INSTEAD, Hydraulic FRACKING has emerged to increase supplies of oil. and gas.
Realists are not so sure, noting that not only is fracked oil very expensive, requiring circa $80 a barrel to cover the costs of extraction, but that production from fracked oil wells drops off quickly so that new wells have to be drilled constantly to maintain production. Until recently information about just how fast our fracked oil wells were depleting was rather hard to come by, so that the hype about the US becoming energy independent and a major oil exporter became conventional wisdom for most.
Last week the US’s Energy Information Administration issued the first in a new series entitled Drilling Productivity Report for key tight oil and shale gas regions. This report analyzes the six onshore oil and gas regions in the U.S. where 90 percent of the growth in oil production and nearly all of the growth in natural gas production has taken place in the last few years. The report tallies the number of drilling rigs at work in these six regions; the amount of new oil and gas they are bringing into production each month; and most importantly, the rate at which production from those wells already in production is falling
More: http://www.postcarbon.org/article/1928847-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-shale Full report: http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/DBD-report-FINAL.pdf 2p Sam Previous extraction relied on drilling a vertical hole
into a horizontal oil strata, and collecting as much oil as could flow naturally to the center.FRACKING depends on horizontal drilling at the bottom of old wells, followed by pressurized injection of materials that prop up the oil bearing strata, allowing old oil to flow freely to the old wells and new wells. This technology could more than double the age of oil.Gasification can't compete for the foreseeable future. The world will be bathed in cheap oil and gas for the next century! I give up on gasification.<><><>WoodGas stoves are still a possible option in deepest Africa. Dean Still is taking care of that!<><><> COMMENTS? Tom ReedHi Tom,This makes assumptions about a relatively smooth linear progress of our current global economy and its supporting infrastructure. If this is the case you are probably right, and if you are working in this field for financial returns, they are unlikely to be found in other than in nitche markets.However, there are several reason to think these assumptions are unlikely.The global infrastructure has become so complex and interdependent that a variety of failures, natural or orchestrated, could cause cascading catastrophic failures that could take a long time to repair. The probability of this increases as complexity and interdependence of infrasttructure elements increases.The economic problems in the developed world are unlikely to find smooth solutions. There doesn't seem to be the willpower to implement long term solutions that are painful in the short run.Either of these problems could result in wars or simply damage to the infrasturcture that disrupts the delivery of energy locally. The localities may include much of the world.In either of these cases local energy solutions may be very needed.Concerns for the welfare of your children and grandchildren could be an adequate motivation for working in this field if you can without expecting large financial returns.Regards, CraigOn Thursday, April 3, 2014, Steven Barber (RIT Student) <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:Hi Tom, I've been doing some research on the price of commodities for several years now. Since global producers of oil can quickly ramp up (or down) production to meet any level of current demand, we can essentially take out supply and demand out of the equation (except for the very short term refinery explosion, Nigerian coup, etc.). Since oil is priced in dollars, the relative value of the dollar itself determines the price of oil. More value, less dollars needed to buy, less value, more dollars needed to buy. For stable oil prices, we simply need a steady or slightly increasing value of the dollar. Regards, -Steve On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:41 PM, thomas reed <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: Long term, I believe that FRACKING will make oil prices stable, so don't count on oil increasing in price. COMMENTS? Tom Reed -- Steven T. Barber MS Finance '12 PhD Sustainability Student Golisano Institute for Sustainability Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) 585-582-1574 - Office 585-370-8598 - Cell --NOTE: PLEASE CHANGE MY ADDRESS TO [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>Dr. Thomas B. Reed The Biomass Energy Foundation BEF, BEC, BER _______________________________________________ Gasification mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
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