Huge Oil Find Off The Gulf Of Mexico
So much going on today that I haven’t had time yet for this welcome news:
Move over, Alaska. Geoscientists have made what may be the nation’s largest oil discovery off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.
It could be the biggest domestic oil find in 38 years, but production is years away, and even then it won’t reverse America’s growing reliance on imports or have any meaningful effect at the gasoline pump.
A group led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool 270 miles south of New Orleans — and almost 4 miles beneath the ocean floor — in a region that could hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil, or more than Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
“It confirms a new frontier, a new horizon in the ultra-deep water,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of “The Prize,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry. “It isn’t energy independence,” he added.
Nevertheless, the announcement of a test well that sustained a flow rate of more than 6,000 barrels a day is a boon to Western oil companies. It comes at a time when they are finding it harder and more expensive to gain access to oil-producing countries such as Russia and Venezuela, and when foreign supplies are increasingly at risk because of political unrest across Africa and the Middle East.
The proximity of the Gulf of Mexico to the world’s largest oil-consuming nation makes the discovery extra attractive to the industry. However, analysts said the find could bring pressure on Florida and other states to relax limits they have placed on drilling in their offshore waters for environmental and tourism reasons.
Chevron estimated that the 300-square-mile region known as the lower tertiary, a rock formation that is 24 million to 65 million years old, contains between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels. The upper end of that range would be enough oil to expand the country’s reserves by 50 percent. But the first drop of oil from the lower tertiary isn’t expected to hit the market until at least 2010, and at best it will only slow the decline in annual U.S. production.
Despite all the no-doubt well-warranted disclaimers, that’s a giant dose of cheer…
Comrades,
I agree. it’s a great discovery…BUT…. it should not deter us from seeking to end our dependence upon fossil fuels, or non-renewable forms of fuel and energy.
Yeah, I know, my thoughts there often catch my opponents as well as friends off guard. Many think I am somewhat to the right of Attila, and maybe I am in some areas…:) HOWEVER, it is to everyone’s interests, both this generations and those to come, to keep searching for dependable, clean sources of energy that can be renewed. Like planting new trees to replace cut timber, we need to find better and cleaner sources of energy. It’s in our national interests, both for all the conservation issues, as well as the national defense issues. the less we depend upon foreign sources of fuel, the less we are susceptible to blackmail and international skull-duggery…. as it were…
Personally, I’d love to see the middle eastern nations awash in oil and nowhere to sell it, unable even to gibe it away…..
Respects,
Gwedd
You’re right, but it will take years of innovation and voluntary adoption before we begin to ween our country from the oil dependency. But this find (along with the resurgence of the oil sands in Alberta) demonstrates that fossil fuel researches are almost always wrong in their doomsday scenarios regarding the rapidly depreciating oil reserves. New technology in ths area usually leads to new discoveries.