[meteorite-list] OT -Oil reserves, the reality

From: Tim Heitz <midwestmeteor_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 13:51:27 -0500
Message-ID: <39AA3D7EF85545C79C27B984145F52D0_at_hal>

Hi David,

340 billion dollars leaves the U.S. every year to buy oil, when we
have all the oil we need right here, its the 24 billion barrels at the
Bakken Oil Formation in S.D.

Our politicians are running this scam and we are the fools. Think of all the
jobs this would create
and onshore drilling would also be much safer against oil spills, keeping
the money here, would
also greatly help America. Just what are the politicians thinking?

Will the oil in the Bakken Formation free us from depending on foreign oil?
You bet it will.


We need more money to buy meteorites:)


Best Regards,
Timothy Heitz - not Ph.d











----- Original Message -----
From: "David R. Vann" <drvann at sas.upenn.edu>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 1:16 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] OT -Oil reserves, the reality


>
> Thought maybe it was time to change the thread title, and maybe stop this
> non-meteorite thread. In truth, I am responding to correct some factually
> inaccurate statements.
>
> Guido, I respectfully suggest that you investigate the facts before you
> make
> statements like "We are played for fools by the career politicians in
> Washington
> who pander to the environmentalists and prevent us from tapping our own
> reserves
> which are larger and easier to obtain than all the oil in the Middle East.
> That's why we object to increased pump prices."
>
> Politicians are not pandering to environmentalists, they are pandering to
> businesses, I think the events of the last thirty years speak very
> strongly to
> this; attacks on the Clean Air and Clean water acts, the Great Recession,
> the
> Savings and Loan disaster, the Energy trading frauds, etc. (I can go on
> for
> quite a while here, but is not the forum).
> Environmentalists have very little influence on the price of oil, if any.
> Rather, market forces determine this entirely. Examples: in the late '70's
> oil
> did not skyrocket because of environmentalists, it did so because OPEC was
> flexing its newfound muscle. Oil prices did not jump prior to the Great
> Recession because of environmentalists; it jumped because of speculators
> and
> because the oil refiners underestimated demand by China and India,
> resulting in
> inadequte production capacity (there was plenty of crude oil). The cost of
> oil
> is related to the cost of drilling; I could, again, go on, but this isn't
> really
> the forum. Suffice it to say, the price of oil is driven by market factors
> that
> are *not* related to supply, as the supply can be (and frequently is)
> increased
> to meet demand.
>
> So, environmentalists atempting to reduce drilling are not affecting the
> price,
> regardless of how one wants to view it. Most recently, the state of
> Florida,
> under a Republican govorner, decided to limit in-shore drilling to protect
> the
> states' fishing and tourist industries. They were deemed more valuable (to
> the
> state) than the short-term gains from onshore drilling - an economic
> argument,
> not an environmental one.
>
> Our oil prices are lower because we consume so much, getting a discount,
> and
> because we subsidize the oil companies with tax dollars. Government
> subsidies
> for profitable companies are not defensible, yet they keep getting them,
> because
> the politicians are pandering to the industries paying for their
> reelection.
>
>
> The final inaccuracy, " tapping our own reserves which are larger and
> easier to
> obtain than all the oil in the Middle East" is the most egregious. This is
> simply wrong. The proven resources in the US are about 22 billion barrels
> of
> oil; Saudi arabia *alone* has an estimated 270 billion barrels. Although
> that
> number has been questioned as possibly politically motivated, it is not
> overestmated by a factor of ten. If we take the 1968 numbers (before
> OPEC), they
> had something like 170 billion barrels, still fabulously more than our
> reserves.
>
> Our remaining reserves are not easier to obtain (discounting the politcal
> issues
> related to dealing with the Middle East), as they are increasingly deep
> water
> reserves (whose difficulty was amply demonstrated last summer) or in
> shales,
> which are environmentally destructive and energetically and mechanically
> difficult to extract; in fact, to date, there has been no economically
> viable
> method to extract these (but we will, when gas is expensive enough). The
> oil
> companies are going for the easy fruit first, as it is the most
> profitable.
>
>
> Sorry, but I have a difficult time letting false information get
> distributed -
> much like the NYT article. Plenty of others responded to that, so I'm
> responding
> to this one. The fact is, the Middle East holds more than one-half of the
> total
> reserves in the world. North America, including the shale sands in Canada
> holds
> maybe 16%. The largest reserves are in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the
> former
> USSR.
>
> We consume about 6.6 billion barrels per year, so we have about 3 or 4
> years, if
> we drilled everything (that we 'own').
>
> The world average consumption rate vs the reserves indicates that we have
> about
> 50-60 years left (at current consumption rates, which are increasing
> substantially each year).
>
> So, to recap this too long message:
>
> Oil prices reflect market forces, not environmentalist obstruction.
> The US does not have more oil, easily obtained or not, than the Middle
> East.
>
> We complain about high oil prices, not because of politicians, but because
> it
> means we have fewer dollars left to buy meteorites.
> (that puts it back on topic. Sort of.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> David R. Vann, Ph.D.
> Department of Earth and Environmental Science
> THE UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA
> 240 S. 33rd St.
> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6316
> drvann at sas.upenn.edu
> office: 215-898-4906
> FAX: 215-898-0964
>
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Received on Fri 08 Apr 2011 02:51:27 PM PDT