Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
One of the biggest oil finds in history last year in the Gulf 1 BILLION barrels of recoverable oil:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...275032794.html
And that's just one of the massive oil finds that new technology is making happen...but the Obama administration blocked.. |
Thats a truly insane, and uniquely politically warped, interpretation of that article.
The article says that Interior was pissed that Exxon wanted to sit on the find, and were delaying development, so they were going to take the lease back and give it to another company that would develop it faster, so that the US would start getting the royalties.
But, like many of the new finds, its a small find in deep water, and the risks and the costs involved in developing it are huge. We simply do not yet know if deepwater finds like this can be extracted safely, the technology is still being developed, and most people think it will be ten years before the first of these deepwater finds start pumping, maybe 20 or even 30.
Quote:
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"This is very deep water, very complex structures and difficult-to-produce oil," said Exxon's Mr. McGinn.
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Lets see - a billion barrels is about 12 days worth of oil for the world? Is that right? Looks right - so, not a lot, two weeks worth of oil.
You do get that a billion barrels is a small find, compared to the size of the fields we used to find? Even the 10 billion or more in the deep off brazil is tiny compared to the giant fields we used to be discovering. And those early fields were easy and cheap to extract, with a great EROI.
Nobody really knows yet what the EROI of these deepwater fields is going to be, but many estimates place them about the same as bitumen and shale kerogen.