On Jul 30, 2008, at 5:25 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Thank you, Horace!
Now, I wonder where Devoir got that 412 gBBL number? Sure doesn't
seem to be in the report. Seems like they must have conflated the
oil and gas numbers using some kind of conversion factor to turn
cubic feet of natural gas into barrels of petroleum.
http://tinyurl.com/5qrpta
Well, 1 boe (barrel of oil equivalent) = 5.8x10^6 Btu, and 1 cf of
gas is 1000 Btu, so 1 boe roughly equates to 5800 cf of gas. The
1,670 Tcf of gas is thus equivalent to 287 billion barrels of oil.
We thus have in billion barrels equivalents:
90 undiscovered oil
44 natural gas liquids
287 natural gas equivalent barrels
===
421 total billion barrels equivalent
Strange, the transposition of the last two digits. It's all a very
rough guess anyway.
None of this strikes me as terribly relevant to todays problems. Even
if it is actually there, an extreme expenditure is required to get to
most of this stuff and actually make it deliverable. Most everyone,
including congress, seems to be ignoring the fact that fast delivery
of oil is only likely to come from ANWR, because the pipelines and
other facilities are practically in place already. The already
available natural gas in Alaska will likely take 10 years or more to
start delivery to the central US by pipeline, mostly due to delays in
Canada. It could be delivered as LNG to the west coast much quicker,
but there is a problem obtaining sufficient unloading capacity
there. I think the better solutions are conservation (now already
having a price effect in the form of reduced gasoline consumption),
wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear and increased drilling in unused
lease areas. The many unused lease areas within the continental US
could be opened up to small drilling companies, but that also ignores
the problems of equipment shortages, product delivery, and
comparatively low expectations of finds.
I think a major problem will be maintaining a commitment to see
through the conversion to renewable energy when the price of gasoline
falls back to lower levels. The best way to maintain the commitment
is to apply a tax to gasoline that supports some minimum price, say
$3/gallon, and directly and only applies the tax revenue to renewable
energy development and to transportation infrastructure.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
