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When you hear about news like that, remember that 1) a billion barrels is about 50 days of US consumption and the Us is less than half of global consumption 2)
by throwaway5752 10y ago
When you hear about news like that, remember that 1) a billion barrels is about 50 days of US consumption and the Us is less than half of global consumption 2) that the announcements are usually about "oil in place" which an estimate of the total size of the deposit, of which 10-40% is usually recoverable.
If you are talking about Alpine High, it's less than 1/2 a year of US consumption of oil and less than 3 years of US consumption of natural gas at current rates (and very likely less depending on the recovery ratio).
- maxerickson 10y agohttp://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2016/11/17/usgs-largest-oil-deposit-ever-found-us-discovered-texas/94013292/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2016/11/17/us...
- paulddraper 10y agoWolfcamp shale has 20 billion barrels of oil. According to your numbers, 3 years of US consumption (not counting recoverability). So...it's a pretty big deal.
- iampherocity 10y agoMaybe. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/science/fracking-earthquakes-alberta-canada.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/science/fracking-earthquak...
- astrodust 10y agoThree years of consumption is a drop in the bucket, I'm sorry. If you think that's a big deal you need to get your head checked. Three years is a blink in time. If it was fifty years or more you would at least have a case.
- maxerickson 10y agoIf it is cheaper to extract than the Arctic oil, it's enough to shift investment for a period of years. This action only lasts for 5 years.
- astrodust 10y agoPretty much any oil you can think of is cheaper to extract than arctic shale oil. That's an extremely dangerous environment to be operating in, and whatever you extract must be piped out, which incurs significant infrastructure costs as well. This doesn't even touch on what an environmental time bomb this is.
- maxerickson 10y agoAre we talking about the same thing? Wolfcamp shale is in west Texas (see my link in this thread). It seems more likely to me over the next few years that west Texas sees a boom than Arctic drilling sees intense interest.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoThree years is 75% of the next administration. Context is king.
- astrodust 10y agoWrong. This is a three year supply presuming you could extract 100% of the energy needs of the US from this singular patch, which is patently impossible. There is no feasible way to extract it that quickly. Instead, optimistically, you're looking at this supplying 0.5% of the US energy needs over a span of 20-30 years at best. To put that in perspective: You could shave 0.5% off of the US energy needs by pushing for more electric vehicles. Then you wouldn't even need this oil.
- paulddraper 10y ago"You could shave 0.5% of the US energy needs over a span of 20-30 years" Did you miss a decimal point? You think that only 3% of the oil is extractable over the next 20 years?
- paulddraper 10y agoNo one said it would take us to the next galaxy. I just said it was a "big" deal. And it is. $1 trillion dollars. At least as newsworthy as most HN headlines.
- throwaway5752 10y agoAgain, that is technically recoverable , not probable or proved (1P/2P estimates) which takes into acccount if it can be done profitably. It is a big deal, but even if all was economically recoverable at current prices (almost certainly not the case) it still would be only 7 months of global consumption.
- paulddraper 10y agoOnly 7 months for the entire world...yeah, let's not get too excited.