental reasons.
But it>s fine with Chinese drillers in the Carribean.
Ditto anwar.
Shale is the most abundant source by far....but the processing might
pollute.
So we let others pollute for us and watch the flood of dollars
outgoing.
It>s a fine idea to end oil era and curtail pollution.
But doing it unilaterally is economic suicide.

Rob Dekker · Guest

"Anthony Ferrante" <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com...
[quote]I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony
[/quote]
Hi Anthony,

There is quite a bit of oil underground in US territory, but frankly speaking, drilling for it right now is not going to change much
at all.
Check the following report. It>s a status report on all the fields in the world, and a wake-up call of what>s to come.

The large ANWR field is on page 56, a little drop in the bucket if seen in the bigger picture.
We will need that oil later much more than we need it now.

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.pdf

Rob

DB · Guest

Rob Dekker wrote:
[quote]
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.pdf
[/quote]
http://lakeweb.com/money/OPEC_hist.gif

Bob Eld · Guest

<jess225107@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e22a7b6e-4abe-4741-8d07-0b93ab6b974b@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
[quote]On Jul 13, 2:45 pm, Anthony Ferrante <ferrante276-ngs...@yahoo.com
wrote:
I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony

Federal and states have virtually banned all OS drilling for
environmental reasons.
But it>s fine with Chinese drillers in the Carribean.
Ditto anwar.
Shale is the most abundant source by far....but the processing might
pollute.
So we let others pollute for us and watch the flood of dollars
outgoing.
It>s a fine idea to end oil era and curtail pollution.
But doing it unilaterally is economic suicide.
[/quote]
Why is it economic suicide? Developing and producing alternative energy
creating a vibrant US industry employing over a million people with
countless job and business opportunities is economic suicide? But, it>s not
economic suicide to send $700 Billion a year out of the country as we do now
to buy most our energy from foreign sources? This, it turns out, is the
greatest transfer of wealth in world history, ever. If that>s not economic
suicide, I don>t know what is.

BTW there are NO Chinese drillers in the Caribbean. That>s a myth pushed
apparently by Chenney

Guest

[quote]Why is it economic suicide? Developing and producing alternative energy
creating a vibrant US industry employing over a million people with
countless job and business opportunities is economic suicide?
[/quote]
The unilateral halt to oil production is economic suicide.
Renewable industry would be excellent for jobs that can>t be
outsourced.
But see below...the Cuban gvt has agreed with China to some sort of
joint venture.
As you state with everything else it TAKES TIME. Our knee jerk answer
to everything is the time factor, but it>s not considered with
renewables. I know of several wind and other projects that have been
scratched for mostly aesthetic reasons.
SO: Show me the renewables working THEN curtail oil/coal etc.
Putting the horse before the cart has given us the ethanol debacle.
Others will surely follow.
The sane approach is to gradually phase out the oil/coal as renewables
step in to replace them..
50 year off mandates do nothing. Piddling commitments to research are
pablum for the masses.

[quote]
BTW there are NO Chinese drillers in the Caribbean. That>s a myth pushed
apparently by Chenney[/quote]

T. Keating · Guest

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:45:16 -0400, Anthony Ferrante
<ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote:

[quote]I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

[/quote]
here is a primer to start with..

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-13-offshore-drilling_N.htm

Their is plenty of Oil and gas under current leases, but NOT in
production.

Another aspect is the shameful behavior of the Oil industry that
occurs before and after a major oil spill.

Look at the Exxon Valdez spill.. malfeasence leads to an
inevidiable spill.. 20 years of appeals to delay justice, and
whittle down the damages award to a mere pittance.
That was not justice served..

With a track record like that.. Big OIL should NEVER be allowed to
drill off our coastlines. If anybody does drilling in these areas,
it should be a corporation formed by our state and federal
governments. Where ALL the profits funnel back to state and federal
treasuries. Just maybe we can pay off all the debt they>ve
accumulated and fund SS/medicare.

Ivan · Guest

"Bob Eld" <nsmontassoc@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:VFsek.8341$L_.8013@flpi150.ffdc.sbc.com...
[quote]

Drilling may give us a few more years but at higher and higher prices
and
our reserves are not nearly enough to keep us from importing all we need.
We really should bite the bullet now and get free of the stuff.

[/quote]
The Titanic had an uneventful voyage, until it hit the iceberg, a problem
which wasn>t going to be solved by desperately attempting to rearrange the
deckchairs.

Paul Ciszek · Guest

In article <37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com>,
Anthony Ferrante <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote:
[quote]I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?
[/quote]
Plenty of new drilling taking place in Colorado.

--
Please reply to: | President Bush is promoting Peace and Democracy
pciszek at panix dot com | in the Middle East by selling Weapons to the
Autoreply is disabled | King of Saudi Arabia.

z · Guest

On Jul 13, 3:26 pm, "Bob Eld" <nsmontas...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[quote]"Anthony Ferrante" <ferrante276-ngs...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com...

I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony

It>s partially true. Much of the oil people talk about is in Anwar in
northern Alaska. It>s an environmentally sensitive area and drilling there
could harm wildlife on the refuge up there, to say nothing of oil spills and
damage to the permafrost, tundra. etc.

Oil companies claim they can drill cleanly, but so did Capt Hazelwood think
he could pilot the Exxon Valdez. The Oil industry does NOT have a very good
record with respect to the environment.

Add to that there is presently no way to get oil out of the Anwar region.
The aging Alaska pipe line is not up to the task and ships can>t operate in
the Arctic ocean so what do you do with the oil if you do drill it?
[/quote]
and all that, with that "mammoth" reservoir, would supply the US for
less than a year, at present rates of consumption; assuming it could
be extracted and delivered at a high enough output to do so,but by the
time it gets developed, we will be using more, at present rates of
increase, so it will make less of a dent.

in fact, rate of production and delivery is more sticky these days
than the absolute size of the reservoir. as you point out, getting a
big enough production and transport of oil to provide the entire US is
a mammoth task. even if it can be done, no oil company is going to put
the kind of investment necessary in to get it flowing at that rate,
knowing that it will be useless in less than a year. they>re going to
balance the size of the investment versus the profit to be made to
decide what>s the best amount to tap each year; and given that the
less you intend to tap each year the smaller the investment and the
longer it will last, and the price of oil goes up every year, what do
you think the answer will be?

realistically, the most recent assessments by a congressional
committee (when congress was republican, mind you) were that ANWR
would cut the price of oil by 50 cents a barrel as long as it lasts. a
barrel of oil is 45 gallons, of which about half becomes gasoline. a
little math shows that that represents 2 cents a gallon of gas. if
everything goes well. whoopee. now i won>t lose my mortgage paying for
gasoline. and afterwards, we>re right back where we are now.

(and that>s just drilling for actual petroleum; the oil shale and oil
sands so populkarly referred to for their huge reserves have the same
problem to the nth power. no matter how much petroleum is in there,
there is no way to extract it at a rapid enough rate to make a dent in
our consumption, without investing so much in the engineering needed
to get actual petroleum out of it that the price will be worse than it
is now. again, the economics give you the choice between investing a
huge amount to produce a lot for a limited time, at a lower price, or
investing less to give you a smaller amount every year for a longer
time, while the price goes up. you can count on those sources
producing, at best, a thin trickle of fairly expensive petroleum, for
a very long time.)

[quote]
The oil companies have millions of acres under lease they have NOT drill on
for various reasons one being a shortage of rigs and equipment. Some say
they should exhaust the existing leases before getting new ones.
[/quote]
the rate of inflation for oil exploration is now 15% per year. we>ve
picked all the low hanging fruit. ExxonMobil is only spending 12% more
on exploration than they did last year; a de facto scaling back. as
you point out, they>ve reached the point of diminishing returns, and
they well know it. that despite being penalized for it by stock
analysts who have noticed that their reserves are diminishing. it
won>t be this year, but the end of cheap oil is definitely coming
within the visible horizon, when companies like ExxonMobil start
pulling out of the oil business.

[quote]
Then there is refining capacity. The US has done little to expand refining
capacity and new oil may not even find the pipelines, ships and refineries
to handle it.

Then there>s the economics of the situation. The oil companies are making
record profits without new oil, why would they want to increase supply?
They>re better off doing as little as possible and keeping supplies tight..
It>s simple economics. That>s one reason they don>t rush into all of their
present leases to say nothing of new ones.
[/quote]
and of course, future value of oil is greater than current value; what
kind of motivation is that to produce more, now?

[quote]
Then we come to the basic idea that we MUST end the oil age sooner or later.
There>s the CO2 problem, smog and other pollution plus oil is finite.
Drilling may give us a few more years but at higher and higher prices and
our reserves are not nearly enough to keep us from importing all we need.
We really should bite the bullet now and get free of the stuff.
[/quote]
i>ve said it before, but i>ll say it again; it>s the same thing all
the addicts tell the doctors: "i know i>ve got to clean up, and i will
starting Monday, but you>ve just got to give me something to get me
through the weekend".

zzbunker@netscape.net · Guest

On Jul 15, 1:49 pm, z <gzuck...@snail-mail.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 13, 3:26 pm, "Bob Eld" <nsmontas...@yahoo.com> wrote:

"Anthony Ferrante" <ferrante276-ngs...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com...

I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

Anthony

It>s partially true. Much of the oil people talk about is in Anwar in
northern Alaska. It>s an environmentally sensitive area and drilling there
could harm wildlife on the refuge up there, to say nothing of oil spills and
damage to the permafrost, tundra. etc.

Oil companies claim they can drill cleanly, but so did Capt Hazelwood think
he could pilot the Exxon Valdez. The Oil industry does NOT have a very good
record with respect to the environment.

Add to that there is presently no way to get oil out of the Anwar region.
The aging Alaska pipe line is not up to the task and ships can>t operate in
the Arctic ocean so what do you do with the oil if you do drill it?

and all that, with that "mammoth" reservoir, would supply the US for
less than a year, at present rates of consumption; assuming it could
be extracted and delivered at a high enough output to do so,but by the
time it gets developed, we will be using more, at present rates of
increase, so it will make less of a dent.

in fact, rate of production and delivery is more sticky these days
than the absolute size of the reservoir. as you point out, getting a
big enough production and transport of oil to provide the entire US is
a mammoth task. even if it can be done, no oil company is going to put
the kind of investment necessary in to get it flowing at that rate,
knowing that it will be useless in less than a year. they>re going to
balance the size of the investment versus the profit to be made to
decide what>s the best amount to tap each year; and given that the
less you intend to tap each year the smaller the investment and the
longer it will last, and the price of oil goes up every year, what do
you think the answer will be?

realistically, the most recent assessments by a congressional
committee (when congress was republican, mind you) were that ANWR
would cut the price of oil by 50 cents a barrel as long as it lasts. a
barrel of oil is 45 gallons, of which about half becomes gasoline. a
little math shows that that represents 2 cents a gallon of gas. if
everything goes well. whoopee. now i won>t lose my mortgage paying for
gasoline. and afterwards, we>re right back where we are now.

(and that>s just drilling for actual petroleum; the oil shale and oil
sands so populkarly referred to for their huge reserves have the same
problem to the nth power. no matter how much petroleum is in there,
there is no way to extract it at a rapid enough rate to make a dent in
our consumption, without investing so much in the engineering needed
to get actual petroleum out of it that the price will be worse than it
is now. again, the economics give you the choice between investing a
huge amount to produce a lot for a limited time, at a lower price, or
investing less to give you a smaller amount every year for a longer
time, while the price goes up. you can count on those sources
producing, at best, a thin trickle of fairly expensive petroleum, for
a very long time.)

The oil companies have millions of acres under lease they have NOT drill on
for various reasons one being a shortage of rigs and equipment. Some say
they should exhaust the existing leases before getting new ones.

the rate of inflation for oil exploration is now 15% per year. we>ve
picked all the low hanging fruit. ExxonMobil is only spending 12% more
on exploration than they did last year; a de facto scaling back. as
you point out, they>ve reached the point of diminishing returns, and
they well know it. that despite being penalized for it by stock
analysts who have noticed that their reserves are diminishing. it
won>t be this year, but the end of cheap oil is definitely coming
within the visible horizon, when companies like ExxonMobil start
pulling out of the oil business.

Then there is refining capacity. The US has done little to expand refining
capacity and new oil may not even find the pipelines, ships and refineries
to handle it.

Then there>s the economics of the situation. The oil companies are making
record profits without new oil, why would they want to increase supply?
They>re better off doing as little as possible and keeping supplies tight.
It>s simple economics. That>s one reason they don>t rush into all of their
present leases to say nothing of new ones.

and of course, future value of oil is greater than current value; what
kind of motivation is that to produce more, now?

Then we come to the basic idea that we MUST end the oil age sooner or later.
There>s the CO2 problem, smog and other pollution plus oil is finite.
Drilling may give us a few more years but at higher and higher prices and
our reserves are not nearly enough to keep us from importing all we need.
We really should bite the bullet now and get free of the stuff.

i>ve said it before, but i>ll say it again; it>s the same thing all
the addicts tell the doctors: "i know i>ve got to clean up, and i will
starting Monday, but you>ve just got to give me something to get me
through the weekend".- Hide quoted text -
[/quote]
But, that idiot rationale is also why A.I and Digital were invented
60 years ago.
Nuclear Energy Solar Energy were invented 50 years.
Lunar Rockets and satellites were invented 40 years ago.
Space Shuttles were invented 30 years ago.
DVD and WWW were invented 20 years ago.
Wind energy was invented 10,000 years ago.
And robots were invented over the weekend,

[quote]
- Show quoted text -[/quote]

George Cornelius · Guest

Paul Ciszek wrote:
[quote]In article <37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com>,
Anthony Ferrante <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?
[/quote]
There are two great political pandering operations going on. One is to
pander to the corn belt by subsidizing ethanol. The other is to pander to
the coastal states by blocking oil exploration on either the Pacific or
the Atlantic seaboard. ANWR is a special case, but is banned for similar
reasons to the coastal bans.

If you want to be elected in this country, you do what is politically
necessary.

You have just heard, with a single exception, the massive political
chorus that has just been orchestrated to preserve the status quo:
no drilling.

The reality is this: from a U.S. perspective, there is a _lot_ of oil
in those two places. ANWR in itself is a certain percentage of U.S.
production. California would further increase production. Florida>s
eastern seaboard would increase production. And so on.

I recently corrected someone>s math in another group in which he claimed
there were a mere 68 billion barrels in those locations and that was only
a few weeks of U.S. consumption. He had confused billions with millions
and was off by three orders of magnitude. The 68 billion barrels - his
number - would be good for up to 10 years of U.S. consumption.

Now those who consider it criminal to open up coastal exploration are in
a panic mode and want to win the argument at all costs. So they divide
up the issue into little parcels and argue that each parcel is small.

But the entirety is significant.

And my calculation, if the 68 billion barrel estimate is correct, is that that
is an amount of oil at current prices that is roughly equal to the national
debt.

Wouldn>t it be something to have the U.S. benefit from that massive cash infusion,
with perhaps much of the income from it going into federal and state government,
instead of having it flow out to countries who care little for us and to whom
we are becoming increasingly beholden?

I will not argue that we will add 10 years to the world>s supply. But if we
are able to provide our own needs for a few years, that>s that much less 'fuel'
feeding the speculative frenzy, that much more of a bargaining position when
times are tight, and of course money flowing into local economies on a massive
scale instead of a hemorraging of funds to OPEC and others.

[quote]Plenty of new drilling taking place in Colorado.
[/quote]
Sure, there>s plenty of drilling in all the places we have looked for it
before. We are in declining production in all the known on-shore oil
fields, but we>ll reopen them and use increasingly expensive methods
of retrieval for less and less benefit, eventually shifting to extraction
from tar sands and oil shale. But the coastal areas are expected to
contain very significant oil resources that can be used at much lower cost.
ANWR is separate, but if it is 10-15% of the total, not something to sneeze
at either.

So, here>s the issue: do you feed the local economy, or do you continue at
full speed hemorraging cash to the Chavez>s, the Ahmadinizad>s, the Bin Laden
family, and thousands of others equally as friendly?

And if you think it is a giveaway to oil companies, then let>s focus on
negotiating what the terms for the leases will be, and accept or reject
the deals on the merits instead of mere theories about some vast
conspiracy.

By the way, the massive anti-drilling PR compaign always assumes that
current consumption levels will continue unabated.

Of course they won>t. We all have vehicles, except in a very few isolated pockets
such as New York City. We won>t just send them to the crusher - that would be
pointless, even with prices double what they are now. But we will use vastly
less oil. We will skip many of the long trips; commute via bicycles and public
transportation; and eventually shift to high mileage vehicles, including
electric cars. The high prices, at long last, will do what no amount of lecturing
to the population to conserve was able to do - cause us to recognize that we do,
in fact, have a scarce resource that is going to do nothing but increase in price,
and cause us to act accordingly.

Enviro>s, you have your wish: high prices are driving down consumption. But we
can>t cut it off instantaneously without committing economic suicide; so let>s let
the price rise in a bit more moderate fashion by exploiting what we have (yes,
I used the _exploit_ word), provide a cash rebate or two - _not_ tied to oil
consumption - to those at the bottom of the economic scale and therefore hardest
hit by high prices, and move on to the task of eliminating our dependence on oil,
not to mention the other fossil fuels.

George Cornelius

Rob Dekker · Guest

"George Cornelius" <STXgcornelius@charter.netETX> wrote in message
news:487D8C30.104@charter.netETX...
[quote]Paul Ciszek wrote:
In article <37jk7458kn1cfogagjkif83ie0agg9r4tp@4ax.com>,
Anthony Ferrante <ferrante276-ngspam@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have been told by friends that the USA has vast amounts of oil
underground but the government keeps blocking all attempts to get at
it. Is this true and if so, why the opposition to getting it?

There are two great political pandering operations going on. One is to
pander to the corn belt by subsidizing ethanol. The other is to pander to
the coastal states by blocking oil exploration on either the Pacific or
the Atlantic seaboard. ANWR is a special case, but is banned for similar
reasons to the coastal bans.

If you want to be elected in this country, you do what is politically
necessary.

You have just heard, with a single exception, the massive political
chorus that has just been orchestrated to preserve the status quo:
no drilling.

The reality is this: from a U.S. perspective, there is a _lot_ of oil
in those two places. ANWR in itself is a certain percentage of U.S.
production. California would further increase production. Florida>s
eastern seaboard would increase production. And so on.
[/quote]
Check this out, for the amounts of oil avaiable anywhere. Not just the US
coasts.
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.p
df

Then realize that drilling a few billion barrels spread out over a few years
is hardly going to change anything.
It just postpones the inevitable : that the end of large volume of (cheap)
oil is here.
That we need to remove the stuff from our dayly addiction pattern pronto, or
make very costly changes (like wrecking our economy) very soon.

Rob


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