Yahoo, no more oil crisis

I think you may be being a tad harsh there (about the oil companies, anyway!). The "original" North Sea oil was "unreachable" until the technology became available to find/recover it, and every hike in the oil price makes exploiting the more inaccessable fields more viable. I dare say there's an awful lot of oil under the Atlantic, but it's simply not viable to go looking for it......yet.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd
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All over the world there are oil wells that are capped because at that time they were considered not financially viable Alan

Reply to
Roberts

Well blow me! Just announced from the good ole USA. They've discovered a huge field that'll reduce their imports by 50%.

It's good to be correct and even better not to be a cap doffing respectie of the unworthy establishment and not to be unduly influenced by the diabolical aplomb of the faux learnedly reasonable. But I bet these 'new' discoveries aren't over yet, by a long way.

Reply to
mv

This new discovery is in ultra deep water, and at almost record total depth. The actual amount of the discovery is uncertain, and in any case it will be a long time before it is developed, and it will be enormously expensive to develop. Timing of the announcement was determined mainly by US politics. JD

Reply to
JD

At todays prices... When, not if, other sources start to run dry it will become economic to extract.

Definately. Is the war monger(*) due for election in the next 2 years?

(*) Not that he cane be re-elected having served his maximum term and done most of the damage he can.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Well it's not quite as problematic as that. Venezuela for example has had to reach deep into the ocean for it's oil and the Brazilians have also been much to the fore in developing deep sea drilling technology that's extended considerably beyond that of the North Sea players. Needs must as they say. Sure it's more expensive than drilling in the desert, why the heck does one suppose they are getting that out of the ground first!? But suggestions that deep sea drilling is beyond economic viability have not been true for some years now. If there's one issue that might still make the American Atlantic offshore reserves expensively difficult is the effect climate change is having on hurricanes. If hurricanes become much stronger than rig designs are normally capable of withstanding, then much larger and more storm resistant platforms will massively increase capital costs. Ironic really, since it's now been proven through isotope analysis that the carbon effect is almost entirely due to human fossil fuel burning activities rather than other naturally occurring atmospheric carbons such as volcanoes and forest fires.

Reply to
mv

Where did all the fossil carbon come from originally ?

Steve

Reply to
steve

I wasn't saying it was problematic to develop - what I was saying is that it is right at the edge of technology, and as a result the amount of recoverable oil (or gas) is very much a guess at this stage. I am familiar with deep water oil exploration and production, having been in the upstream oil industry for over forty years, including involvement with pioneering deep water fields in Australia and the Gulf of Mexico. JD

Reply to
JD

Depends how far back you want to go. The carbon in the sediments that forms the oil comes from formerly living plants and animals (probably mainly plants in most cases) that were incorporated in the sediments when they were formed. But before that, before a number of of cycles through living organisms and rocks, from the primeval, largely CO2, atmosphere of the earth (like Venus is now), and ultimately the carbon is believed to have been formed in the core of early stars. JD

Reply to
JD

JD wrote: But before that, before a number of of cycles through living

That's what I meant. I have a hard time believing that the weight of carbon in the stuff we have used, and the stuff we know we have, nad the stuff we haven't found yet weighs only as much as one primordial atmosphere.

Steve

Reply to
steve

Time marches on JD, Bi-planes evolved into straight winged piston engine mono-planes which evolved into swept wing jets. The accomplished air marshals of WW1 nearly left Britain defenceless in WWll because they took their own case for a generality by asserting the mono plane would never catch on. The technologies for deep ocean drilling have been well cracked, and as I said not by the greedy guts western companies who still have access to loads of cheap to exploit fields but by South Americans who've had no option but to drill deep for their cut of the global money scam.

There's no oil shortage per se, by far the bigger problem is burning it in the atmosphere and the merely selfish wishfulness of the wilfully ignorant. It's not so bad when such utterances are made by largely ineffectual tabloid readers whose opinions on anything are only required to be manipulated every four or five years at the great undemocratic stitch up called the elections. More diabolical is when utter bollocks is presented by those who have acquired the sheen of gravitas. Something akin to subliminal propaganda.

Anyway here's a report from the more intelligent sector of the community;

'Ten years to climate meltdown' The Press Association Monday September

4, 04:52 PM

A climate change timebomb may be just 10 years away from detonating, according to the latest global warming evidence.

New data from a deep ice core drilled out of the Antarctic permafrost reveal a shocking rate of change in carbon dioxide concentrations.

The core, stretching through layers dating back 800,000 years, contains tiny bubbles of ancient air that can be analysed.

Scientists who studied the samples found they left no doubt as to the extent of the build-up of greenhouse gases.

For most of the past 800,000 years, carbon dioxide levels had remained at between 180 and 300 parts per million (ppm) of air. Now they are at

380ppm.

In the past, it had taken 1,000 years for carbon dioxide to rise by

30ppm during natural warming periods. According to the new measurements, the same level of increase has occurred in just the last 17 years.

Isotopic tests confirmed that the recent carbon dioxide had come from fossil fuel sources and must be due to human activity.

Dr Eric Wolff, from the British Antarctic Survey, who presented the findings at the BA Festival of Science in Norwich, said: "The rate of change is the most scary thing.

"We really are in a situation where something's happening that we don't have any analogue for in our records.

"It's an experiment we don't know the result of."

Reply to
mv

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