Off-Shore Drilling... Interesting
It's obvious it's time for alternative methods...
Link: http://www.architecture2030.org/news/news_090608.html#DrillHereDrillNow
HT: mom
Link: http://www.architecture2030.org/news/news_090608.html#DrillHereDrillNow
HT: mom
posted by Charissa at 10:21 AM
2 Comments:
My favorite portion of that graph--something I think is terribly missed in all of the drumbeating for off-shore drilling--is when the drilling would even begin to come online. Any drilling would be at least 15 years away, and the improvement it would make to domestic oil production is a drop in the bucket at best.
Rissa,
You are in my wheelhouse here...as an energy economist, I can tell you that many of the points in the article are definitely slanted.
We currently get 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) from Gulf of Mexico offshore production--that is over 25% of all domestic production.
First of all...not all offshore production is created equal...
In an area like Destin Dome, offshore Florida, where there is a confirmed discovery of natural gas and infrastructure exists, supplies could come on more quickly, perhaps in less than five years.
In many other areas, such as offshore CA, there are older fields that are known and infrastructure exists...but the moratorium has stopped the full exploitation of the resource. These too are likely to be available as early as 7 years.
ANWR (although not an offshore resource), if made avaialable, is likely to begin production within 7 years as well and could likely account for a 400,000 bpd in prodcution itself within 10 years.
Part of the analysis that is missing is that without more exploration and production, US production (currently around 5.1 million bpd or about 33% of our current crude oil usage) will decline and the amount we will require from imports will increase even more dramatically than it has.
We currently are using over 15.5 million bpd. 8.5 million bpd are domestic or from Canada and Mexico (55%), with another 400,000 bpd (2%) from other friendly countries in Central and South America (this does not include the 1.1 million bpd from Venezuela).
We will not replace this anytime soon. At the turn of the last century, there were those that were saying we were running out of coal...now we have more than we know what to do with!
Most of our oil (almost 75%) is used in our transportation sector. 47% of the crude is for gasoline (nearly all in automobiles), another 15.5% for ultra-low sulfur diesel (nearly all for trucking) with another 3.5% in other diesel (mostly for rail and sea-going vessels), and 7% for jet fuel.
(By the way, current ethanol production is 425,000 bpd, or about 5% of the total gasoline production...there is much debate about how much more we can make of this without affecting food supplies).
Until we find another way to move from sea to shining sea, oil will continue to be the only workable solution. Until the other technologies catch up and are acceptable to the consumer, we must continue to find and use as much of our own resources that we can!
Sorry this was so long-winded!
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