![Familiar sight in Texas [image credit: StateImpact Texas]](https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/shaleoil1.jpg)
Familiar sight in Texas [image credit: StateImpact Texas]
Close to a trillion dollars worth of oil at today’s prices – this should be music to the ears of the incoming Trump administration. Anti-fossil fuel groups not so much.
H/T GWPF
The US Geological Survey said Tuesday that it found what could be the largest deposit of untapped oil ever discovered in America, reports Business Insider.
An estimated average of 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are available for the taking in the Wolfcamp shale, which is in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin. Based on a West Texas Intermediate crude oil price of $45 per barrel, those deposits are worth about $900 billion.
US oil exploration companies have flocked to the super-rich Permian Basin in recent years and used shale-drilling technology to create an oil boom that simultaneously helped trigger a price crash two years ago. The count of active oil rigs fell with prices, but has risen over the past few months, mostly in the Permian.
Bloomberg noted that the Wolfcamp, where this deposit was found, has been one of the primary targets of shale drillers. “The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program, said in a statement.
More than 3,000 horizontal oil wells have already been drilled and completed in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp section, according to the USGS. To get the oil, producers fracture, or “frack,” the earth below with a high-pressure liquid mixture to untap oil and gas from shale rock.
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Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it!.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Peak oil” update …
So we’ve got them over a barrel?
Reblogged this on Wolsten and commented:
The combination of Trump withdrawing harmful environmental policies coupled with oil finds like this will provide a major boost to US energy independence. Difficult to see how much longer the UK and at least some other european companies can ignore this.
‘…even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more’
So much for ‘peak oil’.
Several years ago while drilling in the Naval Reserve at the south end of California’s Great Valley, A vast extension of that field was discovered below the strata that fuelled the oil bonanza of the early 1900s. Early drilling was shallow, hundreds to a few thousand feet of bore. Now 10s of thousand feet are possable.
Gas is EVERYWHERE, just some areas are easier,cheaper, to tap then others. However, Nuclear power plants are the only long term solution for base Electric Power. Burning oil and gas for that use is such a waste of a wonderful resource…pg
The quoted article has a misstatement. The USGS did not do the oil discovery, they evaluated it.
Low energy costs may help manufacturing to make a comeback.
With abundant, low cost, energy all other things are possible even a clean environment. There can be no shortages if plentiful, inexpensive, energy can be applied.
First, the Red, Black and Green terrorists must be subdued. They’er drive towards slavery and poverty for all of us can not be tolerated ..pg
We need lightweight, compact, safe nuclear to power the Mars communities.
The Wolfcamp Shale geologic formation in the Midland area also contains an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, the agency said in a release.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/16/massive-field-recoverable-oil-natural-gas-uncovered-in-texas.html
pochas94 says: “We need lightweight, compact, safe nuclear to power the Mars communities.”
And when they’re up and running, we can call the Mars bases “New Van Diemen’s Land” and re-introduce transportation!
Sounds good, that…
‘In just getting to Mars, an explorer would be exposed to more than 15 times an annual radiation limit for a worker in a nuclear power plant.’
http://www.space.com/24731-mars-radiation-curiosity-rover.html
…which has nothing to do with oil finds in Texas 😎
It reminds me of the story. When the first oil was discovered in Texas, a farm boy who had been working up in Pennsylvania for Standard Oil went down to advise the city.
The experts at Rockefeller’s Standard were so sure there was no oil in Texas, they said that they would “drink every barrel of oil found west of the Mississippi.”
20 billion barrels just in time for the Trump Administration to streamline approval. Hard not to speculate on the expressions on Rockefeller faces, once again.
Texaco’s Joseph S. Cullinan
“Who’s the man responsible for putting the “Tex” in Texas on countless gas station signs across America and around the world? Joseph S. Cullinan.
Not one of the best known nor most colorful oil wildcatting legends, nor anywhere near the richest, Cullinan nonetheless had an impact on the oil business as big as anyone. Born near Sharon, Pa. on New Year’s Eve in 1860, he started working in the Pennsylvania oil fields at age 14. He became an expert in virtually every aspect of the oil game by the time he was invited to Texas in 1897 by the city of Corsicana to oversee its gushing field that was opened by accident four years earlier by prospectors drilling for water. It was the first significant oil and natural gas patch in the Lone Star State.”