re: #167 freetoken

This gets to one of my soapboxes - Americans and “oil”.

The Macondo project was important because it was a major find that would have slowed down the net loss of petroleum production in the GoM. It turns out that the deep-water GoM plays deplete quite quickly and new wells (and thus platforms) have to turn around more quickly than one might have thought even 10 years ago.

Thus not only was/is it an environmental disaster, the blowout also effectively reduced US GoM production.

While the sustained high prices for petroleum has allowed for the high cost production in North Dakota to make up for the loss of GoM so far, the production from the Bakken is expected to peak in a couple of years as depletion overtakes new exploration.

Thus we will be right back to where we were in 2006, after the 2005 hurricanes sidelined so much US production, by the end of this decade.

But don’t tell that to the wingnuts, who believe that it’s only those damn libruls who are keeping America from having all the “oil” it deserves.

Well, this is the problem with high porosity, low permeability plays. They produce like motherfuckers in the short term, but the long term production is, at best, iffy.

Although the SW Texas play in the Eagle Ford shale is showing some legs. Lots of gas, lots of condensate at 68 API (!!!) and a fair amount of light crude. Much better long term potential than the Williston in NoDak.

But again, protecting shallow fresh water is a problem. A petroleum well is only as secure as its weakest cement job. And as we saw in the Macando well, even big players like BP can seriously fuck the dog.

Austin_Blue, licensed Professional Geoscientist, former international wellhead geologist. Now I just keep shit from blowing up.

And happy new year to you all from the central time zone! Many happy returns of the day! Thanks to all of you for making this the best board ever!

And, obviously, thanks to Charles for keeping the monkey house sane.