Oil discoveries peaked? Please drive 55 mph

[Wyldgusechaz]

Hmmm. I start 2 threads in one day. But Memorial is a tradtionally driving holiday so.....

ExxonMobil for the first time has cut back on its investment in discovering new oil deposits. Exxon is a great company, truly exceptional in its business model of finding oil at reasonable development costs. The company has decided to buy back its stock rather than look for new oil. As a company it may cease to exist in 15 years. The lake of oil in Saudi Arabia whose name escapes me is likely more than 1/2 way empty.

There are a lot of theories as to when we will reach the peak of oil discovery and you can plot it like a bell curve. More and more it looks like we are there. The world uses 85 million barrels of oil a day. It could go to 100 million in a few years. Thats how much we need to find every day to stay even.

If you think gas is pricey now, just wait. If you are a young person today and you aren't screaming for a 55 mph speed limit, more nuclear power and more *eco sensitve* areas like the California coast and the ANWAR to be opened to oil drilling, your life looks like its going to be very very small. Alternative energy sources are just that, like asking a do it yourself hand job to compare with an all day orgy with 5 porn starlets. Pretty much all alternatives are just a way of catching sunlight. Oil is really just sunlight captured over 100 million years in the form of fossil plants and animals. There is no fucking way to capture 85 million barrels of oil sunlight each day with wind turbines and solar panels. You can get decently close with nuclear energy. Also we have lots of coal.

When ExxonMobil OIL decides to get out of the oil business because the future looks unprofitable, people should be really nervous about their futures.

 

[2322]

The 55mph speed limit was an abysmal failure when it was introduced. It effectively made the US driving population criminals because nobody drove 55. No law should persecute people and business for driving at the speeds our highways were designed for. Leave it to the states.

And as for alternatives, they are out there and they are viable, but our country has no national energy policy and the government (congress and the president) have done nothing to address that.

What I would suggest:

• Pass large tax breaks for companies and their investors whose primary business is developing alternative energy.
• Use the Department of Energy to direct government funds to be invested in alternative energy research in the national laboratories/university system.
• Create a World Energy Union so that all nations may enjoy the discoveries of all other nations.
• Review the alternative and energy-saving patents energy companies have purchased and direct those companies to either begin implementation of those patents or sell them or risk having their patents rescinded.
• Begin requiring high LEED standards for new housing development.
• Implement a national zoning law that permits businesses and homeowners to implement alternative energy systems regardless of local regulations. These systems should be discounted in all tax assessments.
• Extend the federal tax credit to 100% of the cost of materials and labor for installation of alternative energy systems.
• Phase out ethanol incentives and direct them to switchgrass.
• Create a US-Canada energy treaty that directs consumable energy research to the economical development of oil shale and tar sands.
• Begin the phaseout of present fossil fuel energy plants and replace them with nuclear plants under DoE supervision in areas where alternative energy sources are not yet feasible.
• Require energy companies to buyback excess electricity generated by private home and business owners with no caps.
• Begin a national program to electrify all railways and create incentives for business to use railways for long-haul deliveries for everything other than foodstuffs and medicines/essential goods.

There are centuries worth of coal in the United States. There is enough uranium in Tennessee alone to power the entire United States for centuries. The oil shales of Colorado hold more oil than all of Saudi Arabia. The oil sands of Alberta hold about the same. The key to recovering these is making it economical to do so. Right now it is still cheaper to drag oil across the oceans than it is to mine and refine these domestic resources. We need to have a system in place to develop technologies to reduce the costs of exploiting these domestic resources in such a way that minimizes environmental impact at maximum efficiency. Exploitation of these resources will not solve the problem of CO2 emissions or the problem of safely processing and disposing of the waste created from these resources, but we should consider them as a stop gap until we find suitable technologies to replace oil combustion engines.

The US uses surprisingly little foreign energy to generate electricity. Just about half of electricity comes from domestic coal, while the rest is derived from nuclear, hydroelectric, and natural gas (most of it from Canada). According to the EIA, out of the 4,064,702 thousand megawatt hours generated in the US in 2006, only 64,364 thousand megawatt hours came from oil. We actually generate, discounting hydroelectric, 96,423 thousand megawatt hours from renewable sources. That's more than oil! Electricity is something the US can create with little problem. Nearly all our oil supply, domestic and foreign, goes into our gas tanks and heating systems.This is why, while alternative energy should be developed across the board, we need to focus on replacing diesel/gasoline with something better.

 

[lucky8]

i thought we produce 82 million barrells a day but demand is at 85 million? there is a way to become independent from oil...if youre into the stock market, i'd highly recommend investing in solar and wind energy in the next 5-10 years. the price of solar is expected to drop by 40% by 2010...it's going to get huge

 

[B_Marius567]

coal company are going to start making Gas from coal be for oil runs out but it will cost more.

Im going to change my Gear oil on my nissan to royal purple Synthetic gear oil for better MPG

 

[SteveHd]

[Cue music]

I'm "nervous" about the future oil supply but to hell with 55mph! I never want to see that done again.

 

[dong20]

There are a lot of theories as to when we will reach the peak of oil discovery and you can plot it like a bell curve. More and more it looks like we are there. The world uses 85 million barrels of oil a day. It could go to 100 million in a few years. Thats how much we need to find every day to stay even.

It's known as the Hubbert (oft called Hubbard) curve (after geophysicist Marion Hubbert). Hubbert originally estimated peak US production would occur by the 1970s. This was later revised by Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes to around 2006. He wrote about it in "Beyond Oil—The View From Hubbert’s Peak".

A DoE report was published in 2005 entitled "The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management". It's available on-line here in Pdf format or,as an executive summary.

It's 'generally' accepted that of global reserves of 2.2 Trillion barrels, we've used about half, and that would be the 'easy half'. Global consumption is around 30 Billion barrels annually. Digging up Antarctica (for example) isn't a viable long term solution.

 

[2322]

It's known as the Hubbert (oft called Hubbard) curve (after geophysicist Marion Hubbert). Hubbert originally estimated peak US production would occur by the 1970s. This was later revised by Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes to around 2006. He wrote about it in "Beyond Oil—The View From Hubbert’s Peak".

A DoE report was published in 2005 entitled "The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management". It's available on-line here in Pdf format or,as an executive summary.

It's 'generally' accepted that of global reserves of 2.2 Trillion barrels, we've used about half, and that would be the 'easy half'. Global consumption is around 30 Billion barrels annually. Digging up Antarctica (for example) isn't a viable long term solution.

This is really important. "Easy oil" is what we have been living on. The prized light sweet crude from Kuwait was so pure that all you'd have to do is filter it, pour it in a diesel engine and it would run. Recovering oil from the bottom half of these fields is very expensive. Saudi Arabia does not release estimates of its reserves and nor does it talk about how it recovers oil from its fields. Talk to the engineers who have worked in Saudi though, and you know they're hurting. They're pumping millions of gallons of sea water a day into Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world, to maintain pressure (remember that oil floats on water). Bush's recent failure to persuade the Saudis to increase production is seen by the oil industry not so much as a refusal but an incapability. Saudi simply cannot put more oil on the market than they are now. They're also engaged in very risky side drilling with variable success to increase production. Russia, the world's largest oil producer, announced last year that they have reached peak production, and Mexico is also known to be in decline.

The oil at the bottom half of these fields is heavy crude. It requires much more costly refining and recovery techniques to bring to market. As a result, the prices increase to reflect this.