Article

2007-03-06 Home Front Economy

Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells

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Posted by Steve White 2007-03-06 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11125 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I was unaware of the use of gas or steam, but "water flooding" of formations is a technique that has been going on for many years here in the States.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-03-06 00:51|| 2007-03-06 00:51|| Front Page Top

#2 Why don't we pump our greenhouse gases into the oil wells instead? Duh!

Posted by gorb 2007-03-06 01:42|| 2007-03-06 01:42|| Front Page Top

#3 gorb, gimme an oil well and I could surely contribute an ample supply of greenhouse gasses. ;-)

Oh, you said pump, not dump... no matter, offer still stands. ;-)

Posted by twobyfour 2007-03-06 02:54|| 2007-03-06 02:54|| Front Page Top

#4 Eww. Scotchbrite pad, please . . . .

Posted by gorb 2007-03-06 03:21|| 2007-03-06 03:21|| Front Page Top

#5 This is a dupe of a post from yesterday, which, strangely enough, got no comments at all. Steve's got a magic touch, either that, or Rantburgers don't like clicking on links. A link to this article is here.
The pessimists have not been demonstrated wrong. If the Peak Oil theory is true, it can be known only in retrospect. The theory essentially states at some point world oil production will stop rising & then decline. If the theory is true, what will follow are sporadic shortages, oil price spikes and economic decline unless mitigating measures are taken (such as conservation). Economists just hate to predict things like that. The debate is not about the straw man of "running out of oil" but about how much oil will cost, how hard it will be to extract, and the political & military price that will have to be paid to maintain the world oil economy.
"Oil reserves" are imaginary. The USGS has one estimate, Cambridge Energy has another. A nice thing about reserves is their infinite flexibility. Actual production is something that can be measured, and is usually left out in rah-rah articles like the one cited.
Don't click on my last link. Be happy. It's all good.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-03-06 04:40|| 2007-03-06 04:40|| Front Page Top

#6 The current link to the old article includes [gasp!] a correction:

Correction: March 6, 2007

A front-page article yesterday about technology advances that made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields misstated Saudi Arabias total reserves, which are about a quarter of the worlds proven total. It is 260 billion barrels, not million.

Billion, schmillion - It's all global warming anyway!

Posted by Bobby 2007-03-06 05:42|| 2007-03-06 05:42|| Front Page Top

#7 Yet another innovation puts extra fuel in a trucker's tank. Wonders will never cease.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-03-06 06:03|| 2007-03-06 06:03|| Front Page Top

#8 All kinds of world oil news today: Hugo Chavez wants to prove that Venezuela not Saudi Arabia holds the largest oil reserves in the world.

Experts have long speculated that heavy oil and bitumen deposits in Venezuela's Orinoco River basin may contain more than 235 billion barrels of commercially extractable petroleum. If that amount can be certified by outside experts and added to conventional reserves, Venezuela would reach 316 billion barrels, moving past No. 1 Saudi Arabia, which holds 262 billion barrels, according to the Oil and Gas Journal.

Venezuela's production falls so far short of Saudi Arabia's that its reserves don't matter as much. Being named No. 1 "might make Venezuelans feel better, but I don't see how it has any impact," said Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University's Baker Institute. "What you have in the ground is only important if you can take it out of the ground and sell it."

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-03-06 07:00|| 2007-03-06 07:00|| Front Page Top

#9 It's all about economics. I've stated to people many times that we will never run out of oil, though at some point it will become too expensive to use. In the meantime, let the market do its wonders (as shown in the article): new sources, new technologies, etc.

Posted by Spot">Spot 2007-03-06 08:25|| 2007-03-06 08:25|| Front Page Top

#10 The article notes, and gorb notes, that CO2 is used to inject into some of these oil fields.

A number of coal based electrical generating plants are experimenting with the CO2 injection, not necessarily to recover oil, but mostly to sequester the CO2. Its pretty expensive if new wells have to be drilled but seems technically doable. Also the migration of the CO2 underground has to be monitored, which is also a challenge.

Posted by mhw 2007-03-06 08:44|| http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/]">[http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/] 2007-03-06 08:44|| Front Page Top

#11 Then there's the possibility of a great earth fart.

Posted by wxjames 2007-03-06 11:26|| 2007-03-06 11:26|| Front Page Top

#12 . . . we will never run out of oil, though at some point it will become too expensive to use.

Right you are--and, around the point where the cost of oil exceeds the cost of the alternatives, things will get cut over to run on alternate fuels. The "peak oil" crowd seems to believe there are no substitutes, and no substitutes can ever possibly be invented. Awfully pessimistic view of human ingenuity, that.

(Unless, of course, your purpose in espousing "peak oil" theories is to get everyone to abandon this icky civilization of SUVs and air conditioners and other technological stuff, hatred for which burns in the depths of your Luddite soul with the white-hot fire of a thousand burning sparkplugs. Then, despair over technology is merely a means to your desired end: a virtuous preindustrial civilization where you get to be one of the feudal overlords.)

Posted by Mike 2007-03-06 17:15|| 2007-03-06 17:15|| Front Page Top

#13 I used to work on environmental issues from the "injection" side of the fence. Let me tell ya, there's oil EVERYWHERE. There are even patches of small mom & pop operations up in Kentucky, over in Tennessee, and actually one of the Southeast's largest fields using the injection of liquids is in the panhandle of Florida. Granted the small fries up in KY are only pumping a few barrels/day per well, but get that price back up and there may be new speculation.

I cut out an article on world "proven reserves" from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2004 (based on 2003 data). It broke down all the oil producing nations by their size reserves (and gave more specific import, demand, etc. data on the U.S.). What struck me was the different colored bar for Canada. You add in tar sands oil, and WHAMMO, Canada suddenly becomes the world's SECOND largest reserve, right behind Saudi! Like others more eloquently said, it's all in how much we wanna pay for it (and who has the military to protect it).

Posted by BA 2007-03-06 21:27|| 2007-03-06 21:27|| Front Page Top

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