Comments on: Oil Industry Seeks to Engage Public on Energy Policy http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/05/10/oil-industry-seeks-to-engage-public-on-energy-policy/ Patriotism that loves our country, our land, and our planet Wed, 23 May 2012 01:08:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Brad Hicks http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/05/10/oil-industry-seeks-to-engage-public-on-energy-policy/comment-page-1/#comment-54244 Brad Hicks Tue, 12 May 2009 12:08:41 +0000 http://redgreenandblue.org/?p=3109#comment-54244 I honestly don't "get" what they're thinking, I don't get why anybody who knows anything about petroleum engineering would want to invest in oil exploration in and around the US. They're just blatantly ignoring two facts. First, all the known and even suspected oil reserves left anywhere near North America wouldn't power this country for a year. But second, and more importantly, we used up all of the oil that can be gotten to for below $70 to $80 a barrel back in the 1970s, and the Saudis, with their much more favorable geography and much deeper reserves, can "crash" the price of oil down to $30 a barrel any time they want to put us out of business. The west Pennsylvania oil fields, the southern California oil fields, the Texas/Oklahoma oil fields, they're all basically empty. What's left is deep offshore oil and oil shale; how are either of those supposed to be even minimally competitive with oil from a part of the world where oil still sprays up out of the ground under pressure on its own? And that's assuming that anybody still thinks that it's a good idea to keep burning oil. There's plenty of room left to argue about what comes after oil, and when; there isn't enough lithium in the world to give everybody an electric car, bioethanol consumes as much energy (from oil!) as it produces, there may not be enough cropland and water in the world for biodiesel, algae-based fuels and compressed-air powered vehicles are still experimental. But drilling for oil within and around North America? Don't you have to be dumb as a sack full of hammers to think that's anything but a straight downhill road to bankruptcy? Even if we are stuck with oil for another generation, wouldn't investment in ultra-efficiency gasoline vehicles be more profitable than investing in oil on a continent where oil /by definition/ costs twice as much to extract as anywhere else? I honestly don't "get" what they're thinking, I don't get why anybody who knows anything about petroleum engineering would want to invest in oil exploration in and around the US. They're just blatantly ignoring two facts. First, all the known and even suspected oil reserves left anywhere near North America wouldn't power this country for a year. But second, and more importantly, we used up all of the oil that can be gotten to for below $70 to $80 a barrel back in the 1970s, and the Saudis, with their much more favorable geography and much deeper reserves, can "crash" the price of oil down to $30 a barrel any time they want to put us out of business. The west Pennsylvania oil fields, the southern California oil fields, the Texas/Oklahoma oil fields, they're all basically empty. What's left is deep offshore oil and oil shale; how are either of those supposed to be even minimally competitive with oil from a part of the world where oil still sprays up out of the ground under pressure on its own?

And that's assuming that anybody still thinks that it's a good idea to keep burning oil. There's plenty of room left to argue about what comes after oil, and when; there isn't enough lithium in the world to give everybody an electric car, bioethanol consumes as much energy (from oil!) as it produces, there may not be enough cropland and water in the world for biodiesel, algae-based fuels and compressed-air powered vehicles are still experimental.

But drilling for oil within and around North America? Don't you have to be dumb as a sack full of hammers to think that's anything but a straight downhill road to bankruptcy? Even if we are stuck with oil for another generation, wouldn't investment in ultra-efficiency gasoline vehicles be more profitable than investing in oil on a continent where oil /by definition/ costs twice as much to extract as anywhere else?

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