longweekend58 wrote on Aug 28
th, 2014 at 4:07pm:
____ wrote on Aug 28
th, 2014 at 3:05pm:
red baron wrote on Aug 28
th, 2014 at 2:59pm:
No Greens-win, many of us right wingers want to stay the hell out of the Middle East. Nothing is going to stop that sh.thole of the world from tearing each others' throats out.
After all, they have been doing it successfully for centuries.
Then you better start educating your hard right mates about Greens' renewable energy. Sooner we end our addiction to arab oil and middle eastern exports, like live animals, the sooner we can distance ourselves.
there is a better solution and more likely. USA is now only 6 years away from becoming an oil EXPORTER due to shale and tar oil extraction and horizontal drilling. Up SA's far north likes a shale oil deposit that would make Australia an oil exporter as well. As canadas oil supplies com on stream other countries will be buying their oil from other countries than the M/E area to avoid the troubles there.
Lets ignore it's catastrophic depletion rates and horrendous costs aye long ...
First, a good shale oil well, fully fracked, may produce in the region of 500 to 1,000 oil barrels a day, when it first starts producing. This is abysmal compared with a conventional oil well that typically produces in the tens of thousands of barrels a day.
Second, after a year of production, the shale oil well will be producing at 50 per cent of its initial rate, and after two years at around 15 per cent of its initial rate, ie, the well is pretty much depleted.
Third, the shale oil project has indeed increased crude oil production by some 2m b/d. Unfortunately to achieve this, in the Bakken shale oilfield alone, this has required the completion of 7,000 wells in a little over five years. To maintain production, some 200 rigs are in operation in the Bakken field, each one drilling a new well every month or so, ie, more than 2,000 new wells every year. Similar figures apply to the other North American shale oilfields.
Fourth, proposals to further increase shale oil production in the US to replace the crude oil still being imported (more than 10m b/d) would require a massive further increase in the already frenetic drilling rate. Are we really to believe that it is actually physically possible to drill and complete several tens of thousands of shale oil wells each year and every year for the indefinite future? Since such an increase is in fact impossible, how exactly is the US going to achieve energy independence, or even maintain existing shale oil production rates?
Fifth, shale oil wells are painfully expensive to drill given the quantities of materials consumed and the sophisticated drilling rigs they must use. While some wells can break even with an oil price of between $50 and $80 a barrel, many need more than $100 a barrel to stay solvent.
Finally, the only investment destination worse than shale oil is shale gas. Think of it as shale oil on steroids as a way of losing money.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/658ecfb0-1748-11e4-87c0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3BfIh20y...
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Not interested in the Middle East? - You should be (Read 41447 times)
