On 9/5/06, Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
To put it colloquially...
But it might take the 'pressure' off the middle east (or not).
<snip>
The Sacramento Bee
Vast oil pool tapped in Gulf of Mexico
By BRAD FOSS, AP Business Writer
Published 2:04 pm PDT Tuesday, September 5, 2006
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/front/story/3365727p-12386121c.html
<snip>
Chevron on Tuesday estimated the 300-square-mile region where its test
well sits could hold between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of oil and
natural gas liquids. The U.S. consumes roughly 5.7 billion barrels of
crude-oil in a year.
In the light of the current level of annual US consumption, it looks
like it's a minor discovery.
The more we consume fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases we
produce, and the more extreme weather events, like hurricanes*, we
will experience (we have gotten it easy this year so far -- phew!).
What is ironic in this context is that a large part of US oil
production, refinery, and import facilities are concentrated in the
Gulf of Mexico, which is vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms.
Gulf of Mexico Oil & Natural Gas Facts
Energy Information Administration
Data as of June 2005 unless otherwise noted.
Gulf of Mexico Total U.S. % from
Gulf of Mexico
Oil
(million barrels
per day)
Federal Offshore
Crude Oil
Production (5/05) 1.576 5.494 28.7%
Total Gulf Coast
Region Refinery
Capacity
(as of 1/1/05) 8.068 17.006 47.4%
Total Gulf Coast
Region Crude
Oil Imports 6.490 10.753 60.4%
- of which into
ports in LA,
MS and AL 2.524 10.753 23.5%
- of which into
LOOP 0.906 10.753 8.5%
Natural Gas
(billion cubic feet
per day)
Federal Offshore
Marketed
Production (5/05) 10.1 50.58 20.0%
SOURCE: "Hurricane Impacts on the U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Markets,"
<http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/special/eia1_katrina.html>
The Minerals Management Service, a bureau in the U.S. Department of
the Interior, reports: "The cumulative shut-in oil production for the
period 8/26/05-6/1/06 is 162,425,332 bbls, which is equivalent to
29.67% of the yearly production of oil in the GOM (approximately 547.5
million barrels). The cumulative shut-in gas production
8/26/05-6/1/06 is 784.502 BCF, which is equivalent to 21.493 % of the
yearly production of gas in the GOM (approximately 3.65 TCF)" ("
Hurricane Katrina/Hurricane Rita Evacuation and Production Shut-in
Statistics Report as of Thursday, June 1, 2006,"
<http://www.mms.gov/ooc/press/2006/press0605.htm>).
That vulnerability can't be removed in the near future.
Moreover, it is probably not possible to muster the political will to
democratically control supply and demand for fossil fuels in the next
several decades, before shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica melts
down and sea levels rise and devastate coastal areas, which will
exacerbate all existing social conflicts and initiate new ones.
* "Examination of hurricane intensity (Fig. 4) shows a substantial
change in the intensity distribution of hurricanes globally. The
number of category 1 hurricanes has remained approximately constant
(Fig. 4A) but has decreased monotonically as a percentage of the total
number of hurricanes throughout the 35-year period (Fig. 4B). The
trend of the sum of hurricane categories 2 and 3 is small also both in
number and percentage. In contrast, hurricanes in the strongest
categories (4 + 5) have almost doubled in number (50 per pentad in the
1970s to near 90 per pentad during the past decade) and in proportion
(from around 20% to around 35% during the same period). These changes
occur in all of the ocean basins" (P. J.Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A.
Curry, and H.-R. Chang, "Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration,
and Intensity in a Warming Environment," Science 309.5742, 16
September 2005: 1844-1846,
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5742/1844>).
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
