Offshore drilling

A new technique supported by the EU is injection of CO2 into old capped oil wells, this disposes of the excess CO2 collected and offers a storage space for it. Some business can find this as a source of CO2 for business use. Other avenues are to capture CO2 from the water and the target is building CO2 Scrubbers under the ocean. The CO2 'scrubber' was designed by Karl Lackner. CO2 saturates the environment once it reaches a certain percentage and this intensifies the Green House Effect forcing growth esp. of trees. It could be a indication why California had so many large trees. CO2 in carbonated drinks add a taste of dirty water if consumed often enough and the taster becomes frustrated with that taste over time. I don't like it so I cut down on my intake of carbonated drinks, I now have a Kool Aid habit with Grape, Cherry, ice tea, coffee, and real Lemonade being my favorite drinks. Sea water levels drop more if there is a vacuum created by a natural earthquake or a volcanic eruption so those two matters are more to be concerned about not some void as those two create voids and caverns to large to mention which can fill instantly with water, gas, or lava.

Could you elaborate on the mechanism of vacuum creted by earthquakes and volcanoes? This one is a new one to me.

I am aware of sinkholes being created, by water dissolving rock, but I hesitate to characterize that as a vacuum, and certainly not an earthquake.

Thanks for sharing your ideas.

milo

Well said Milo - I'm still scratching my head about the Cailifornia big trees & powdered drink.

The problem with CO2 injection is one of materials science. CO2 + H2O = carbolic acid. It will eat up the casing of the well (and the cement) unless special materials resistant to carbolic acid are used. Most wells use carbon steel which has a 9very) limited life in carbolic acid. I've seen production tubing come out of wells with a lot of CO2 after being there a week or less that had what looked like termite or worm holes all through it. Additionally, not every well is suited to CO2 injection. The geology has to be right for it to work. Ideally you want sandstone, not shale or salt or coal as the formation geology. water + CO2 + silicates turn into clay. you cannot use a "one size fits all" plan for every well. Every well is different and different methods for secondary and tertiary recovery and eventual abandonment must be used.

Friend,

Did you mean carbonic acid (H₂CO₃)?

--JMM

Yes, sorry, you are correct.

Hi Ron!

Given all the energy we burn, not as individuals but at the level of planet, the total volume of the voids created drilling for oil isn't even a drop by comparison to the huge volume of water that is in all the oceans. Remember, something in the order of two-thirds of the entire planet is under water.

In fact I'll hazard an educated guess that the amount of water lost by evaporation across the surface of the planet on any given day, is many times greater than all the oil ever pumped since Mr. Drake drilled his first well in Pennsylvania!

Without a precise method of accounting for evaporation and industrial use, it would be difficult if not impossible to calculate the water lost in filling empty oil pools. The measurement problem will become even more difficult with the advent of efficient extraction from oil bearing shale and sand.

L. J.

From what I have read about off shore dilling they use sea water to force the oil up and run the oil thru a process to get the water out.

With 9 million gals spilt after Katrnia and upwards of 600 million gallon after IKE it looks like we arte senting the curde back to the gulf.

Does not look like a good year to be eating fish from the Gulf.

If your figure of 3.6 km³ consumption is correct (near enough) then I wonder how long can it be kept up for? Will it run out suddenly and the world's economy collapse or it can drag on until it slowly runs out and in the meanwhile give enough time for the politicians to switch to something else?

What will happen is that as it becomes more and more difficult and expensive to meet demand, the price will rise, which will in turn stimulate the development of alternative energy sources as the relative costs change. As I said the other day on a different thread. The only thing required for Photovoltaic power to become economically feasible is for the cost of all the other energy sources to rise with respect to PV.

Now that said, there is a lot of oil still out there, and a lot of oil shale and coal that could be converted to synthetic oil, the problem is that until recently much of it was either too costly to develop, or was legally barred from production due to boneheads in Congress. Now that the congressional bans have expired and pelosi has egg on her face, we can start drilling for it. Has anyone noticed the price of oil has dropped since the end of Sept? That's why.

Talking about oil prices coming down along with other things Wall Street tumbles amid global sell-off however, it seems they are coming down a little too late.

Oil prices are down right now, and may continue to trend lower until the world economy fires back up, but the long term trend will be higher, not lower for the forseeable future. oil will continue to get more and more scarce until a significant amount of the economy shifts to other energy sources, then oil may in fact become more plentiful and the price may come back down. But that day has not yet arrived.

i thought and have seen reports that the drop in oil prices was due to several factors, all involving fear. that the worldwide recession heading for depression, was reducing demand for oil. that oil, being treated as a commodity, even though it really isn't, was tanking along with all other commodities and stock prices. that the selling pressures of stocks and bonds was what was driving down all prices. after all, the high oil prices were an articifical hiigh to begin with. specualtivly driven. the real cost of oil is still around $2 per barrel. every thing else is just profit gouging by someone, just because they can. not debating weather that is good or bad, it just is.

it is my opinion that the dropping of the federal ban on oil drilling had nothing to do with the drop in oil future's prices. i have said before, that i feel speculation in oil and gas futures should be banned to all speculators who can not take posession of the product when that "future date" has been reached. just like they can ban "short selling". it is all in the rules that they play by. change the rules and they will bitch, but they will still play by the new rules. after all, futures selling was implemented to protect producers from price drops, a form of insurance. the buying and selling of futures as just a way to make money, is a perversion of the financial market. it doesn't do anything productive. except for making paper profits and losses, which are only actualized when the holder exercises those options at his own choosing. there is no wealth building thru physical possesion of anything tangible, except a promise to pay up when the debt comes due. that whole system is just a house of cards, designed to extract wealth from the dumb or bad guessers, and flowing to the smart or good guessers. bad system.

It did have an effect precisely because of speculation on the part of oil producing countries. Think about it. Say you are the big cheese in charge of production in one of these countries. Your job is to maximize your country's profit. To do that, it is in your best interest to keep the price of oil as high as possible, but not so high that your client's economy crashes and reduces demand, or the client decides to produce their own instead of buying yours (or both). to do that you closely control how much you produce. But you messed up. You got greedy and kept the price too high for too long and your client's economy tanked and they decided to produce their own. so now you have a problem. you can maintain your (low) level of production and end up being left with a bunch of oil that won't be profitable to produce for several years because there will be a glut in the market that will take time to resolve. This would ruin YOUR economy which is totally dependent on oil revenues, or you can sell everything you can produce for as much as you can get for it now before the other supplies come on line. In doing so, you might just drop the price of oil enough that the client state's economy starts back up, increasing demand, while also lowering the incentive to drill for their own. And in the process, you still make a lot of money.

Oil is a commodity. I don't understand how you can claim it is not. not all of it is as fungible as others are. Some crudes are heavier and harder to refine, so they can only be handled by certain refineries, but those refineries can also take the light sweet stuff too.

Speculation serves a purpose in the market. It is, for lack of a better analogy, a "surge tank" or "accumulator" which helps to even out spikes in price and availability. There is one commodity in which speculation was banned. Onions. And the historical result of that ban was much larger price swings and an unstable supply. Therefore history tells us that bans on speculation result in an unstable market.

i remember, sort of, the reference to the onion speculation situation. my contention still is that it all depends upon the rules that they play by. i don't have a point of reference to the onion speculation though. first of all, i did not say banning all speculation on a particular commodity, just to the money chasers. did they still allow producers and buyers of onions to speculate, or did they close it down for everyone?

so, yes changing the dynamic in a system can create havoc. the problem is the system, not the product.

when you ban shortselling on certain stocks, it does not change anything done in the past, only from that point forward. for those involved in these things, it is all legalized gambling. i still have no problem with producers and end users gambling in order to have a firm grasp on what operating costs are going to be going forward. i just object to others getting into the loop and driving the prices up and down, just so they can gamble on the price move. the people who are involved with that do have a right to make a living, but in my opiinon they are just blood sucking leeches draining the lifeblood of our country into their pockets. you pick leeches off and kill them. why, because they are unhealthy. they sap vitality, without contributing anything towards stability, creativness, or general well being. that is how i feel about speculators being in the commodities market, just for the money, not the good of the country. i just don't buy into the thoughts that "what is good for them is good for the country". we have too many examples of this being untrue.

Rule 1: The lower the supply the higher the price.

The Iraq War shut down Oil production in Iraq.

The lower the supply the higher the price.

The USA has only 3% of the worlds oil at best so rushing to drill and use up what we have is king of silly to me.

Funny Halibourton got NO BID contracts to get the oil feilds producing in Iraq but they are pumping so little.

I wornder if Hailbourton moving their headquarters to Saudai Arbia made a difference it how they do their work in Iraq?

Ummmm..........hold on there a tad...........

CBS/AP) U.S. oil services firm Halliburton Co. is shifting its corporate headquarters and chief executive from Houston to Dubai in a move that immediately sparked criticism from U.S. members of Congress.

Possibly financed building the resort called Dubai..........just a thought......

Actually they went there because the taxation there is low and most of their business is there, so any profits made there cannot be taxed by the US. Raising taxes on other companies will only result in them making even more moves offshore.

Oh, so it's taxes is it? Never mind the obligation to one's country and people which were bilked for all they're worth....or rather.......for all that convenience could afford given the sentiment of the day.

Strange that other nations do well with companies that regulate themselves in an ethical manner.

Duck, think about it. Where do all the credit card companies set up shop? Delaware. Why? Because the laws for credit card companies are pretty loose there. Companies go where it is advantageous to go. If you tax the hell out of them in one country, they'll just move elsewhere if they can so they can keep more of their profits.

In the words of Gordon Gekko, "Greed is good." That is what makes the capitalistic world go-round. If you couldn't keep your profits from your work and instead had to give it all to the government to be given to people who did not bust their humps to make it, would you bust your hump to try to make money to begin with? No, you'd say to hell with it and sit back and let some other poor schmuck do all the work just like everybody else. But what happens when EVERYBODY sits back and coasts? That is when the house of cards starts falling down.

Socialism is theft, writ large.

Well...as a Canadian I am reasurred by the fact that our government doesn't do anything in particular.......but they do it really well.

Point taken Rorschach...........argueably there are times when the common good must assume a responsibility to its industrial interests....Adam Smith.

With the constant surface variations of the Earth's oceans, constant evaporation, constant rainfall (some where), surface motions, waves, etc, I would think it would be very difficult to measure the change in surface height (read "volume") of the Earth's oceans to that small a change. Suppose 10,000 gallons of sea water pours into the well head (which is unlikely, but....). The volume of the Earth's oceans is estimated at 264,173,000,000 gallons. 10,000 gallons something like 0.0003745 % change in the volume of the oceans. It likely rains 10 X 10,000 gallons on the oceans every hour. Find the average daily rainfall on the total area of the Earth's oceans, minus the total ocean's evaporation for the same time period, and you can make a guesstimate.

"The high energy density of hydrocarbons is very favorable to their use as transportation fuels. It means fuel carried in most vehicles is only 2-3% of vehicle empty weight. compare this to the Saturn 5 rocket which was 99% fuel."

Nice job on the calculations,loved your saturn V moonshot!

milo

most of the time, the in-situ (interstitial) water comes in. Petroleum is under pressure in that formation, and a lot of times it's the water (not seawater) within that formation that expands into the pore spaces. Also, any gases will expand there also.

Don't worry, they won't pull the oceans' plugs....