August 04, 2008
The Pain Tool
How arrogant is Nancy Pelosi in making this statement?
"We have a planet to save. We have an economy to grow," Pelosi said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos". "And we can do that if we keep our balance in all of this and not just say but for drilling in unprotected and these protected areas offshore, we would have lower gas prices."
In what alternate reality do Democrats believe that continued reliance on the building of oil rigs in third-world nations is better for the planet than building much cleaner, greener oil rigs off our shores?
We're going to need the oil regardless of where it comes from, and the Democrat-led Congress is conceding the chance to "go green" by switching as much of our consumption as possible to domestic extraction methods we can control. Pelosi isn't saving the planet, she is forfeiting a unique opportunity in this nation's history to help create an environmentally-friendly domestic conventional energy market.
But then, Pelosi isn't trying to save the planet, she's trying to drive up prices. She and other liberal democrats are hoping to force us to concede to their desire for funding more R&D into alternative energy sources that do not yet exist. In effect, she wants us to put a substantial amount of our eggs in a basket that hasn't been built yet, and starve for years to come while it is being constructed, and hope that it works.
And they say Democrats don't support faith-based initiatives.
Which brings us to the second point, our economy. How can we grow an economy when Democrats are doing all they can to put a stranglehold on the extraction of fuels and development of energy sources that makes it run?
It is devastatingly clear that Democrats are purposefully crippling the economy by refusing to take steps to lower conventional energy prices, and indeed, are taking steps to make our energy concerns become a crisis by habitually and continually challenging attempts to extract proven domestic energy sources, and challenging attempts to upgrade or build new power plants. They want us to panic, and agree to fund new, unproven energy sources and technologies under duress.
That isn't democracy. That's extortion.
As for prices, elementary students can readily grasp the concept that raw materials acquired locally are going to be cheaper that paying the same globally-set prices for that material, and then paying the costs of having to ship them halfway around the world... but again, this isn't a concern for this crop of Congressional Democrats. They view your pain view it as a tool to wrest concessions from you.
So much for all the empty rhetoric about caring about the middle class.
CY Commenter "Matt" related this experience on The Economy Killers thread last week:
Ya know something?Ive been going through a program called troops2roughnecks. It is a class put on by the troops transition team.
Well we had our first class today, and I learned an interesting tidbit of information that the politicians seem to ignore.
Like any big business, oil and drilling companies do things with tactical intent. Back in the 70s and 80s the drilling companies drilled thousands and thousands of oil and natural gas wells off the coast of the US, then capped them. They do this because they, and everyone else, knows that business is an investment. So you drill and cap, then when market price rises you extract. That way you did a bulk of the work at a lower price. Then the ban was enacted, so these wells sat and were not exploited.
Now we are looking at the ban being lifted.
According to the instructor who has over thirty years of experience in the oil fields, and has worked in everything from a routabout to CEO claims that the oil (and these are proven wells) can be turned over to market within six months. SIX MONTHS!
According to him, there were over 3000 wells dug in the Gulf, around a thousand dug off the coast of California, and between 500 and a thousand dug off the east coast. He says that something like 90% of them were proven oil.
So is there someone in the oil industry who out there can confirm or deny what this guy told Matt on the record? Are there thousands of proven and capped oil and natural gas wells off our coasts that can be producing a flow of domestic energy in months, that Nancy Pelosi and our Democrat-led Congress are stone-walling?
I don't know about offshore, but when a regular oil well falls below a certain production level, they stop using it. Due to regulations, they then cap it.
There are literally tens of thousands of wells in the continental US that are sitting there unused...
Posted by: cirby at August 4, 2008 01:04 PMFrom my experiences with oil companies here in Wyoming, there are thousands of productive WY oil wells that are capped. Most are 'waiting' for tertiary production techniques.
There are generally multiple problems with uncapping these wells inclusive (and not complete by any means) of: re-issuing of leases, land-owner access grants, various state/federal regulations, infrastructure (pipelines, frac tanks, etc), and the biggest - MAN POWER.
Wyoming is the least populated state in the Union (we like it that way :) ). The work is generally extremely hard and weather conditions are usually unpleasant - too hot or too cold.
Then there's the wonderful fact our junior Senator Barrasso got a drilling ban for the "Wyoming Range" passed through congress this year. That took literally billions of proven resources (plus the unproven postulated reserves yet to be discovered) off the drilling table.
Posted by: Mark at August 4, 2008 02:12 PMI'm sure that if it WASN'T an election year we'd see some positive action towards a solution. Reality is that if the oil prices come down then the 'current occupant' of the White House gets the credit. Pel-loser-i and her thugs have tabled everything in order to avoid giving any concessions that again would allow any positive spin on either oil prices, the economy or life in general for the American Public.
They have forever linked themselves to the ruthless pursuit of power over doing 'whats right' in absurd parody of what both repretative and elected democracy means.
I hope they all rot in hell.
Posted by: Big Country at August 4, 2008 02:16 PMSource: www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id+5570823
Energy Citations Database
Bibliographic Citation
Paper: Seeking Prospects for enhanced gas recovery
dated: 1 Jan 1982
Research Organization: Society of Petroleum Engineers
Abstract (reads in part)
As part of the Institute of Gas Technology's (IGT) ongoing research on unconventional natural gas sources, a methodology to locate gas wells that had watered-out under over-pressured conditions was developed and implemented. Each year several trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas are produced from reservoirs that are basically geopressured aquifers with large gas caps. As the gas is produced, the gas-water interface moves upward in the sandstone body trapping a portion of gas at the producing reservoir pressure. The methodology for identifying such formations consisted of a computer search of a large data base using a series of screening criteria to select or reject wells. The screening criteria consisted of depth cutoff, minimum production volume, minimum pressure gradient, and minimum water production. Wells chosen by the computer search were further screened manually to seek out those wells that exhibited rapid and large increases in water production with an associated quick decline in gas production indicating possible imbibition trapping of gas in the reservoir. The search was performed in an attempt to characterize the watered-out geopressured gas cap resource. Over 475 wells in the Gulf Coast area of Louisiana and Texas were identified as possible candidates representing an estimated potential of up to about 1 Tcf (2.83 x 10/sup 10/ m/sup 3/) of gas production through enhanced recovery operations. A process to determine the suitability of a watered-out geopressured gas cap reservoir for application of enhanced recovery is outlined. This paper addresses the identification of a potential gas source that is considered an unconventional resource.
This source refers to natural gas deposits but shows that in 1982 there were 475+ well that could produce 1 trillion cubic feet of gas and be accessed bery simply and quickly. i have no doubt there are other sources out there that could show similar results for oil.
Posted by: SShiell at August 4, 2008 04:00 PMWhile making sure Dubya doesn't get any credit might be part of the reasoning, Big Country, I think it's a minor point in relation to the fact that the Dems need the ultra-green money to keep going, and those ultra-greens are adamantly opposed to using oil, period. They'd rather have us return to the days when everyone walked (can't use horse for riding or for pulling wagons--cruelty to the horses, ya know).
If Pelosi and Reid upset the ultra-greens, a good portion of the funds to keep them in their fancy offices (and using tons of petroleum in their 757 jets), and then Pelosi, Reid, et al might actually have to get real jobs... and wouldn't that be a shame?
Posted by: C-C-G at August 4, 2008 04:38 PMI concur on that as well CCG... the killer is that the "ultra greens" as you refered to them are they, themselves, (or at least their most vociferous proponents) are some of the BIGGEST abusers of the environment... yeah I'm talkin to you there Owlgore, Sting and all the rest of you limo-liberals...
Posted by: Big Country at August 4, 2008 06:08 PMWell, of course, Big Country... the self-anointed elite aren't subject to the same rules as the proletariat. Just ask Stalin, Lenin, and so on.
Posted by: C-C-G at August 4, 2008 06:32 PM"I don't know about offshore, but when a regular oil well falls below a certain production level, they stop using it. Due to regulations, they then cap it."
The way the instructor explained it, they capped them as soon as they found oil. And yes there are many capped land rigs that had stopped producing above their economic level. But as this level changes with market price, many of them will be producing enough that they are not a drain on the company.
Posted by: Matt at August 4, 2008 08:12 PM
