BP finds 3 billion barrels of Oil

[wildfirepower]

BP says it's found a deep oil field in the Gulf of Mexico that could generate more than 3 billion barrels of petroleum. It'll likely be a few years before a solid estimate is made, and the depth — 35,000 feet — means prices would have to be at $70 a barrel to make it worth drilling.

The United States typically uses more than 7.5 billion barrels a year.

Regardless, the find represents success for new search and find technologies, analysts said.

Researchers have assumed there was more oil to be found in the Gulf. The question now is: Will this discovery and others to come push back the ultimate arrival of "peak oil," when demand exceeds what everyone agrees is a limited supply (what's not known for sure is how much ultimately, there is). Some have argued the peak is upon us, though reduced consumption during the global recession may have altered that argument.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/etc/090902-big-oil-deposit-found-beneath-gulf-mexico.html

[ctiger2]

Oh boy, 6 months worth....

[torchbearer]

Oh boy, 6 months worth....

not bad for one well.
imagine if each well provided 6 months worth. we'd have crude for a millenium.

[InterestedParticipant]

BP says it's found a deep oil field in the Gulf of Mexico that could generate more than 3 billion barrels of petroleum. It'll likely be a few years before a solid estimate is made, and the depth — 35,000 feet — means prices would have to be at $70 a barrel to make it worth drilling.
This country has more oil than it knows what to do with. The question that should be asked is why are proven oil fields capped or not drilled at all.... can you say the North Slope of Alaska or N. Dakota?

The reason is because the elites, via the Club of Rome (CoR), have stipulated that humanity is the problem and manufactured scarcities are the means to convince man that he is the enemy. CoR has been discussed previously in this forum, you can find references by doing a search.

[BenIsForRon]

not bad for one well.
imagine if each well provided 6 months worth. we'd have crude for a millenium.

Keyword if. We are not going to find many more recoverable oil fields.

From wikipedia:


All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas. ”

— William J. Cummings, Exxon-Mobil company spokesman, December 2005

To pump oil, it first needs to be discovered. The peak of world oilfield discoveries occurred in 1965[37] at around 55 billion barrels(Gb)/year.[38] According to the ASPO, the rate of discovery has been falling steadily since. Less than 10 Gb/yr of oil were discovered each year between 2002-2007.[39]

[InterestedParticipant]

Keyword if. We are not going to find many more recoverable oil fields.

To pump oil, it first needs to be discovered. The peak of world oilfield discoveries occurred in 1965[37] at around 55 billion barrels(Gb)/year.[38] According to the ASPO, the rate of discovery has been falling steadily since. Less than 10 Gb/yr of oil were discovered each year between 2002-2007.[39]
Yeah.... we're past peak oil, man is a beast ravaging on the planet, we're all going to die... yada yada yada..... Heard it all before in the MSM. They've been drumming this beat for decades.

Only one slight problem, it's bullshit!

[Icymudpuppy]

There's easier energy than oil if you are a farmer.

[Zippyjuan]

What leads you to believe that it is BS? One by one, countries which used to be oil exporters (and oil is often a major source of income to these countries) including the US are switching from being net oil exporters to net oil importers. Why would they voluntarily give up their bigges source of revenue? Britain. Indonesia. Mexico may join the list in the next few years as may Iran.

THe oil field is estimated at 3 million barrels- that is independent of how many wells you drill into it. You need to find one of these fields every six months just to keep up with US consumption.

There have been discussion threads on this topic before but peak oil does not mean that one day there is not a single drop of oil on the planet but that each additional drop or barrel gets more difficult and more expensive to get out. There is oil shale in the Rocky Mountain area(some estimate perhaps a trillion barrels) but it takes one unit of energy (often coal) to produce one energy unit of oil along with tons of water which is a limited commodity in the area. Oil becomes extremely expensive (according to the article the BP well requires oil to be $70 a barrel to be worth extracting it from the ground).

Even though we are a net oil importer, we are also the third largest oil producer. The problem is that we are also the largest consumer.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/crudeproduction.html

Production in this country peaked in the 1970's.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/gifs/crude_oil_prod_2009.gif

Global production peaked around 2004 while demand (until the recent global slowdown) has been increasing- particularly in places like China, India, and Brazil.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/gifs/world_crude_prod_2009.gif

[tangent4ronpaul]

There's easier energy than oil if you are a farmer.

Yes but fertilizer and pesticides take a lot of energy to produce.

As to peak oil - nature has a way of replenishing all the oil reserves... just introduce a comet to the planet, wait a couple of million years and yer good to go!

Just one other thought: how many things have you seen lately that were not made out of plastic?

-t

[Icymudpuppy]

Yes but fertilizer and pesticides take a lot of energy to produce.

As to peak oil - nature has a way of replenishing all the oil reserves... just introduce a comet to the planet, wait a couple of million years and yer good to go!

Just one other thought: how many things have you seen lately that were not made out of plastic?

-t

If you are operating holistically with good rotation with livestock, multiple crops instead of monoculture, etc, fertilizer and pesticides are unneccesary. Hemp can cover anything made of plastic. Hemp seed oil is very versatile.

[Captain Bryan]

Hemp is the way to go.

[tangent4ronpaul]

If you are operating holistically with good rotation with livestock, multiple crops instead of monoculture, etc, fertilizer and pesticides are unneccesary. Hemp can cover anything made of plastic. Hemp seed oil is very versatile.

Completely agree with you! Now if we could just shut down industrial agriculture, push for a return of and increase in family farms and legalize hemp... Getting rid of Monsanto would be good too.

Wonder how much energy we'd save if we did that? Probably tons!

The one Congress Critter crazy enough to get the CBO/CRS to generate a report on it is probably Kucinich. Doesn't hurt to ask...

-t

[InterestedParticipant]

What leads you to believe that it is BS? One by one, countries which used to be oil exporters (and oil is often a major source of income to these countries) including the US are switching from being net oil exporters to net oil importers. Why would they voluntarily give up their bigges source of revenue? Britain. Indonesia. Mexico may join the list in the next few years as may Iran.
Two very quick points....


The biggest variable in these decisions is power (ie. power OVER a country). These countries are not autonomous, hence, they are no making decisions in their best interest, but in the interests of a system that seeks control over countries. Everything is ass backwards.

I'm talking about Oil reserves... Oil availability... not oil production. Oil production is controlled. Albeit, so is the reporting on Oil availability as well.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Few years ago I spent a day or two accessing a Dept. of Energy report server looking for reports on oil reserves. Found a bunch of them. The really interesting thing was that none of the reports agreed with each other.

I think the bottom line is that no one knows how much oil is out there.

-t

[dannno]

If you are operating holistically with good rotation with livestock, multiple crops instead of monoculture, etc, fertilizer and pesticides are unneccesary. Hemp can cover anything made of plastic. Hemp seed oil is very versatile.

Ya, but all of the corporate factory farms that are using chemical fertilizers now will be screwed, the soil will be completely worthless...

Growing organically feeds the soil and makes it healthier, whereas "conventional" methods leech all of the life out of the soil, and eventually the plants just live off of the chemicals being put into the soil.

There is going to be a lot of farmland that will be unusable once oil is gone, and that is why it is important for people to switch to organic now via education. That way we will have more usable soil in the future if our ability to buy oil for whatever reason disappears.

[Zippyjuan]

Two very quick points....


The biggest variable in these decisions is power (ie. power OVER a country). These countries are not autonomous, hence, they are no making decisions in their best interest, but in the interests of a system that seeks control over countries. Everything is ass backwards.

I'm talking about Oil reserves... Oil availability... not oil production. Oil production is controlled. Albeit, so is the reporting on Oil availability as well.


1)Why would a country cede control by allowing somebody else tell them to decrease their oil production? OPEC does but the US and UK are not OPEC. Unless you go for that New World Order stuff- some secret powers behind the scene controlling everything which I do not subscribe to.

2) Oil reserves are not being added to at a rate faster than they are being depleted. Most Middle Eastern oil reserves have not been verified but only based on what the countries report that they have. In the 1980s when the OPEC oil allocations were going to be determined by the reserves each country had, suddenly many of them vastly increased their reported reserves- without announcing a single new discovery and some have not reduced those figures despite 20 or more years of pumping them out. This probably means that total reserves are LESS than we think they are. But there is no way to confirm one way or the other.

Let us look at a chart of Saudi announced oil reserves:
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/images/article_images/saudi_reserves_graph2001.jpg
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/?fa=show&article=20623
Reserves are little changed despite exporting some nearly 3 billion barrels a year.

A comparison of reported reserves from the BBC they posted in 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4681935.stm

CLAIMED OPEC OIL RESERVES
Kuwait: 92bn (64bn)
UAE: 92bn (34bn)
Iran: 93bn (64bn)
Iraq: 100bn (48bn)
Saudi Arabia: 258bn (170bn)
Claimed oil reserves, bn barrels 1990s/(1970s)

[tangent4ronpaul]

Ya, but all of the corporate factory farms that are using chemical fertilizers now will be screwed, the soil will be completely worthless...

Fixed easy enough. if you had say 10 acres, take one out of production and place waste plant material from another field over it - let compost for a year. Next year, plant in clover That provides nutrients and breaks up the soil and your on your way. Year 3 or 4 plant actual crops. Rotate one field out a year and in 12 years you should be back on track.

There is an older book called the one straw revolution that talks preparing fields with clover.

-t

[torchbearer]

There is an older book called the one straw revolution that talks preparing fields with clover.

-t

soybeans.

[Objectivist]

I posted this story in the "Peak Oil Deniers" thread yesterday or the day before. Reuters reported on it.

The truth about oil is if you added up all the pipes in the world they would displace a very small part of the planets surface. As someone who dives I can tell you that humans haven't even begun searching the ocean floors to any extent. At least not sub-surface ocean bottoms.

[Objectivist]

Hemp is the way to go.

Way to go for what, getting high?

[torchbearer]

Way to go for what, getting high?

no- bad way to get high.
it is useful for ethanol production... more so than a food crop like corn.

[Captain Bryan]

Way to go for what, getting high?

Pretty much everything but getting high, actually.
You can make clothes, plastic, concrete, fuel, and a lot more from it.

[Zippyjuan]

Can you get enough yield from hemp to be useful for fuel? What I am wondering is the trade-off between acreage for food vs acreage for biofuels. That was one of the problems with corn (besides it being one of the worst choices for making a fuel in terms of energy needed to produce a gallon of fuel)- displacing food supplies and increasing their scarcity and driving up their prices.

At this site, http://hemp-ethanol.blogspot.com/2008/01/economics-history-and-politics-of-hemp.html they mention the highest yield on hemp:

In Tim Castleman's article "Hemp Biomass For Energy", he wrote his observations about biodiesel too, explaining that "Some varieties are reported to yield as much as 38% oil, and a record 2,000 lbs. per acre was recorded in 1999. At this rate, 760 lbs. of oil per acre would result in about 100 allons [sic]of oil, with production costs totaling about $5.20 per gallon.(13) I asked Tim if there were any other factors that could further reduce the price per gallon. He replied: Hempseed oil is worth $30 per gallon as food. ... hemp (biodiesel) doesn't make the lineup for fuel.”

I am ignoring any prices- they are subject to change and are not what I am after here. This says that at maximum output (and this would not be sustainable across the board certainly), you might be able to get about 100 gallons of fuel from an acre. At maximum yields.

According to the Wall Street Journal, even in the recession, we are burning up 371 million gallons of gas a day in our vehicles http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123957686061311925.html That means you need 1.3 billion acres growing hemp at maximum yield to replace all the gasoline we currently consume in a year. The first article linked to also points out that ethanol is

Fuel efficiency:

Some might argue that ethanol isn't as fuel efficient as gas – thus the dollar-per-mile ratio of hemp ethanol would make it more expensive than gas to run. Ethanol contains approx. 34% less energy per gallon than gasoline, and therefore will result in a 34% reduction in miles per gallon.


so to allow for that you need to additionally increase your production by a third. Then to further allow for lower yields in some places, more than likely double my original estimate or 2.7 billion acres to hemp would be required.

The USDA reports that in 2009, we had 320 million acres dedicated to agriculture http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2009/06_30_2009.asp which is less than a quarter of the original, optimal yield estimation for land needed to go with hemp to replace gasoline in our automobiles.

This is the biggest restriction to going with biofuels to try to replace gasoline. We could convert every acre of cropland to it and still need three times more than we currently have in food production (this includes plants like cotton too which is not a food though- it is all agriculture). It can work as a marginal substitute but never a full replacement.

The total area of the entire USA is 2.3 billion acres. http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB14/

This PDF http://www.votehemp.com/PDF/The_Case_for_Hemp_as_a_Biofuel2008.pdf says that in terms of cellulose, hemp yields aproximately twice the cellulose as corn and would require 25,000 square kms of land to replace the 2006 US gasoline consumption. This is of course much less than the land required when simply using hemp oil for fuel.

[torchbearer]

ethanol cannot be transported via our current pipelines, so every gallon of it has to be hauled by truck.

[stag15]

ethanol cannot be transported via our current pipelines, so every gallon of it has to be hauled by truck.

Factor that into the EROEI.

[Objectivist]

no- bad way to get high.
it is useful for ethanol production... more so than a food crop like corn.

http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

There will be a test after you read this.

A hint: BTUs

[tangent4ronpaul]

Cost would go down if you used the fiber for other things, like clothes. Also, remember that you mix it with gas - maybe 30%? don't remember, but it's not a 100% replacement. You have to alter the engine if you want to burn 100% ethanol. It also grows like a weed, so doesn't need to take up traditional farm land.

Sugarcane is supposed to give the highest yield of ethanol, but where you can grow it is limited.

The lower MPG is a bit o a concern, as the gvmt is pushing for higher gas mileage.

-t

[Objectivist]

Cost would go down if you used the fiber for other things, like clothes. Also, remember that you mix it with gas - maybe 30%? don't remember, but it's not a 100% replacement. You have to alter the engine if you want to burn 100% ethanol. It also grows like a weed, so doesn't need to take up traditional farm land.

Sugarcane is supposed to give the highest yield of ethanol, but where you can grow it is limited.

The lower MPG is a bit o a concern, as the gvmt is pushing for higher gas mileage.

-t

You get a higher fiber yield on Sun Hemp per pound of plant matter and it's a cleaner fiber.

Sugar cane grows well in Brazil and that's why they can get away with Cane based fuel. Note that Brazil is still drilling and finding oil off-shore.

And what government is pushing for higher fuel milage? Not the ones I see in this country, otherwise they would reduce vehicle weight and stop putting socks on Diesel trucks, like California is doing.

[InterestedParticipant]

1)Why would a country cede control by allowing somebody else tell them to decrease their oil production? OPEC does but the US and UK are not OPEC. Unless you go for that New World Order stuff- some secret powers behind the scene controlling everything which I do not subscribe to.

2) Oil reserves are not being added to at a rate faster than they are being depleted. Most Middle Eastern oil reserves have not been verified but only based on what the countries report that they have. In the 1980s when the OPEC oil allocations were going to be determined by the reserves each country had, suddenly many of them vastly increased their reported reserves- without announcing a single new discovery and some have not reduced those figures despite 20 or more years of pumping them out. This probably means that total reserves are LESS than we think they are. But there is no way to confirm one way or the other.

Let us look at a chart of Saudi announced oil reserves:
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/images/article_images/saudi_reserves_graph2001.jpg
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/?fa=show&article=20623
Reserves are little changed despite exporting some nearly 3 billion barrels a year.

A comparison of reported reserves from the BBC they posted in 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4681935.stm
First, data from Carnegie Endowment is not trustworthy.

Second, of course countries cede internal decision making to supranational bodies all the time, such as the World Bank & the IMF, there is no secret here.

Third, as far as the USA, I strongly urge that you read Chapter V from the Club of Rome's First Global Revolution. This will explain the plan to create scarcity and to position man's engagement with the planet as a dialectic between the two.

Finally, any real oil field finds are kept off the radar map, and are unreported or severely under reported. For example, what ever happened with N. Dakota's Bakken formation? Original geologist dies and USGS severely downgrades the initial barrel estimates.

[Zippyjuan]

First, data from Carnegie Endowment is not trustworthy.

Second, of course countries cede internal decision making to supranational bodies all the time, such as the World Bank & the IMF, there is no secret here.

Third, as far as the USA, I strongly urge that you read Chapter V from the Club of Rome's First Global Revolution. This will explain the plan to create scarcity and to position man's engagement with the planet as a dialectic between the two.

Finally, any real oil field finds are kept off the radar map, and are unreported or severely under reported. For example, what ever happened with N. Dakota's Bakken formation? Original geologist dies and USGS severely downgrades the initial barrel estimates.

The information was only quoted in the Carnegie Endowment article- they did not create it- the info came from Saudi Arabia. If you choose not to believe it, that is your choice of course. If you wish to search for other data sources, you are free to do so. If you can find contrary information from a reliable source, please share it with us.

Oil field estimates are constantly updated after further exploratory work is conducted. Sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down. Recoverable oil can also change by either new technology or changes in the price of oil- a higher oil price will mean that more of the oil is now economically recoverable. Lowering an estimate is not necessarily a conspiracy to "hide" the oil. The Bakken formation was found to be shallower and more dispersed than initially thought meaning more wells required to extract the oil or new technology (such as horizontal drilling) to extract the oil. Then there are two estimates usually- the "oil in place" and the recoverable oil. The first is usually considerably larger than the second. Turned out the field seems to be many smaller pools of oil rather than a continuous large one- as first thought. That means more work to get the oil out.

This takes a good look at it:
http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2008/04/03/bakken-boon-bust-or-boondoggle/

The methods used by Price to determine the amount of hydrocarbons generated by the Bakken are different from the traditional petroleum geochemical practices and are under dispute. Previous estimates were determined directly from available data and did not take into account the changes that had already occurred within the rock. These estimates are calculated from the area (measured) times the thickness (measured) times the total organic content (TOC, measured by RockEval pyrolysis in the laboratory) times the percent of organic carbon that has been converted (measured by RockEval). Price used a more complete database and re-calculated the data based on what he considered more realistic input parameters. The reasons for these adjustments are beyond the scope of this review; however his methods appear to be supported by the data and adequately explained. He estimated that the Bakken was capable of generating between 271 and 503 BBbls of oil with an average of 413 BBbls. Price also re-calculated the data previously presented by Schmoker and Hester (1983) and Webster (1984); the re-calculated values also fall within the range stated above. These values combined with the idea that the oil has not migrated from the Bakken is what is under dispute. Price also states that 50% of this oil is recoverable (on average, 200 billion barrels of oil).

…

New estimates of the amount of hydrocarbons generated by the Bakken were presented by Meissner and Banks (2000) and by Flannery and Kraus (2006). The first of these papers tested a newly developed computer model with existing Bakken data. Data used was not as extensive as some of the other studies mentioned in this discussion therefore estimates of generated oil presented were 32 BBbls. The second paper by Flannery and Kraus used a more sophisticated computer program with extensive data input supplied by the ND Geological Survey and Oil and Gas Division. Early numbers generated from this information placed the value at 200 BBbls (pers. comm. Jack Flannery, 2005). Estimates had been revised to 300 BBbls when the paper was presented in 2006. Even if the lower value of 32 BBbls is correct, the amount that may be potentially recovered from the Bakken is significant.

How much of the oil that has been generated is technically recoverable is still to be determined. Price places the value as high as 50% recoverable reserves. A primary recovery factor of 18% was recently presented by Headington Oil Company for their Richland County, Montana wells. Values presented in ND Industrial Commission Oil and Gas Hearings have ranged from 3 to 10%. The Bakken play in the North Dakota side of the basin is still in the learning curve. North Dakota wells are still undergoing adjustments and modifications to the drilling and completion practices used for this formation. It is apparent that technology and the price of oil will dictate what is potentially recoverable from this formation.


Basically, they STILL don't know exactly how much oil is there and how much is recoverable.

This article reports 200- 400 billion barrels "oil in place"- again, not necessarily recoverable. http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1406007/xto_energy_announces_bakken_shale_acquisition_for_ 185_billion_in/index.html

In a recent report, the U.S. Geological Survey published a new assessment of the Bakken Shale play of North Dakota and Montana. The report cites that 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered oil are technically recoverable with current technology and industry practices. This estimate by the USGS made the Bakken Shale the largest continuous oil accumulation in the lower 48 states. In addition, the USGS has estimated total oil-in-place at 200 to 400 billion barrels.


Note the huge difference between "recoverable" and "in place" numbers. In this case, the numbers are hugely different from each other. This is not a normal discrepancy although there is always a big difference. The wide gap here is due to the geology of the area. You can't just drill down to a giant pool of 400 billion barrels and pump them all out because it is not one pool. And as noted, technology can increase the recoverable number.

From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

While these numbers would appear to indicate a massive reserve, the percentage of this oil which might be extracted using current technology is another matter. Estimates of the Bakken's technically recoverable oil have ranged from as low as 1% — because the Bakken shale has generally low porosity and low permeability, making the oil difficult to extract — to Leigh Price's estimate of 50% recoverable.[11] Reports issued by both the USGS and the state of North Dakota in April 2008 seem to indicate the lower range of recoverable estimates are more realistic with current technology.

The flurry of drilling activity in the Bakken, coupled with the wide range of estimates of in-place and recoverable oil, led North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan to ask the USGS to conduct a study of the Bakken's potentially recoverable oil. In April 2008 the USGS released this report, which estimated the amount of technically recoverable, undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m3), with a mean of 3.65 billion.[4] Later that month, the state of North Dakota's report [5] estimated that of the 167 billion barrels (2.66×1010 m3) of oil in-place in the North Dakota portion of the Bakken, 2.1 billion barrels (330,000,000 m3) were technically recoverable with current technology.




The rock formation consists of three members: lower shale, middle dolomite, and upper shale. The shales were deposited in relatively deep marine conditions, and the dolomite was deposited as a coastal carbonate bank during a time of shallower water. The middle dolomite member is the principal oil reservoir, roughly two miles (3.2 km) below the surface. Both the upper and lower shale members are organic-rich marine shale.

Porosities in the Bakken average about 5%, and permeabilities are very low, averaging 0.04 millidarcies—much lower than typical oil reservoirs.[6] However, the presence of horizontal fractures makes the Bakken an excellent candidate for horizontal drilling techniques in which a well drills horizontally along the bedding, rather than vertically through it. In this way, a borehole can contact many thousands of feet of oil reservoir rock in a unit with a maximum thickness of only about 140 feet (40 m).[7] Production is also enhanced by artificially fracturing the rock,[8] to allow oil to seep to the oil well.




Finally, any real oil field finds are kept off the radar map, and are unreported or severely under reported. For example, what ever happened with N. Dakota's Bakken formation? Original geologist dies and USGS severely downgrades the initial barrel estimates.

You must have some secret contact within the industry. Perhaps you can share some of those "secret" oil fields with us. I promise not to tell anybody else. We can buy stock in the companies which own the rights and get rich some day.

[BenIsForRon]

Hemp may be a viable alternative for plastics, I haven't seen the research though. There is currently no viable alternative for gasoline. The era of superhighways, suburbs, and strip malls is over.

[Anti Federalist]

I just got back from this project.

Will comment more later.

[BenIsForRon]

There is an older book called the one straw revolution that talks preparing fields with clover.

-t

Yeah, that's by Masanobu Fukuoka, the guy I quote in my signature. The world would do well to convert to his type of agriculture, especially the parts with a year-round growing season, like florida.

[Icymudpuppy]

Can you get enough yield from hemp to be useful for fuel? What I am wondering is the trade-off between acreage for food vs acreage for biofuels. That was one of the problems with corn (besides it being one of the worst choices for making a fuel in terms of energy needed to produce a gallon of fuel)- displacing food supplies and increasing their scarcity and driving up their prices.

At this site, http://hemp-ethanol.blogspot.com/2008/01/economics-history-and-politics-of-hemp.html they mention the highest yield on hemp:

I am ignoring any prices- they are subject to change and are not what I am after here. This says that at maximum output (and this would not be sustainable across the board certainly), you might be able to get about 100 gallons of fuel from an acre. At maximum yields.

According to the Wall Street Journal, even in the recession, we are burning up 371 million gallons of gas a day in our vehicles http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123957686061311925.html That means you need 1.3 billion acres growing hemp at maximum yield to replace all the gasoline we currently consume in a year. The first article linked to also points out that ethanol is


so to allow for that you need to additionally increase your production by a third. Then to further allow for lower yields in some places, more than likely double my original estimate or 2.7 billion acres to hemp would be required.

The USDA reports that in 2009, we had 320 million acres dedicated to agriculture http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2009/06_30_2009.asp which is less than a quarter of the original, optimal yield estimation for land needed to go with hemp to replace gasoline in our automobiles.

This is the biggest restriction to going with biofuels to try to replace gasoline. We could convert every acre of cropland to it and still need three times more than we currently have in food production (this includes plants like cotton too which is not a food though- it is all agriculture). It can work as a marginal substitute but never a full replacement.

The total area of the entire USA is 2.3 billion acres. http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB14/

This PDF http://www.votehemp.com/PDF/The_Case_for_Hemp_as_a_Biofuel2008.pdf says that in terms of cellulose, hemp yields aproximately twice the cellulose as corn and would require 25,000 square kms of land to replace the 2006 US gasoline consumption. This is of course much less than the land required when simply using hemp oil for fuel.


You're switching between ethanol and biodiesel. Diesel engines are 30% more efficient than gasoline engines, making biodiesel less consumptive than gasoline, and much less consumptive than ethanol. Factor in the clean sulferless emissions of using biodiesel instead of petrodiesel, and there would be no anti-diesel crowd, and much lighter restrictions on diesel engines in weird places like California which won't even import VW TDIs.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Hemp may be a viable alternative for plastics, I haven't seen the research though. There is currently no viable alternative for gasoline. The era of superhighways, suburbs, and strip malls is over.

Sandia is working on a carbon to gas project that uses sunlight to convert carbon in the atmosphere to fuel. It's about 10 years out from hitting the market.

-t

[InterestedParticipant]

You must have some secret contact within the industry. Perhaps you can share some of those "secret" oil fields with us. I promise not to tell anybody else. We can buy stock in the companies which own the rights and get rich some day.
Yup, Lots of them!

One cannot analyze oil in a vacuum, it must be analyzed as an essential geopolitical tool of control.... and that's an entire different strategic discussion.

Anyway, for those interested, here's another, widely accepted take on oil and its origins...


It appears that, unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been, for quite some time now, two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel' deposited in finite quantities near the planet's surface. The other theory claims that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma. One theory is backed by a massive body of research representing fifty years of intense scientific inquiry. The other theory is an unproven relic of the eighteenth century. One theory anticipates deep oil reserves, refillable oil fields, migratory oil systems, deep sources of generation, and the spontaneous venting of gas and oil. The other theory has a difficult time explaining any such documented phenomena.

So which theory have we in the West, in our infinite wisdom, chosen to embrace? Why, the fundamentally absurd 'Fossil Fuel' theory, of course -- the same theory that the 'Peak Oil' doomsday warnings are based on.

[literatim]

Hemp may be a viable alternative for plastics, I haven't seen the research though. There is currently no viable alternative for gasoline. The era of superhighways, suburbs, and strip malls is over.

Gasified coal. Hemp bio-diesel.

[BenIsForRon]

Gasified coal. Hemp bio-diesel.

I'm talking viable at the current rate of consumption. Both of your options are too expensive to support our current economic system.

http://i.treehugger.com/images/2007/10/24/economist-petrol2007-001.jpg

[idiom]

Peak Oil is not about how much Oil there is, but about how quickly we can get it out of the ground.

[jmdrake]

What leads you to believe that it is BS? One by one, countries which used to be oil exporters (and oil is often a major source of income to these countries) including the US are switching from being net oil exporters to net oil importers. Why would they voluntarily give up their bigges source of revenue? Britain. Indonesia. Mexico may join the list in the next few years as may Iran.


Here's your answer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-court/memos-show-oil-companies-_b_6980.html

Memos Show Oil Companies Closed Refineries To Hike Profits
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If you believe the oil industry's response to Katrina, you'd think demanding environmentalists are to blame for $3 per gallon gasoline because the tree huggers shut down refineries with tough new rules. President Bush even mimicked the industry excuse by waiving environmental standards in the wake of Katrina. Well, the industry's own internal memos show the intentional shrinking of American refinery capacity in the 1990s was the oil companies' own idea to pump up profits.

Take this internal Texaco strategy memo: "[T]he most critical factor facing the refining industry on the West Coast is the surplus of refining capacity, and the surplus gasoline production capacity. (The same situation exists for the entire U.S. refining industry.) Supply significantly exceeds demand year-round. This results in very poor refinery margins and very poor refinery financial results. Significant events need to occur to assist in reducing supplies and/or increasing the demand for gasoline." The memo went on to discuss a sucessful campaign in Washington State to shrink refined supply by removing other additives in the gasoline that filled gas volume.

Another Mobil memo shows the company promoted tough regulations in California to shut down an independent refiner. A Chevron memo acknowledged the industry wide need to shutter refineries and discussed how refiners were responding in kind.

Large oil companies have for a decade artificially shorted the gasoline market to drive up prices. Oil companies know they can make more money by making less gasoline. Katrina should be a wakeup call to America that the refiners profit widely when they keep the system running on empty. It's time for government to regulate the industry's supply. The fact that President Bush received $2.6 million from the oil industry for his reelection in 2004 should make regulation of the nation's gas supply one of the Democrats' most important talking points.


And I've actually read the memos.

[idiom]

I guess deregulation failed again eh?

[Zippyjuan]

Yup, Lots of them!

One cannot analyze oil in a vacuum, it must be analyzed as an essential geopolitical tool of control.... and that's an entire different strategic discussion.

Anyway, for those interested, here's another, widely accepted take on oil and its origins...

The abiotic theory of oil is not exactly "widely accepted". If you look at the real evidence, there is little support for it.

[InterestedParticipant]

Closed Coffin: Ending the Debate on "The End of Cheap Oil" A commentary
Michael C. Lynch, Chief Energy Economist, DRI-WEFA, Inc.
September 2001
http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/world-oil.dir/lynch2.html


The past five years have seen a renewed debate on the issue of oil supply and the possibility of a near-term peak in production and the concomitant adverse economic consequences. A number of articles have stated that discoveries over the past thirty years have been only a fraction of consumption and that according to the Hubbert Curve method, world oil production is close to a peak. What few people realize is that these arguments are based entirely on a very particular technical argument, and recent evidence has highlighted its fallacy.

The greatest attention was achieved by the March 1998 Scientific American article "The End of Cheap Oil" by Jean Laherrere and Colin Campbell, largely due to the extreme nature of their warning -- production peaking within a few years -- and the alleged irrefutability of it. Subsequently, the authors have been very active publicizing their views, including testimony to the British House of Commons, speaking on BBC, and a number of other venues. A few articles in the general press have been at least skeptical, but most of the work refuting their arguments has been treated cautiously and quite a few lay observers have taken their arguments as truth rather than speculation. Critics of these arguments (like myself) have noted that these forecasts have repeatedly proven to be incorrect, including those by Colin Campbell in particular, who as early as 1989 predicted a peak in world oil production for that year. Their rejoinder has been to note correctly that -- past performance is not proof of future performance.

However, to the more explicit charge that their model is mis-specified, the authors have made a more substantive response. The primary flaw in this type of model is the assumption that recoverable petroleum resources are fixed, when the amount of oil which can be recovered depends on both the total amount of oil (a geological factor which is fixed), but also dynamic variables like price, infrastructure, and technology. If the amount of recoverable oil increases, as it has in the past, then the level predicted for peak production must increase and the date pushed further into the future. This has been observed many times from forecasters using this type of model and relying on estimates of ultimately recoverable resources (URR). But Campbell and Laherrere have asserted that their estimate of URR is both highly accurate and stable because of their calculation using field size estimates showing declining discovery size, moving towards an asymptote. Since they have relied heavily on a privately held database, which is unavailable to the general researcher, it has been difficult for critics to respond to this specifically.

The reliance on discovery trends to estimate URR has received similar criticism as the faulty URR estimates, namely that estimates of field size tend to increase over time with improved recovery methods, better examination of seismic data, infill drilling, and so forth. This means that the size of the recent fields is being underestimated compared to older fields, exaggerating the nearness of the asymptote and understating its size. An analogy would be to plant trees over twenty years and note that the size of the most recently planted trees was shrinking, and concluding that timber resources would become scarce. Campbell and Laherrere have argued in response that increases in recovery at existing fields are artifacts of accounting rules (which is only partly true) and that they have overcome this flaw by their reliance on a database whose reserve estimates do not suffer from this bias. Since the estimate of ultimately recoverable resources is based on their field size estimates, the question of field growth becomes central to the entire debate. And their primary line of defense has been that their critics lack access to this database.

Last year, the publication of the USGS's World Petroleum Assessment provided one particularly sharp nail in the coffin of this argument, when (among other things) they examined the development of field size estimates over time using the same proprietary database which Campbell and Laherrere relied on, and concluded that reserve growth from existing fields, although uncertain, would be substantial. They published a mean estimate of 612 billion barrels (nearly 30 years of current consumption), significantly increasing their estimate of the world's URR.

But the final nails seem to be located in this summer's little-noticed announcement by IHS Energy -- the firm whose field database Campbell and Laherrere have utilized -- of estimated discoveries. According to the firm, discoveries in 2000 were 14.3 billion barrels in 2000, a 10% drop from 1999. This has two interesting implications: first, discoveries have risen sharply the past two years, refuting the statement that poor geology, rather than lack of access to the most prospective areas in OPEC, has kept discoveries low for the past three decades. But also, this implies that discoveries in the past two years have amounted to nearly 20% of the total undiscovered oil which Campbell and Laherrere argued remain! Undoubtedly they -- and others -- will argue that this is due to the firm's inclusion of deepwater reserves, which they are not considering, and that is a factor in the recent robustness of discoveries. However, the primary element behind the greater discovery rates has been the finding of two new supergiant fields in Kazakhstan and Iran. Again, this refutes the argument that discoveries have been relatively low in recent decades due to geological scarcity and supports the optimists' arguments that the lower discoveries are partly due to reduced drilling in the Middle East after the 1970s nationalizations.

And the most crucial fact is actually IHS Energy's reference to earlier discoveries. They have revised their estimates of remaining reserves at end -- 1991 to 1200 billion barrels, implying that oil discovered to that date was close to 1900 billion barrels (since about 675 billion barrels had been produced). This despite the Campbell/Laherrere argument that their data does not experience revisions due to their reliance on P50 (50% probability) estimates, compared to P90 (90% probability) used in the US and by many US oil companies. While there remain uncertainties about future field reserve growth versus historical growth, it becomes clear that it is still continuing and the arguments that they had corrected for the problem are fallacious at best.

Indeed, the sheer size of the revisions are themselves significant. Although I lack access to historical IHS Energy estimates, Campbell and Laherrere had placed "back-dated" reserves in the early 1990s at barely over 1000 billion barrels in their 1998 article. This implies (to be generous) an increase due to revisions of 150 billion barrels or more in a mere five years: 30% more than actual consumption! It means (as I have repeatedly argued) that their discovery trend curves are misleading, because the more recent numbers were understated, and in the future will likely be too low again. The method they use is flawed because of this definitional mistake.

Note also that the amount discovered to 1991 (which would include only minimal deepwater discoveries) is actually significantly greater than the two now estimate would ever be discovered. In fact, IHS Energy puts current reserves at 1100 billion barrels, which, with past production, yields almost 2000 billion barrels, about 10% or 200 billion barrels over the 1800 billion barrels which the duo have confidently predicted would be the ultimate total. Presumably we can expect them to make yet another upwards revision in their URR estimate. Indeed, despite fears of declining discoveries, estimated recoverable resources -- even by pessimists -- have grown faster than consumption. This can hardly be argued as a sign of resource scarcity.

There are many other arguments that have made up part of this debate, and I have tried to deal with each of them in the articles cited below, as well as further forthcoming work. But while we need be concerned about quite a number of issues related to petroleum supply -- depletion, change in reserve growth, concentration of production in politically stable areas -- a possible near-term peak in production (conventional or otherwise) is not one of them. It takes a lot of nails to close a coffin, but the size and quality of these will hopefully ensure that it remains closed.

1. "Forecasting Oil Supply: Theory and Practice," Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2001, forthcoming.
2. "The Debate Over Oil Supply: Science or Religion?" Geopolitics of Energy, August 1999.
3. "Farce this Time: Renewed Pessimism About Oil Supply" Geopolitics of Energy, December 1998-January 1999.
4. "The Analysis and Forecasting of Petroleum Supply: Sources of Error and Bias," in Energy Watchers VII, ed. by Dorothea H. El Mallakh, International Research Center for Energy and Economic Development, 1996.

[AFPVet]

Well, bio-diesel and other alternative fuels/platforms would have to be phased in gradually. There is no such thing as an overnight fix.

[InterestedParticipant]

Well, bio-diesel and other alternative fuels/platforms would have to be phased in gradually. There is no such thing as an overnight fix.
Just pump the damn domestic oil!

Freaking chumps are just trying to strangle America and maximize profits while doing it. People wanna know what we can do, we should start showing up at all the damn capped wells in this country and start pumping and refining our own energy again. Let them bring out the troops... what do you say Pcosmar? Your guys can run security.