Oil oil everywhere and not a drop to drink... oh wait...

A hundred years ago everyone made the same claims about coal. What happened? As the price of coal rose, the companies could afford to pay more to look for deeper, harder-to-find seams. As supply seemed to shrink and prices rose, suddenly new supplies were found.

We're doing the same thing with oil. There are a lot of areas in the US where the oil companies have found oil pockets, but haven't tapped into them because they won't make a profit unless the oil prices rise just a little bit. Two years ago, when oil prices were high, one of my customers that builds drilling rigs could not build them fast enough. The company went from building around 12 a year, to building 4-6 per month. They had something like 150 units on backorder. That's more than 10 years worth of normal production. Because the oil prices had passed the "magic number" for all of those pockets, it was a race to get the wells in place and sell it before the prices dropped. Last year when the economy tanked, so did all of that. They went from buying $250,000 worth of stuff from me two years ago, to $800 in the past year.

The oil companies are constantly discovering new, huge pockets of oil in places they just haven't looked before. It wasn't long ago that if you had told Texas oil men that there was oil out in the gulf, and they'd soon be drilling mines underwater, they'd have laughed in your face. Now, the technology keeps advancing, letting them search in deeper and deeper waters, and drill wells in deeper and deeper waters. If you combine the facts that with every small increase in oil prices, exploration increases, development of new drilling and extraction methods increases, and methods of getting oil out of places we previously though impossible (oil shale, tar sands) are developed, we're still in good shape for a long time.

Plus, the costs of alternative energy sources are slowly falling, and eventually will meet the price of oil as it slowly rises. When that happens, we'll shift from oil to the alternative, reducing oil demand, and holding prices at that level for at least a little while.

Also remember that all the oil coming from the middle east is controlled by OPEC, and they constantly increase and decrease the amount they pump to manipulate prices the way they think is best for them. If we stopped pumping our own oil and were 100% dependent on foreign oil, prices would be astronomical compared to now.

 

I don't know enough about the industry or the economics to really comment here, except to say one thing I noticed on the news that really bothered me:

Some bitch on her talk show was making numerous comments about it being a "foreign" company responsible and how we can't have "foreign" companies reaking this kind of havoc on America.

And I thought that was just about as stupid as it gets. If anything can transcend national borders this should be it. If a Russian oil well blew, that should cause US and everyone else to rethink their oil drilling practices, not to stop them necessarily, but to make them safer and to perhaps get a little kick in the ass to continue moving towards other types of fuel. The Oceans touch everyone, they flow together, if we fuck with them, that will not turn out good for us (people).

I'm not sure what kind of evil these talking heads are trying to stir up here, but I would bet my ass their are millions of idiot Americans sitting around thinking, "Yeah, foreign evil, foreign evil, gettin oil all on my beaches n' shit." Rather than blaming themselves as they should.

Obviously, this isn't a criticism on anyone involved in what's actually going on, but yet again, just another criticism on the American media, and whatever groups might be paying them to say what they are saying.

But, you've gotta note that BP has been convicted of environmental crimes a few times, and had to pay out well over 100 mill for them. Obviously in that light, this incident really ain't making em look too shiny.

 

I like that. No matter how much some folks might want to go "green" or whatever, until the economics of it reaches a more profitable point, nobody is every really going to give a shit.

A nice little kick in the mouth to all those dumbass neo-hippies.

 

Exactly. The reason nobody uses E85 is that since it contains 2/3 the stored energy (so 2/3 the mileage) of gasoline, the only way it would make economic sense is if the price of E85 was 2/3 the price of gasoline or less. Usually, it's priced within about 5-10% what gasoline is, and that's with massive government subsidies. Unless gas goes way up and corn magically doesn't rise with the increased price of fuel on the farms, they make ethanol from something else a lot cheaper, or somehow the price of corn goes way, way down, E85 won't be a "mainstream" fuel. Economics of the market drive just about everything.

 

If anyone is looking for a fun, clean job, there are quite a few companies paying nice dollars to help clean up this mess. You can even rent out your boat to companies working out of Venice and Fourchon. Thankfully Halliburton and BJ are on standby right now to start pumping a heavy mud into the well to try and choke it up, because it will be easy to clean oil off of the beaches, but nearly impossible to do so if it gets into the marshes.

 

Yeah, I saw on the news today that they were getting ready to start pumping. I hope it works, we can't really afford for it not to.

 

Saw this on Fark:
http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

Hilarious. My favorite: "Proud to announce that BP will be sponsoring the New Orleans Blues Festival this summer w/ special tribute to Muddy Waters."

 

In reality, what were going to see is a Moratorium on American and American Oil Companies drilling in the gulf. The russians will still be there, the chinese will still be there, and all the other countries that have the desire to be there.

So basically, there will still be drilling for oil in the Gulf. There just won't be any American rigs.

 

Or the American rigs will work out deals to drill in areas that aren't under US control. They've stopped the drilling because the US suspended all drilling permits in US controlled areas. If there's a place outside those areas that they can hit oil, I'm sure they'll be there. My honest opinion is that within the next week, maybe two, Obama and the rest of the government will give in to the corporations that have supported them, and re-authorize the drilling. Of course, that's assuming that they're able to get this well plugged.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some sort of hippy who demands that this entire industry shut down because of this one accident. As one other poster said "that's just stupid". I guess my anger really is directed towards the people pointing fingers at each other instead of manning up and taking responsibility for this. If something happens like this again, do you really think they are going to want to pay for it again? I'm not going to put up a front and even pretend I even remotely understand the economics about this, so I won't even touch that aspect.

I guess a better question is, wouldn't their efforts be better spent elsewhere instead of drilling for rigs? This may be going a bit off topic, but if they spend billions of dollars on this industry, I'd rather have them invest in some sort of cleaner energy alternative and integrate that into some sort of mass transportation. I don't know about you guys, but traffic where I live fucking SUCKS. I'd gladly pay several hundred dollars a month if I didn't have to pay insurance, gas, and a truck payment ontop of not having to deal with traffic. This is not even taking into account the environmental benefits. I mean it's not like they wouldn't be making money off of this.

 

Here's the deal. BP is paying for the cleanup, because they're LEGALLY REQUIRED TO. It has nothing to do with whether they want to pay for it or not, they have to.

Know what's crazier? Even though they're spending billions of dollars, it's still basically the cheapest source of energy around. If you take the money that they're going to spend on all of the cleanup, settlements for damages in lawsuits brought by all the people around there, and everything else, and average that over the sheer volume of oil that they produce, it's miniscule. You're talking pennies per barrel, fractions of a cent per gallon. Yes, it's ridiculously expensive to drill wells a mile below the ocean. It's even more ridiculous that they can take that drill bit, and they can make the well bend and curve to hit the pockets of oil they want. The technology involved in drilling for oil is insane, and insanely expensive. But, they use that technology to get a shit-ton of oil out of those wells, so it's worth it.

If a company like BP suddenly stopped drilling for oil altogether, and redirected all of that money into any of the current "alternative energy" technologies, they'd be lucky if it produced a quarter of the energy they are getting from the oil, it would probably be closer to 10%. As it is right now, oil is the cheapest, most efficient source of energy out there. Until sufficient advances are made in the alternative technologies, it's going to stay that way.

 

Mine is this one: "Funny, no one has thanked us for seasons 3-15 of Treme yet. #bpcares"

 

Someone earlier said something to the effect of "when the price of oil goes up people will start going to alternative energy sources as they will be cheaper." I agree with this but one thing that needs to be taken into consideration is whether or now we have enough alternative energy sources to support us. I'm not sure if we do or don't, and surely when the necessity arrives people will find new energy sources. But, it's just something to take into consideration that when there is a shift towards alternative energy it may or may not be there in enough abundance to support us.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPRL2U5E3p4

I didn't know Transocean employed so many Japs. And why are they referred to as Tagruato???*

[*Yes, I know this is from the Cloverfield viral.]

 

Heard from my contact on site, as of yesterday they had finished drilling a third well down to the same site. The completion team is on it now, drilling is finished. The hope is that by pumping oil out through these other three, it will reduce the pressure at the leak enough for them to cap it off. The pressure in the wells is so high it's causing headaches with these other three, but they're taking their time and making sure the completion goes well since that's the stage they were in when the first one blew.

Apparently the company that built the BOP that won't shut off buys some of their stuff from the company I work for. My buddy started getting phone calls from people way up the corporate ladder last week asking for the test and certification info on the stuff we sold them. It doesn't sound like our stuff has anything to do with the problems, but the government wants it anyway.

 

Interesting. In your opinion, which alternative technology do you think has the best chance of supplanting or matching oil at this point? Because if a catastrophe like this is a pittance in the overall scheme of things; with other sources of energy either woefully inefficient, cost ineffective, or not fully developed it would seem to be that if incidents like this continued to happen we'd be right proper fucked.

 

I remember the Exxon Valdez spill from 1989, they're still cleaning that shit up last I heard.
Everyone they put in front of the camera or opens their mouth about this, looks like such an asshole. The president, all the BP guys, Sarah Palin (she's already a known asshole) all the senators and fuckers from the sierra club, they all look so goddamn bad.
I feel that the government should step in already, send in Bruce Willis or something. And those dicks at BP should get bent over the proverbial oil drum. They can start by figuring out how they plan on paying for this without raising prices too much.
I know they're going to, but a little accountability for their little accident would go a long way about now.

How hard would it be to send down a couple of those subs they used to film the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean? Send down, I don't know, like a hose? Hook it up to that other pipe that's spewing oil?
I'm sure someone else already thought of that exact plan, I never would of figured to plug it with rubber, concrete, golf balls or whatever other shit they have laying around.
How much oil and shit can we put into the ocean before we fuck it up so bad that it can't be fixed?

 

BP turned a profit of something like 5 billion dollars in 2009. I think they got it covered.

 

We don't have ways to lower our demand for oil? Everybody I know has big SUVs or trucks, yet they don't have kids, never go in dirt roads or haul trailers and they work in office buildings.

I have an uncle who cranks the AC in the house in the summer, but also cranks infloor heat so that his feet don't freeze.

I bought a memory card for my camera, but the packaging was the size of a book. The extra plastic requires oil to make it, and oil to ship it. Or, the last time I did my grocery, half the items I bought came from southerm US or latin america. Guess how much that was to ship.

And, finally, there are plenty of technology to lower the cost of of electricity in a house or ware house. You can put up electric solar panels or, solar panels to heat the water (and can be used to do infloor heat).

Sure, BP, the regulators and the drillers are partially to blame for this fuck up. However, we require cheap oil and lots of it. BP is only giving us what we need.