Alaska oil reserves 90% smaller than predicted. Does this change "Drill baby drill!"?

Great Debates
41

We also used to live in caves and rely on hunting and gathering. That does not mean our society can survive going back to those, either.

We have abandoned rail. We no longer have the infrastructure to support rail and many communities are not supported by rail at all. It would take a huge investment of both capital and time in infrastructure to get to a point where we could depend on rail for even basic transportation needs and would require a huge retooling of our economy and society. Especially, since you would have to similtaniously develop steam/nuclearship infrastructure to replace the loss of air power and and ocean-going sea power that currently runs on oil .

42

It’s not a direct cost, it’s an opportunity cost. Beyond a certain point, R&D and science can’t be sped up by throwing money at it. So every year we don’t invest in oil alternatives adds to the chances we’ll get caught with our pants down when the oil well dries and all that diamond age oil sucking tech we’ve been working on amounts to precisely zero.

Besides, there is just so much tech and solutions we’d need to come up with for a post-petroleum world. It’s not just about power generation and cars. Plastics are also kind of a big thing in our societies. Almost every physical object we own is either made of it, or made using petroleum products at some point. For many of those applications, there is no practical mass producible alternative. What are we going to replace all that with ?

43

If the only reason to drill in Alaska is to provide for all our domestic oil needs, then sure it changes things. If the reason to drill in Alaska is because there’s still a lot of economically recoverable oil there then it doesn’t.

Since we were never going to be able to supply all or most of or even a large fraction of our oil needs from Alaskan oil, even under the rosiest of scenarios, then it doesn’t change anything. And since we were never going to be able to dump enough Alaskan oil on the market, even under the rosiest of scenarios, to decrease gasoline prices significantly, then it doesn’t change anything.

44

How would oil company execs make money off drilling for non-existent oil? Let me know, because I want to use that tactic to make money off building non-existent accessories for iPads.

45

Pretty much agree with what Blake has said (very well) in this thread.

This seems to depend on the rather odd definition of DBD that’s being asserted in this thread. If the assumption was that even the high end estimates of undiscovered reserves were correct and that this would somehow make the US oil energy independent, then that was never going to happen regardless. If DBD basically means, well, drill for the oil that is in US territory because it’s worth billions of dollars, then…nope, doesn’t change a thing. It’s still worth billions, just not as many billions as previously thought. Still…a billion here, a billion there, eventually it adds up.

And while I’m sure that the thought of all those billions going to evil capitalist types is painful, the thing is, that this revenue would be taxed too…which means that state and local governments get fresh tax revenue. And the Federal Government gets it’s cut as well. And what’s not to like about the government getting more taxes, ehe?

I don’t see how it substantially changes anything about the US’s energy policy, to be honest. It’s not like this revelation is going to cause a panic, as people scramble for the last few drops of oil before the darkness closes in on us all. We’re going to use oil as long as it’s economically viable to continue to do so, and sometime during that process as the price rises, we’re going to start experimenting with alternatives in the market place to see what works and what doesn’t. Along the way vast fortunes will be made, to the disgruntlement of many fervent 'dopers…but, by the same token, vast amounts of tax will be generated for the government…to the disgruntlement of many fervent 'dopers. And life will go on.

I don’t want to get into the Peak Oil hijack which seems to be happening, but:

[QUOTE=Kobal2]
I think he means that by the time the Earth’s oil is completely spent we’ll have moved on to new techs depending on new resources. Which is wishful thinking IMO, especially if all the money that should go into figuring that new tech out is funnelled into finding ways to suck out those last scrumptious drops of tar.
[/QUOTE]

Leaving aside the absurdity that anyone would be trying to suck out the last drop of tar to get the last barrel of oil (presumably), why do you think it’s wishful thinking??

-XT

46

???. Why would drilling for economically recoverable oil not be a good reason to drill in Alaska particularly when we built a pipeline to deliver it?

47

But we are investing in oil alternatives, right now. And if R&D and science can’t be sped up beyond a certain point by throwing more money at it, why are you suggesting we should be funnelling the oil extraction research money into oil alternative research when your argument is that this won’t help?

48

Because I think we’re far from that certain point when it comes to preparing for the post-petroleum world.
Yes, we sponsor token oil alternatives, but mostly in a supplementary capacity and we’re not implementing them large scale anyway (which we should, since infrastructure also takes time). And we’re not at all preparing for a shortage of plastics, lubricants, chemicals etc… ; we just operate on the assumption that practical alternatives exist and someone will have come up with them by the time we absolutely need them. IOW, wishful thinking.

Beyond that, investing in oil extraction research just seems short sighted to me. Current tech and oil reserves can carry us long enough. The hard-to-reach oil which necessitates the research probably doesn’t represent that much oil to begin with, given our current consumption rates. When even the last of that is gone, that investment will have become a sunk, irrecoverable cost providing zero benefit, whereas the same money invested in efficient, renewable or at least very long-lasting alternatives would just keep on profiting. On top of possibly saving our collective asses and certainly decreasing the influence of OPEC dictators as a side benefit.

And if we manage to make the switch before all oil is gone, well, that’s a net benefit isn’t it ? Oil’d become even cheaper, and we’d use less of it so it’d last longer for those applications which we can’t replicate through other means.

49

Who says it isn’t?

The only people who would change their mind over this revelation are people who for some reason wanted to stop oil exploration in Alaska, but then they heard Alaskan oil could supply all our domestic needs, so they changed their mind and decided that it was OK to drill in Alaska after all, and then they found out that no, we can’t supply all our needs now, and so now they come back to opposing oil exploration.

Except, I don’t think you’re going to find many of these people.

How many people want to shut down the Alaska oil fields in the first place?

50

Well, while we’re using parables to dismiss those who disagree with us, let me remind you that the Boy Who Cried Wolf was eventually right. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, and all that.

What is ridiculous is that a grown man seems to honestly believe that mankind will perpetually develop new technologies and resource dependencies in time to prevent crisis from resource depletion, in such a way that we can just count on unknown technologies and resources to keep our growing, modern society running forever.

. . . or at least I think that’s what you’re saying. If you could not pose your arguments as rhetorical questions about analogies about the issue at hand and state a little more clearly it would be easier to know what you’re getting at.

51

But we don’t need “unknown technologies”. We have dozens of known technologies that would be a substitute for oil. The only problem is that all these technologies are more expensive than oil, some of them much more expensive.

And this is why we continue to use oil rather than alternative fuels. At some point oil will become more expensive than a range of alternatives, and then we’ll use the alternatives. This doesn’t mean that by magic future-tech armwaving the alternatives will become cheaper, it means that oil will become more expensive.

We already know how to convert coal into liquid fuel. We already know how to power cars by natural gas, or propane, or alcohol, or hydrogen, or any liquid or gaseous fuel you care to name. We already know how to make electric cars. We already know how to make super-efficient vehicles for conventional fuel.

We already know how to do it, it’s just that no one wants to do it because it would cost more and deliver worse performance. You can trade in your SUV for a Prius today. You can trade your sports car for a moped. You can trade your single-occupancy vehicle for a bus pass. You CAN, but you don’t, because you’d rather not. Because despite the fact that you could have bought a more fuel efficient vehicle, the one you have suits your needs better, despite the problem that you pay more for fuel. And that’s because fuel cost is only one factor in your transportation budget. There’s also time, hassle, vehicle cost, maintenance cost, vehicle performance, coolness, and on and on.

Except, in the future world of the future, the relative cost of each of these factors will be different. If gasoline is $8/gallon you start looking enviously at your neighbor’s moped every time you fill up your SUV. But $8/gallon gas isn’t the end of the world, simply because you CAN get yourself a moped. You can get yourself an electric car, nevermind that it has a 40 mile range and doesn’t have the performance of your Porsche, it still gets you from your house to your office every day.

This isn’t magic. This isn’t wishful thinking. The technology we’ll use when gas is $10/gallon is already on the shelf. You could buy it today, and plenty of people already have. The reason most people haven’t is that gas isn’t $10/gallon, it’s $3/gallon. As of today.

52

You. There is no sane reason not to drill in ANWR. The area that would be drilled in represents a very small portion of a park land that is nothing but an arbitrary line drawn on a map.

It’s retarded to run a pipeline all across Alaska and then not use it to fully tap the resources it was meant for.

53

Speaking as an Engineering Manager who in the Real World has actually led a study on this issue - it’s an attractive-sounding option which is fraught with both environmental and infrastructure problems. Going to coal essentially requires either a return to steam, or else some sort of train-mounted IGCC, and the emissions regulations associated with coal trains would require a lot of capital and O&M investment, and might also raise some safety issues.

54

Where?

55

Right. It would be more expensive, polluting, and require a pretty huge new investment. But it’s 100 year old technology. Some people think the only alternative to oil is magic.

56

I’ve noticed that theme a lot in these kinds of threads. It’s like people think that just because the technology isn’t in wide use today that means it’s all magic pie in the sky. They don’t realize that, adjusted for inflation, oil and hydrocarbon based fuels are still really really cheap. At least in the US where we don’t have a metric butt load of taxes tacked on top of the price for fuel. Even in Europe, though, hydrocarbon based fuels are still relatively cheap…cheap enough that it just doesn’t make sense to pick and adopt an alternative at this time. But that doesn’t mean that alternatives aren’t out there already, waiting in the wings for the price of oil to reach a sustained level to make them economically viable.

-XT

57

Wouldn’t the most obvious way to do it be to switch to electric with that electricity coming from coal?

58

I agree with everything you said in this post. However, I draw a different conclusion-- nothing oil does is unique, but for many things it does nothing comes even close to competing on cost. It’s not that we’re dependent on oil per se, it’s that we’re dependent on oil’s ability to do things for extremely little cost. Sure there’s other resources and technologies that can do things like ship stuff halfway across the world, but not for pennies a pound and that’s what we’ve become dependent on.

59

But oil will never be $1000 a barrel. We can make oil out of coal using Fischer-Tropsch for just 50% more than the current price of using liquid crude.

Really? Can we have a cite for this claim?

Maybe, but based on past experience, probably not. Declines in whale oil and horse feed didn’t make anybody anymore uncomfortable.

:confused:

WTF? They aren’t replacements for oil, they are just oil? That doesn’t make any sense at all. How can oil not replace oil?

Yes, it is. The technology was perfected many decades ago.

Name one transportation need that can not be replaced with either coal oil or electricity? Just one.

I think you seriously underestimate how much more expensive these altervatives are. Shale oil for example is much cheaper to produce than the current costs of OPEC liquid crude. If the world can survive and even prosper with oil prices of the 2008 then why would it be unable to prosper at the *cheaper *oil prices provided by oil shale?

No, it does not. All the technology I refer to exists. Most of it was perfected before the Korean war.

60

And what was the moral of that story? What should people like make sure of before shouting “wolf”? What is the likely consequence of you shouting “Wolf” constantly for over 100 years?

I agree entirely with you, this is major problem, insofar as when a real catastrophe does loom people will ignore it because you have told them the catastrophe was just around the corner since their grandfather was a boy.

At the moment no catastrophe looms, It can’t possibly loom for at least a couple of hundred years because we already have perfected technology that makes it impossible. yet the shrill cries of “Wolf” can still be heard on every street corner.

Which new technologies would these be pray tell?

Fischer-Tropsch coal-oil conversion?
Electric trains?
Nuclear electricity generation?
Biomass conversion?

Is a grown woman really ignorant of the existence of these technologies?