#17 "For that matter, it takes a lot of crackin to get any gas from Venezuelan crude. It looks like tar, has more asphaltenes"
I don't know much about oil refining and extraction but until we get new technology to break our oil dependence, it looks we need to get the most out of what we have. This sounds dumb, but Jim's comments triggered some thoughts in a slightly different tangent. The ancient name of the Dead Sea is Lake Asphaltis; National Geo printed an old diary of early British explorers seeking the source of local legends. It was so caustic, it ate through their wooden boats and burned their skin. Great clumps of sticky asphalt could only be removed with "menstrual blood", although it never said how such a discovery was made. There could be vast deposits under Israel and Jordan. Then on CSI, they removed a couple of bodies encased in tar by injecting liquid nitrogen and removing an entire block of the tar. The Canadian oil sands are basically washed with hot water and the sand returned in a clean mining operation. Then there are the vast methane beds under the ocean, waiting to be tapped. A kid on FOX won the Invention Convention by inventing a lawnmower propelled with compressed air, using graphite and no gasoline. New processing techniques could prove to be economical and open new sources of energy. Everyone has previously been discouraged from anything besides the status quo by big oil and big auto makers but it seems like the world is finally waking up to the threats of blackmail we are open to by refusing to change.
So in short, you don't know much about the oil industry but you feel certain that "big oil and big auto makers" are behind supressing all the magic technologies that keep us oil dependent?
This is the same Powerful Big Oil that can't change the fact that you can only drill offshore of _three_ states of the union?
Put another way: I'm in the oil industry. I sell a specialized tool for working with dual-shouldered rotary connections.
Of the last thirteen delivered-or-under-construction tools I've made in about the past year and a half, three have been for the US, and ten for overseas. And one of the US tools is used mainly in support of a company using it to make river crossing pipelines for fiber optic data lines.
We're five years into this crisis and thus far those who don't want more drilling here have been able to block the smallest expansion of drilling in the north slope of Alaska, which is one of the most desolate regions on earth.
That decision wasn't made by "Big Oil." That decision was made by the Electorate. The People. In short, US. |
May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Oil prices would soar to $100 a barrel if Venezuela decided to cut sales to the U.S. amid worsening relations between the two countries, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said. Venezuela, South America's biggest oil producer, can sell crude that now goes to the U.S. to China, Europe and other nations, Chavez said in an interview with the U.K.'s Channel 4 television. The U.S. yesterday banned all arms sales to the South American country, saying it wasn't cooperating enough in the fight against terrorism. ``If we decided now to stop selling oil to the U.S., among other things, the price of oil would shoot up to $100 a barrel,'' said Chavez, who called the U.S. decision on weapons sales ``absolutely ridiculous.''