Offshore Oil Drilling and the Oil Rig Disaster in the Gulf

[stjr]

Aesthetic pollution is just as bad as other forms.

Here we agree... 100%  I cannot say that anymore clearly.

But... reality dictates that if you want energy... you will use resources, despoil someones view, create some form of pollution, and to claim otherwise is folly.

Current technology DOES NOT ALLOW US TO HAVE OUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!

Bridge, here we diverge.  Require use of proven horizontal and/or slant drilling.  But, I don't even see them taking time to investigate it, discuss it, or build it in to the bill they are proposing.  This type of carelessness raises all kinds of red flags for me.  Build my confidence or lose my support and vote.

[tufsu1]

Sure the oil platforms pose no significant threat!

But I changed my mind last Sept. 4, when a cloud of the poisonous gas was expelled by one of the other rigs in Mobile Bay, and drifted over the island, sickening dozens of residents and forcing the evacuation of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab School.

Exxon Mobil confessed to the unplanned expulsion of hydrogen sulfide, which turns out to be a fatally poisonous by-product of all the wells. The noxious, sour-smelling gas is usually burned off by a continuous flame on the rig, which had inexplicably gone out, like a pilot light in the wind.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/may/01/na-life-with-oil-rigs/news-opinion-commentary/

[Sigma]

Drilling For Oil Still Makes Sense, But, Sadly, Politics Gets In The Way
By ROBERT SAMUELSON | Posted Friday, May 01, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs.

And so it is, say the president and his supporters. The trouble is that there's one glaring exception to their claims: the oil and natural gas industries.

The administration is biased against them â€" a bias that makes no sense on either economic or energy grounds. Almost everyone loves to hate the world's Exxons, but promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense.

Contrary to popular wisdom, the U.S. still has huge oil and natural gas resources.

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off-limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today's "proven" U.S. reserves.

The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, more than 20 times a 1995 estimate.

And there's upward of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado. If only 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that's triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

None of these sources, of course, will quickly provide oil or natural gas. Projects can take 10 to 15 years. The OCS estimates are just that.

Oil and gas must still be located â€" a costly and chancy process. Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems.

Its economic viability remains uncertain. But any added oil could ultimately diminish dependence on imports, now almost 60% of U.S. consumption, while exploration and development would immediately boost high-wage jobs (geologists, petroleum engineers, roustabouts).

Though straightforward, this logic mostly eludes the Obama administration, which is fixated on "green jobs" and wind and solar energy.

Championing "clean" fuels has become a political set piece. On Earth Day (April 22), the president visited an Iowa factory that builds towers for wind turbines.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of clean energy," he said.

The president is lauded as a great educator; in this case, he provided much miseducation. He implied that there's a choice between promoting renewables and relying on oil.

Actually, the two are mostly disconnected.

Wind and solar mainly produce electricity. Most of our oil goes for transportation (cars, trucks, planes); almost none â€" about 1.5% â€" generates electricity.

Expanding wind and solar won't displace much oil; someday, electric cars may change this. For now, reducing oil imports requires using less or producing more.

Obama has attended to the first with higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. But his administration is undermining the second.

At the Department of Interior, which oversees public lands and the OCS, Secretary Ken Salazar has taken steps that dampen development: canceled 77 leases in Utah, because they were too close to national parks; extended a comment period for OCS exploration to evaluate possible environmental effects; and signaled more caution toward shale for similar reasons.

Any one of these alone might seem a reasonable review of inherited policies, and it's true that Salazar has maintained a regular schedule of oil and gas leases. Still, the anti-oil bias seems unmistakable.

Conceivably, Salazar may reinstate administratively many restrictions on OCS drilling that Congress lifted last year.

Meanwhile, he's promoting wind and solar by announcing new procedures for locating them on public lands, including the OCS.

"We are," he says, "setting the Department on a new path" â€" emphasizing renewables.

It may disappoint. In 2007, wind and solar generated less than 1% of U.S. electricity. Even a tenfold expansion will leave their contribution small.

By contrast, oil and natural gas now provide two-thirds of Americans' energy. They will dominate consumption for decades.

Any added oil produced here will mostly reduce imports; extra natural gas will mostly displace coal in electricity generation.

Neither threatens any anti-global warming program that Congress might adopt.

Encouraging more U.S. production also aids economic recovery, because the promise of "green jobs" is wildly exaggerated. Consider.

In 2008, the oil and gas industries employed 1.8 million people. Jobs in the solar and wind industries are reckoned (by their trade associations) to be 35,000 and 85,000, respectively.

Now do the arithmetic: A 5% rise in oil jobs (90,000) approaches a doubling for wind and solar (120,000). Modest movements, up or down, in oil will swamp "green" jobs.

Improved production techniques (example: drilling in deeper waters) have increased America's recoverable oil and natural gas. The resistance to tapping these resources is mostly political. To many environmentalists, expanding fossil fuel production is a cardinal sin.

The Obama administration often echoes this reflexive hostility.

The resulting policies aim more to satisfy popular prejudice â€" through photo ops and sound bites â€" than national needs.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326073872477255

[Dog Walker]

"Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems."

One of the major problems with oil shale is that when heated to remove the oil, it pops like popcorn and doubles in size.  You can't put it back in the hole it came out of since it won't all fit.  So it will just make mountains of toxic by product that will pollute all of the water that comes in contact with it.

Worse polluter than coal!  Cross it off the "available reserves" list.

[Sigma]

Thanks Dog Walker - I was wondering about that when I read it. 

[Ocklawaha]

About half the men on this site would pay a handsome price to see a pool full of pretty girls wrestle around in a giant puddle of petroleum oils... About half the women on this site pay big bucks several times a year to buy bottles of various oils to slather all over their bodies...

NOW, the government wants to bring these attractions to the entire coast of Florida and y'all are bitching?

WTF?

OCKLAWAHA

[civil42806]

"Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems."

One of the major problems with oil shale is that when heated to remove the oil, it pops like popcorn and doubles in size.  You can't put it back in the hole it came out of since it won't all fit.  So it will just make mountains of toxic by product that will pollute all of the water that comes in contact with it.

Worse polluter than coal!  Cross it off the "available reserves" list.

Okay so lets get this straight, shales is off the list, nuclear is off the list, wind is off the list (well at least if someone with money can see it, solar is off the list, can't erect panels in the mojave congress banned it, can't build the transmission lines anyway, environental groups are suing about the location, can't drill for more oil.


so..............................................................we go to our caves and bang our rocks together

[samiam]

As long as the rocks are not Shale

[Ocklawaha]

OCKLAWAHA GO COWBOYS

[Sigma]

"Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems."

One of the major problems with oil shale is that when heated to remove the oil, it pops like popcorn and doubles in size.  You can't put it back in the hole it came out of since it won't all fit.  So it will just make mountains of toxic by product that will pollute all of the water that comes in contact with it.

Worse polluter than coal!  Cross it off the "available reserves" list.

Okay so lets get this straight, shales is off the list, nuclear is off the list, wind is off the list (well at least if someone with money can see it, solar is off the list, can't erect panels in the mojave congress banned it, can't build the transmission lines anyway, environental groups are suing about the location, can't drill for more oil.


so..............................................................we go to our caves and bang our rocks together

What Green Means
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Marketing: The environmental left is conceding that its effort to "fight" global warming is in trouble because the public has tuned out the message. So the plan is to obscure the agenda even more.

An agenda that eviscerates property rights, enlarges the regulatory state, increases taxes and forces egalitarianism isn't an easy sell in a nation with a legacy of liberty and free markets.

But some time ago, eco-activists and their allies in Congress understood that they could march the country to the left by small degrees if they disguised socialism as environmentalism.

And thus the environmental movement was hijacked.

Decades of sermonizing have indeed nudged us leftward, but we are still â€" for now â€" a nation of mostly free men and largely free markets. Credit a public that seems to grasp we don't have to kill capitalism in order to save the planet.

This same public has become increasingly skeptical of the global warming assumption, perhaps the environmentalists' last chance to remake the country in their image.

Now, frustrated with their inability to have forced a deeper leftward shift, the environmental activists feel the need to recast the language of the debate.

Using polling and focus groups, ecoAmerica, an environmental group that develops marketing and messaging strategies, has forged a list of recommendations. It was obtained by the New York Times, which says it's one of "a number of news organizations" that was accidently e-mailed a "summary of the group's latest findings and recommendations."

Rather than talk about "global warming," which is already being replaced by the less-specific "climate change," ecoAmerica suggests that alarmists should discuss "our deteriorating atmosphere." And instead of picking on carbon dioxide per se, it proposes we simply abandon "the dirty fuels of the past."

The memo also recommends embroidering conversations with language about "shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency," which is ironic, since those are the uniquely American qualities that the environmental movement seems to be moving us away from.

What's clear is eco-activists and their allies will do anything to avoid talking about their real goals, which have less to do with cleaning up the environment than with pulling down capitalism.

Every solution they offer to the problems they exaggerate erodes economic freedom, increases regulation or both. Blurring the real meaning of words can't change that.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326414989713648

[mtraininjax]

Apparently some of you did not eat enough Mexican on Cinco de mayo to realize that Natural Gas is the one true form of energy we can put into our power plants and cars and have a source of energy to last us years, get us to using battery power for transportation. Use gas, eliminate coal and the expensive scrubbing of the stacks. Gas burns clean, much like the displaced gas by your friends later that night on May 5.

Shale extraction is nasty dirty business and where it takes place, there is not an abundance of water anyway, so that should be a last ditch source. What is the worst that can happen to a natural gas rig in the ocean? What spills do we fear from it? I see a lot of upside and not much downside.

[Sigma]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326589033617322



Drill, Ivan, Drill
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Energy Policy: Oil prices have risen to a six-month high on the prospect of economic recovery. Russia plans floating reactors to power Arctic drilling. We plan to do nothing to increase supply.

Oil prices jumped to nearly $58 a barrel Thursday in Singapore in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Benchmark crude for June delivery was up $1.31 at $57.68 on expectations for a global economic recovery by year's end and rising demand for the fossil fuel.

As oil prices rise again, the Guardian reports that Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear reactors to provide power for drilling and exploration for oil and natural gas in Arctic areas that Moscow claims as its own.

There is a triple irony here. The first is that it would be the Russians obeying the law of supply and demand. Then there's their "all of the above" approach to domestic energy needs, building nuclear reactors to power oil and gas rigs, neither of which we seem willing to do.

Environmentalists, of course, are not in love with either source of power and warn of the dangers of nuclear radiation and oil leaks. Not only might polar bears be killed, but they might glow in the dark afterward.

No one considers that the nukes might be considered a "carbon offset" for the oil rigs.

And isn't natural gas environmentally friendly and T. Boone Pickens' favorite energy source when he's not tilting at windmills?

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Four more 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors aboard giant steel platforms, are planned.

The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years. Russia's stimulus program for energy includes planned submersible nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.

The U.S. Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds up to 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, leading some experts to call the region the next Saudi Arabia. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin underscored that point at an April 14 Interior Department field hearing in Anchorage chaired by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Palin testified: "The world-class potential of Arctic Alaska was verified in the recently released Circum-Arctic Oil and Gas Assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey, which highlighted that Arctic Alaska was second only to the West Siberian Basin in total Arctic petroleum potential and the highest Arctic potential for oil."

The Russians fully intend to develop the West Siberian Basin and any other Arctic areas their technology can reach. We may someday find ourselves importing Russian oil extracted off the Alaskan coast by Gazprom instead of Exxon or Shell.

As Palin pointed out to Salazar, the USGS assessment "estimates that Arctic Alaska has mean technically recoverable resources of approximately 30 billion barrels of oil, 6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 221 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas."

Continued Arctic exploration is also necessary for the continued viability of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Production at Prudhoe Bay is in decline. North Slope production is one-third of its peak, and unless we are allowed to produce oil and gas from ANWR and in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, Palin said, reduced flow will cause the pipeline to close.

The administration's game plan is to force energy prices to "skyrocket" to make alternative sources of energy more competitive. We don't see the Russians dotting Siberia with wind turbines and solar panels. They recognize the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

Alaska's environmentally friendly natural gas, according to the Energy Information Agency in its 2009 Energy Outlook, would lower the cost to consumers by 63 cents per thousand cubic feet in 2002.

The only way we might be able to get at these resources may be to sell Alaska back to the Russians.

[mtraininjax]

The last time a refinery was constructed in the United States was 1973. You can't build platforms without overhauling the refinerys as well.

[BridgeTroll]

Sure you can... but we should build some more refineries too.

[mtraininjax]

but we should build some more refineries too

Uh yeah!