Posted by
theoilpatchplug on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:18:47 AM
Drilling The Future
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, April 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: America's energy crunch is sadly self-inflicted. While others around the world engage in a mad dash to find more oil reserves, the U.S. seems to think $111-a-barrel oil won't be affected by more supply.
Aline from the recent film "There Will Be Blood" reminds us of the spirit this country's original oil entrepreneurs once had. "There's a whole ocean of oil beneath our feet," bellows antihero Daniel Plainview. "No one can get at it except for me."
Such sentiment these days is in short supply. But not overseas. Take Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro. On Monday, it announced that its Carioca offshore oil field may hold up to 33 billion barrels — more than the estimated official reserves in all the U.S.
This follows Brazil's discovery last December of a huge new oil source, the Tupi field, also thought to hold billions of barrels. Haroldo Lima, head of Brazil's National Oil Agency, estimates that Carioca might be as much as five times the size of Tupi.
Why the spate of discoveries off Brazil? Simple: With oil topping $100 a barrel, it's now more economical to prospect for hard-to-get supplies, whether deep in the ocean or in remote regions of dry land. When prices soared, Brazil got busy.
This is happening around the world. As we reported in December, China last year made 10 major new energy discoveries in a bid to secure its energy future. India recently invited foreign companies to help it find more energy on its territory.
Europe continues to fully exploit its oil reserves in the North Sea, without worrying about hurdles such as the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases or concerns about damage to the ocean ecosystem. Yet "peak oil" advocates in the U.S. argue that we're already at the end of our large-scale recoverable reserves.
Conventional wisdom is that the U.S. has just 30 billion barrels of oil left, enough for just 10 years of pumping at current rates. Sounds pretty bleak, but that figure is ludicrously low. Just last week, a new report concluded that the Bakken oil basin, stretching from North Dakota and Montana into Canada, contains an estimated 4 billion-plus barrels of oil.
Colorado and Utah are estimated to contain as much as 1.2 trillion barrels of oil trapped in shale below ground. They're not counted as "recoverable" reserves because until recently they weren't economical. Today they are.
The 2006 discovery in the Gulf of Mexico by Chevron, Devon Energy and Norway's Statoil of an oil field containing as much as 15 billion barrels of crude is still another example.
Offshore U.S. sources hold as much as 10 billion barrels of untapped oil, while the 2,000 acres of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge have as much as 16 billion — enough to replace 30 years of Middle East imports.
Many estimate that just under 1 trillion barrels of oil remain to be pumped. But a U.S. Geological Survey four years ago put the amount worldwide at 3 trillion.
We need oil. It's the lifeblood of our economy. And fortunately we have lots of it. But because of Congress' unwillingness to go after it, we're leaving billions of barrels untapped, driving up prices and causing untold economic hardship. This madness must end.