Sitting on an Ocean of Energy, Doing Nothing

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Joel's a freeper??!?!?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

You just want us to be a Third World Nation!

I've got my rikshaw ready.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I'm gonna trade in my pants for these:

Just like my sweet old ancestors!

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770968/posts

not sure how accurate this is, but it is a good read. There is a lot more oil in ANWR than you may think.

Heard of Lindsey Williams and his book 'the Non-Energy Crisis'?

http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html

[GaryC 7]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770968/posts

not sure how accurate this is, but it is a good read. There is a lot more oil in ANWR than you may think.

No offense, Joel, but that is politically centered website. You have to kind of search around, but the geophysicists that aren't tied to any of the oil companies speculate that ANWR has about 2 percent. I think it's absurd not to be talking about reducing our demand first and foremost. In 2003, Cheney said that reducing our demand was not an important issue when he was forging the Energy Policy in close door meeting with oil execs.

Do you trust the USGS? They say there is about 10 Billion barrels there.

The total quantity of technically recoverable oil within the entire assessment area is estimated to be between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels (95-percent and 5-percent probability range), with a mean value of 10.4 billion barrels.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.htm

Your also forgetting that we have much more than that off our shores of FL and CA. We have vast supplies of oil shale that is now economicly feasable to recover. We can replace the oil use to make electricity with clean burning coal and nuclear. Reducing our demand is good but conserving doesn't put one drop of additional oil in our supply. We need to do both conserve and increase supply. What have you got against doing both?

Edited June 13, 2008 by GaryC

[kerewin21 2]

You might find the sad story of the island nation Nauru instructive:

Nauru is a phosphate rock island, and its primary economic activity since 1907 has been the export of phosphate mined from the island. With the exhaustion of phosphate reserves, its environment severely degraded by mining, and the trust established to manage the island's wealth significantly reduced in value, the government of Nauru has resorted to unusual measures to obtain income. In the 1990s, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and money laundering center. Since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian government; in exchange for this aid, Nauru housed, until early 2008, an offshore detention centre that held and processed asylum seekers trying to enter Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru

For a devastating but fascinating history of this island and all the problems it now has (including having to import all their fruits, vegetables, and most of their food and even their drinking water by plane, relying largely on canned foods, having no trees, and being the most obese country in the world), you can listen to this story from This American Life:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Epis...spx?episode=253

I know it's an extreme example, but plundering our natural resources when we have other options doesn't make sense.

Edited June 13, 2008 by kerewin21

[zqt3344 21]

VJ Troll, my my my... by the way western Kansas has many oil wells in it pumping oil every day. So they will be ok.

in the end, we'll have no way to get to work, be freezing our butts off and can't take a hot shower, but we can still appreciate the beauty of nature around us while wondering how the hell we wound up in that position.

I'll get to work, no problem. Plenty of buses and trains around me.

Kansas is fukced though. We'll just have to turn your state into a national park or something.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

You might find the sad story of the island nation Nauru instructive:

Nauru is a phosphate rock island, and its primary economic activity since 1907 has been the export of phosphate mined from the island. With the exhaustion of phosphate reserves, its environment severely degraded by mining, and the trust established to manage the island's wealth significantly reduced in value, the government of Nauru has resorted to unusual measures to obtain income. In the 1990s, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and money laundering center. Since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian government; in exchange for this aid, Nauru housed, until early 2008, an offshore detention centre that held and processed asylum seekers trying to enter Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru

For a devastating but fascinating history of this island and all the problems it now has (including having to import all their fruits, vegetables, and most of their food and even their drinking water by plane, relying largely on canned foods, having no trees, and being the most obese country in the world), you can listen to this story from This American Life:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Epis...spx?episode=253

I know it's an extreme example, but plundering our natural resources when we have other options doesn't make sense.

Interesitng. Thanks for info.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

That's just crazy talk that they have planted into your brains in this communism seminar you were attending.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Your also forgetting that we have much more than that off our shores of FL and CA.

You're forgetting that the people of these states (Republicans and Democrats alike) are in strong opposition of drilling off their shores. As the strong states rights advocate that you keep presenting yourself as, I am sure you can respect the will of these states. If not then as a Floridian I'd have to say on behalf of this great state of ours, back the ** off!

[HAL 9000 96]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770968/posts

not sure how accurate this is, but it is a good read. There is a lot more oil in ANWR than you may think.

No offense, Joel, but that is politically centered website. You have to kind of search around, but the geophysicists that aren't tied to any of the oil companies speculate that ANWR has about 2 percent. I think it's absurd not to be talking about reducing our demand first and foremost. In 2003, Cheney said that reducing our demand was not an important issue when he was forging the Energy Policy in close door meeting with oil execs.

Comunist propaganda. We all know that geophysicists know nothing about ANWR. They have a secret Al Gore agenda.

[almaty 19]

VJ Troll, my my my... by the way western Kansas has many oil wells in it pumping oil every day. So they will be ok.

in the end, we'll have no way to get to work, be freezing our butts off and can't take a hot shower, but we can still appreciate the beauty of nature around us while wondering how the hell we wound up in that position.

I'll get to work, no problem. Plenty of buses and trains around me.

Kansas is fukced though. We'll just have to turn your state into a national park or something.

i lived in western kansas ..and been to russell..hometown of bob dole..kansas has as much oil as illinois has ...not enough, to run their old broken down pieces of sh!t farm machinery for a week

[joelunchbox 0]

Liberals make me sick. Most still drive their cars and cool/heat their house but say:

NO oil

NO gas

NO coal

NO wind (kills the birds)

NO hydro (kills the fish)

We're gonna need more than solar. Open your minds!!

I say--Use our oil wisely

I say--who clean can we afford coal to be?

I say--put up them windmills!! the people who don't like them, own land that might possibly be devalued by them...I doubt that though.

I say--yay to hydro but did you know that there are ways to generate hydro power without building dams?

I turn off my heatpump at night. I drive only when I need to and I make one big trip for eveything I need. As opposed to driving an 8 mpg SUV to get a loaf of bread...

Are you saying screw everything as long as we can pump gas??

[HAL 9000 96]

Do you trust the USGS? They say there is about 10 Billion barrels there.

So, according to another US Gov't survey current production of oil is at about 5 million barrels per day in the lower 48. Add Alaska and that's a grand total of 6 million barrels per day. Considering that our daily demand as a nation is much greater than that, lets first deal in absolutes and then factor in the global contribution:

6 million barrels per day: 6 * 365 = 2190 million barrels per year = 2 billion, 190 million barrels per year = 2.19 billion barrels per year.

10 billion / 2.19 billion = 4.57 years at this demand + consumption rate until ANWR is dry.

That would be at just the current production rate, of course, and is an absolute.

Looking at it from a consumption point of view:

20.7 million barrels of oil per day consumed by US Market

means

20.7million barrels per day = 20.7 * 365 = 7555.5 million barrels per year = rounded to 7 billion, 555 million barrels per year demanded/presently consumed. Lets say we got green and decided to consume only 7.5 billion barrels per year.

So if we consume this much it means that the 2.19 billion barrels we produce in one year currently will have a slight bump from the estimated 10 billion barrels in ANWR, but for how long? Lets say we only pump it at 1 billion barrels per year from ANWR. That's 10 years worth before it runs dry. Is that a sound investment? Are you considering the overhead costs to drill as well as the start up costs to set up the drilling ops in the first place? Sure, we'll save a few bucks until it runs dry up front... but what about consequential costs?

Not financially feasible to be honest. Windfall might be good for a couple of years... but what later? Same kind of irresponsible fiscal management we have in Iraq right now. Let others pay later, right?

[SaadBell 0]

If not then as a Floridian I'd have to say on behalf of this great state of ours, back the ** off!