Sunday, May 29, 2011

The New Texas Oil Rush

So much for peak oil.

NyTi reports:
....the region is in the hottest new oil play in the country, with giant oil terminals and sprawling RV parks replacing fields of mesquite. More than a dozen companies plan to drill up to 3,000 wells around here in the next 12 months.

The Texas field, known as the Eagle Ford, is just one of about 20 new onshore oil fields that advocates say could collectively increase the nation’s oil output by 25 percent within a decade — without the dangers of drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico or the delicate coastal areas off Alaska.

There is only one catch: the oil from the Eagle Ford and similar fields of tightly packed rock can be extracted only by using hydraulic fracturing, a method that uses a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hazardous chemicals to blast through the rocks to release the oil inside.

The technique, also called fracking, has been widely used in the last decade to unlock vast new fields of natural gas, but drillers only recently figured out how to release large quantities of oil, which flows less easily through rock than gas....

The oil industry says any environmental concerns are far outweighed by the economic benefits of pumping previously inaccessible oil from fields that could collectively hold two or three times as much oil as Prudhoe Bay, the Alaskan field that was the last great onshore discovery...

“This is very big and it’s coming on very fast,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of IHS CERA. “This is like adding another Venezuela or Kuwait by 2020, except these tight oil fields are in the United States.”

7 comments:

  1. Ah, but does this increase in output even come close to the calculated decrease in output from existing oil fields? To the best of my knowledge, the new discoveries and the extra juice they have started squeezing out of old wells isn't even close.

    With that said, the consequences of peak oil may not be what people think. The amount of energy we can save by simply scaling back on the "non-essentials" will be more than enough to keep us all warm, fed, and healty. This of course assuming that the government doesn't somehow screw things up ..... errr, scratch that then.

    Simple point : Energy-heavy consumption will go up in price, energy-low consumption will fall in price.

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  2. Robert: Usually you cut through BS like a laser - ehich is why I heart this blog. WTF is this BS?

    "So much for Peak Oil."

    PO is all about the era of EASY to get oil.

    "...without the dangers of drilling in the deep waters..."

    There is only one catch: the oil from the Eagle Ford and similar fields of tightly packed rock can be extracted only by using hydraulic fracturing, a method that uses a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hazardous chemicals to blast through the rocks to release the oil inside.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A

    25% over 10 years. Please do yourself a favor and go watch "A Crude Awakening" and then spend a few hours reading Chris Martenson's blog and the Oil Drum.

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  3. Ah, 'Mexas' the land wherefrom I first encountered cracks in my Conservatism.  

    It was the land where the Buckley family 'contended' with the Rockefellers for oil in the south of that land.

    Hmm ... those families had contacts of a sort in the Long Ago?

    Now William F. Buckley was portrayed to us as a believing Catholic (a la 'God and Man at Yale').

    Later finding that William F. Buckley Junior was a Bonesman ... as well as his brother and his son ... I saw through the dust ...

    For, at the time of the books publication, membership in a secret society (think Masons) was automatic excommunication.  No Believing Catholic would join one of THOSE ...What was up with that?

    And what about all those 'former Trotskyites' (think Neo-Cons) that worked for the National review?

    And what about Buckey in the CIA? And his Station Chief in Mexico City who later became the Godfather to Christopher Buckey (E. Howard Hunt - no relation (think Watergate and Kennedy Execution))?

    Flash forward now with me to the crushing of the Hunt brothers ...  Let us not make them into other than confused heroes for, while working on a political campaign, I excitedly pried open a crate containing a donation for the candidate from the Hunts.  

    What could it be .. cash ... bullion ... ???!!!

    No, it was copies of H. L. Hunts utopian novel:   'Alpaca'! Or maybe it was 'Alpaca Revisited' ... even after all these years the mind still recoils in horror!

    I am NOT making this up!  Google them! Go to Amazon!

    But whatever their ideological confusion they were independent of the Buckley-Rockefeller-Whomever semi-cartel and were taken down and neutered by them and their chief minion - the U.S. government.

    Flash forward with me again to a region north of Mexas during the Carter administration.

    Do you remember shale oil?  Where ARE all those companies that were there before the market crashed?  I wonder just who did NOT participate in the frenzy? I wonder just who picked up the pieces?

    I wonder all these things and more ... that pipeline in northern Afghanistan springs to mind ...

    The point of all of this?

    Now knowing, we may see further then the sheeple may.  What delightful games are now to be played before us that we may see them and the sheeple ... not?

    The Chinese have a saying where they identify one who is enlightened: 'He has seen through the red dust'.

    So, I pray, may we all ... see through the red dust of Mexas.

    And do you REALLY think Christopher Buckley is worthy of being a 'best selling author'. I suspect that he had the same 'publisher' and 'marketing firm' as his Father - don't you?

    The day was in this country when the machinations of the Seven Sisters and those who stood above them was well documented in daily newspapers (think Chicago Tribune).

    But now, only in Wenzel's Blog?

    Oh, that Rothbard were alive to see this day!

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  4. You all need to read:

    "The Deep Hot Biosphere" by Thomas Gold.

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  5. YEEEE HAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

    GONNA GET ME A HUMMER AND BURN DAT GAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    YEEEEE HAAAAA!!!!!!!!

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  6. As someone already partly replied, we hit peak conventional (easy) oil in 2006 and have been at a plateau since then. Chris Martenson is a good Misean follower who gives lots of details. This plateau can only be maintained by continued real (not just nominal) price increases, though consumption may fall and limit pricing if the bust cycle starts soon.

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