[AgentR]

Will drilling alone solve this problem? No. But why would we leave those reserves in the ground? For what purpose? They are doing no one any good underground.

Snik.. that was awful. Read like it was typed out of a PR brochure or something...

But to answer the final question...

Buy Saudi oil today at $120 / bbl... Produce ours when its worth $500 / bbl. Simple, strategic math.

Burn theirs first.

Granted we burned all our easy stuff before folks in charge saw the problem,... But just because you start with an error, doesn't mean you have to continue with that error.

[Aaron]

ANWR would power the US for 57 minutes/day, the rest would have to be imported.

EIA, best case scenario would reduce oil prices by $.30 to $.50 per barrel

Source

Reminds me of that scene in Tremors.

"We'll be dead in three days anyway... Well... I want to live for the three days."

[Ludi]

why would we leave those reserves in the ground?

For our children, maybe?

Oh, yeah, we don't give a rat's ass about their future, only about our own present.

Silly me.

[hironegro]

I would only support drilling if we nationalized profits and use the windfall for a sensible power down and sensible power up with nuclear/alternative energies at the sametime.

[roccman]

Bravo Monte!!

[mos6507]

I would only support drilling if we nationalized profits and use the windfall for a sensible power down and sensible power up with nuclear/alternative energies at the sametime.

That's the Roscoe Bartlett proposal and I fully support it.

[ROCKMAN]

Aaron,

I’m always amazed at statements like “well….that amount of added production is only X amount of consumption time. Let’s take ANWR as an example. OK……57 minutes a day…..that’s 360 hours each year…..and that’s 15 days a year. Let’s just call it two weeks to be conservative.

You make it sound like adding 57 minutes a day of production as insignificant. I’ll ask you to denote which of the following sacrifices are insignificant to you:

•Two weeks less paycheck
•Sitting at home two weeks with no TV, air conditioning/heat, no lights, no phone, no hot meals (OK…we should all eat more salads)
•No driving for two weeks regardless of how good your mpg is with that hybrid
•Two weeks less vacation
•Two weeks of no shopping
•Two weeks of no sports (It’s only fair…we cut out shopping for the gals)
•Two weeks NO INTERNET
•Two weeks of no coffee (my own personal nightmare)
•Two weeks of no sex (after all she’s still mad about the no shopping thing)

I’m sure you get my point. But we’re not just talking about you giving up these “insignificant things”. We need to multiply these by 300 million people here in the US.

Let’s look at the financial side of ANWR:

Based on you 57 minutes that would equate to 500,000 bopd. That is $24 billion a year that’s stays in the economy instead of sending overseas to people that hate us.

It’s also about $4 billion a year into the Federal treasure from the royalty payments.

I’m not sure how much ANWR would cost to drill up and set the production facilities but it’s a safe bet it would exceed $15 billion. And probably most of that would go to US companies (i.e. US blue color workers)

Not a bad investment…spend $15 billion and make back around $20 billion the first year. Makes for happy share holders. And remember: about 40% of the stock of ExxonMobil, Chevron, and all the other big oils belong to average American Joes and Josephines. Many of them don’t even know it because the ownership is typically through their pension funds. Some of the biggest investors in Big Oil are the auto union pension funds. Somewhat ironic given the hit their workers are taking by reduced demand for those gas guzzling US autos.

One more perspective: the US produces 7 million bopd of the 20 million bopd we use. That’s only 8 hours of consumption. Hell….let’s shut in all our production and save it for the grandkids. What y’all say? It would only mean $500/bbl oil and $20/gallon of gas.

I’m not really fussing at you Aaron. Just trying to put matters into perspective. No…we are not going to drill ourselves out of the peak oil dilemma. But that was also true in the 1950’s when we produced almost all the oil we used. Regardless of the big fields discovered 50 years here and in the Middle East PO was going to be an inevitable fact of life. We should be adjusting to a different consumption model. The only really big fix to drop energy costs quickly is a massive conservation effort. Developing alternatives can’t happen quick enough to accomplish that. Only reducing consumption can be done quickly enough to effect prices in the short term. In time, alternatives would offer the chance to pull back from a hydrocarbon dominated economy. But time is the enemy. Drilling won’t change PO arrivals…just delay it a little. But we desperately need that time to develop viable alternatives as well as serious conservation efforts.

The most important question, IMHO, is whether the politicians/public recognize the immediate need to change business as usually and take advantage of any additional breathing room that increased drilling might afford us.

[ROCKMAN]

Interesting proposal mos6507,

So we let the federal gov't fund the exploration effort. I'm all for that. I'm a petroleum geologist and would love to climb on that gravy train. As a consultant it doesn't matter who pays my invoice...Uncle Sam or Uncle Exxon. There would be a whole lot more work with a government run operation that wasn't based on a profit making business plan. From what I've read about the General Accounting Office report of abuse of Federal credit cards by gov't workers I can't wait to get mine.

[Snik]

Will drilling alone solve this problem? No. But why would we leave those reserves in the ground? For what purpose? They are doing no one any good underground.

Snik.. that was awful. Read like it was typed out of a PR brochure or something...

But to answer the final question...

Buy Saudi oil today at $120 / bbl... Produce ours when its worth $500 / bbl. Simple, strategic math.

Burn theirs first.

Granted we burned all our easy stuff before folks in charge saw the problem,... But just because you start with an error, doesn't mean you have to continue with that error.

A PR brochure for what? I am an independent oil producer who would actually be hurt by a drop in oil prices. On a personal basis I would love for oil to go to $500....party time in South Texas!

Your thinking makes no sense whatsoever. It is completely failed logic, and is the line of thinking that has helped get us into this mess. By your way of thinking we what, allow drilling in these areas when oil reaches $500/BO? Or is there some other majic number? I am guessing that a few years ago you might have said $100.

You are calling our producing of the "easy stuff" an error whereas it has been anything but. Our ability to support ourselves in the past with our vast natural resources is one of the things that has made this country one of the greatest ever on the planet. Your line of thinking is the same that has shut down, or severely curtailed industry after industry in this country with the "why here", and NIMBY (not in my back yard) thinking. If we don't wake up, in another generation we won't be producing or manufacturing much of anything here. We've already got a trade deficit that is going to choke us to death if we don't watch it, and this kind of thinking is only going to make it worse.

[Snik]

Well said Rockman.

[ROCKMAN]

Damn it! Snik and I used the same $500/bbl line from our ExxonMobil supplied propaganda boolet. Now everyone will know.

Seriously though, Snik and I are on the same page I think. As long as prices stay high I'm in tall cotton. I can almost charge what I want as a consultant. A significant increase in production or reduction in consumption would only reduce my income potential. But I would gladly trade that for a chance to let the country adjust to the new reality. I've already had to look into the face of one of my cohorts in the oil patch that lost a child in Iraq. The life of a young Marine may seem to some a cheap price to pay to satisfy our national glutony. But not to me and certainly not to HER parents.

[Aaron]

I’m always amazed at statements like “well….that amount of added production is only X amount of consumption time. Let’s take ANWR as an example. OK……57 minutes a day…..that’s 360 hours each year…..and that’s 15 days a year. Let’s just call it two weeks to be conservative.

Everything you refer to is fair enough I'd say.

It's not that it's "insignificant" per se... it's just that given global demand for oil, & coupled with depletion rates for existing fields, all drilling ANWR will accomplish is to make folks like yourself rich, while encouraging consumption through slightly lower cost.

This will ensure that our world is more dependent than ever on oil, as we enter a time of diminishing supplies.

I do understand your thinking here, but it's based on the false promise of "what's next".

It's pure fantasy to expect supply will ever again meet demand for oil. In fact, peak oil dictates that supplies become more expensive & less available year after year, with sharp drops in supply an emerging reality.

So I contend that making oil slightly more affordable now, (10+ years from now), only multiplies the tragedy we face.



No offense...

[Snik]

I would only support drilling if we nationalized profits and use the windfall for a sensible power down and sensible power up with nuclear/alternative energies at the sametime.

Why would anybody drill it if we nationalized the profits? Oil companies aren't charities, they are in business to make a profit. Yeah, that nasty word...profit. I don't think that the shareholders of those companies would be too happy with their company spending billions of dollars for nothing.

Any other industries you think we should "nationalize" (read confiscate) the profits on?

[ROCKMAN]

No offense felt what so ever Aaron. I'm on this site to have just the type of discussion we're having. You take the time to think though the thoughts of others and offer alternative views. I truly believe that such discourse is the only way to acheive consensus and move toward a workable solution.

Read my words again: Po is coming regardless of what we do: drilling or voluntary conservation. You say the world would be more dependent than ever upon oil. That's not true: we are absolutely dependent upon oil right now. No less dependent than upon the air we breath. There is no substitute for oil/gas under any scenario for many decades. Just like being a "little pregnent"..you is or you ain't.

I wish like hell we had adopted Jimmy Carter's proposal 25 years ago (I actually voted for Jimmy...we engineers like to stick together)to start running up the tax on gasoline to force us away from our glutony. But we didn't and every politician (red and blue) since then has failed to prepare society to adjust to a diminishing hydrocarbon based economy. But that's history. Can't change it.

I'm not a doomer but I am very concerned about the fragility of our society. Whether we like to think about it or not we are not as tough as the folks who survived the depression. But if want to avoid facing such a test we need to get away from the bumper sticker mentality (both pro and con) and start applying every tool we have available which could allow us a soft landing instead of a demoralizing crash. At 58 yo I'm set for life. But I have an 8 yo daughter who wants to be a horse vet. I'd like to think that in 15 years or so our society will have the disposable income to accomodate her dream.

[MonteQuest]

I like how you always say power down, instead of saying several billion people must die, I guess it's easier for you to talk about it then huh ?

Get a grip and read my threads on these issus. I don't mince words.

We must powerdown and reduce the population.

Several billion are going to die even if we do that.

We are in overshoot. Nature will correct this.

[Aaron]

I'd like to think that in 15 years or so our society will have the disposable income to accomodate her dream.

Even if the price of her dream means a harder fall for everyone else?

I have not doubt we will drill ANWR... & everywhere else we can think of in our desperation. I believe we will burn everything which can be burned, in our insane panic to maintain our "birthright".

And the world will suffer the consequences of our lack of vision 10 fold.

The solution to crack addiction... is never more crack.

Just how big did you want to grow our little human experiment before we face nature's impartial reality anyway?

[Dezakin]

I like how you always say power down, instead of saying several billion people must die, I guess it's easier for you to talk about it then huh ?

Get a grip and read my threads on these issus. I don't mince words.

We must powerdown and reduce the population.

Several billion are going to die even if we do that.

We are in overshoot. Nature will correct this.

No we're not. You've never shown that. You never can. You'll die of old age still insisting we're in overshoot and then spout off a bunch of anecdotes while the population is still in excess of seven billion.

My favorite was you're post of the paper of environmental sinks that were being used up to prove we're in overshoot, when the only environmental service that was experiencing any significant pressure over the last 40 years were CO2 sinks... which are largely irrelevant in the long run of depleted fossil fuels.

Back on topic, I still think its ironic that people are so vocally opposed to offshore drilling when its nearly entirely benign while there is much indifference to coal mining.

[MonteQuest]

You must be terrified of a future where we aren't actually in overshoot then, where global energy production is several times larger than it is today.

You still have no grasp of what overshoot means. The only way out of overshoot is a reduction in a species's population.

You are talking about enlarging carrying capacity when limits are being approached.

We are not approaching limits; we have overshot them by orders of magnitude.

Two entirely different concepts.

[Dezakin]

You must be terrified of a future where we aren't actually in overshoot then, where global energy production is several times larger than it is today.

You still have no grasp of what overshoot means. The only way out of overshoot is a reduction in a species's population.

You are talking about enlarging carrying capacity when limits are being approached.

We are not approaching limits; we have overshot them by orders of magnitude.

Two entirely different concepts.

I know exactly what you're saying, I'm just saying you're wrong. We haven't overshot carrying capacity.

You only assert. You've never provided anything more than anecdotes to support your claim. The one time I've seen you post a study it undermined your position. You seem to think that carrying capacity can only decline.

[MonteQuest]

It is a multifaceted problem which must be attacked on all fronts. Everything from conservation, to research and development of new technologies, to drilling for new reserves, to additional use of existing renewable energy sources.

All fronts? I see no mention of powering down or reducing the population.

You actually believe that we can overlook that elephant in the room?

To say that any one of these things is going to be THE answer is, of course, absurd. However, the aggregate of all of them is a different story altogether.

No, it is not. Not even close.

Keep in mind too, that every barrel we don't produce here is a barrel we have to import.

Sorry, US production of oil even from all possible sources will not keep up with import demand and offsert existing decline.

We might be able to slow the rate of growth of imports at best.

ANWR alone would reduce our trade deficit by over a trillion dollars over it's lifetime. Thats a trillion dollars that stays in this country instead of going overseas.

But why would we leave those reserves in the ground? For what purpose? They are doing no one any good underground.

That kind of thinking is why we used 1 trillion barrels of oil in 125 years and why we have this crisis.

What about future generations? Why not leave something for them?

Hmmm?