Posted: 6/11/2008 8:22:02 AM EDT
| Why are we so dependent on oil from the mid-east when we have domestic oil? We have oil from the Gulf, Texas and Alaska. |
|
A) We can pump out of the ground less than 1/2 of what we consume. B) For a long time (say 1970-2000) we thought it was a safe way to preserve our oil futures as long as those other countires would sell us their oil for less than we would sell our oil to our refiners. C) Even if we drilled every promising location as fast as possible and for every strike we pumped as much as possible, 1) we could satisfy only 3/4 of our needs, 2) we would be out of oil in 20 years. |
|
IIRC - the US doesn't use much Arab oil. Most of ours comes from Canada, Venezuela and domestic production IIRC. The thing though is that oil is a commodity traded on the world market, and OPEC nations control most oil - so if the price goes up in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Nigeria or Venezuela, etc. then it has a ripple effect on the rest of the world. |
Yeah, I do that all the time. Actually, there is a thing called lifting costs. That is the cost of getting the oil out of the ground. Some places it is cheaper to get the oil out, based on labor rates, royalties, the amount of oil to be had per well, ect. The difference between the cost of a barrel of oil and the lifting costs in $ per barrel is called profit. They like to pump the profitable ones first. |
The part in red? Not so true... google "Gull Island". Only a tiny fraction of Alaska and off-shore has been explored, much less put into production. Add in oil sands, oil shale, and liquifoed coal and natural gas, and we most certainly could be energy independant. |
This is the correct answer. We in the U.S, do not directly buy that much crude from the Middle East; last I heard it was around 18, maybe 20 percent. We produce around 30% of the oil we use and import the rest mostly from Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. But oil is a globally traded commodity and the giant Middle Eastern oil fields, especially production from the giant Saudi Arabian oil fields determine world prices. Historically, this has been because the Saudis possess what is called "over capacity". That means they historically could determine how much oil was available to world markets by regulating their own production, but there is a second reason; lifting costs. The giant Saudi oil fields are still operating under what is called "primary production". This means these fields are still pumping out oil under their own natural oil field pressure due to the pressure from the underlying water table. You will see no pump jacks in Saudi Arabia; the rocking horse-like pumps which you see all over the southwestern U.S. Natural oil field pressure is the cheapest way to lift oil. Once the natural field pressure is gone you have to start USING energy to get energy (the oil in the ground). The Saudis are vitally important to both world oil price stability AND to total oil availability. In a way, inexpensive Saudi oil production SUBSIDIZES more expensive production from less economic oil fields. If we lose Saudi production, or if it declines (which it inevitably WILL) then we are really and truly F**KED. |
This is the correct answer. Snip /quote] I built a MCC acouple of years ago for a job going to Kuwait, which is almost like Saudi. This was running a bunch of turbines pumping steam into one of the oilfields. The engineer on the project told me the pressure had been dropping on this field, so this project that I was working on, was experimental to see if they could keep the pressure up and keep the oil flowing. |
Bingo, Ben nailed it. |