Mmarrkk

Peak Oil: China vs. USA

Fitz: excellent article once again. Yes, I too am completely amazed at Mulva's deafening quiet on natural gas. Its amazing.

I see you are somewhat surpised at Obama's actions...thinking he "a better man". Well, some of us have been saying for a long time that "The Change" is nothing more than another politician and politicians are all the same. They don't take the high road. They take the road that either gets them the most votes or the most campaign contributions. Obama is just a politician, albeit a very inexperienced, liberal politician. From a big coal state. People raked Bush over the "coals" for being an oil man from an oil state. Well, Obama is a coal man from a coal state. enough said.

Keep it up buddy. One day, someone in power will grasp this concept of NG usage. Hopefully, it will be before our country goes down in flames!!!

Opportunities in the Oil Sector

First, there is no "simple" and "inexpensive" way to recover the 2 trillion barrels you speak of. The Bakken is not simple and its not cheap. And the oil volume you speak of is known as Oil-in-Place. That means total volume stuck in the rocks. In conventional reservoirs, only 20-50% of the oil ever gets produced. In shales like the Bakken, it is far lower than that.

And I think a lot of folks would argue that the 2 trillion number is too high!

Finally, EOG, one of the leading Bakken players, has dropped a lot of rigs up there and is shutting in wells as the costs are higher than the returns.


On Mar 11 01:18 PM User 224899 wrote:

> Why don't we simply and inexpensively recover the 2,000,000,000,000
> barrels of oil in the Bakken Formation (a.k.a. Williston) in Montana
> and North Dakota, as ordered by the president 3 years ago?
>
> I hope nobody is so mad about "Red State" dissent that the whole
> nation is being made to suffer, but that's sure what it looks like.

Not Calling Crude Oil Prices a Bubble For Now

I love the idea of using nat gas for autos. HOWEVER, our supply of nat gas is not as unlimited as you seem to indicate. We IMPORT a lot of nat gas from Canada and used to from LNG. However, since the price of nat gas in the Far East is much more than here, almost all of the LNG has been diverted. That supply is growing too, but so is demand for Nat gas. With all of the drilling that's going on, we are still well behind last year in terms of nat gas storage. And, all of the new shale plays have wells that come on like gang busters but by the end of the first year, are producing only 30% of what they originally produced. So, its a treadmill that eventually will run out.

Also, as we use more nat gas for transport, our electric bills will start to rise as it is a huge source of incremental power fuel. In fact, this winter the "big news flash" will be how "outrageous" our utility bills are. We are putting gas in storage this summer at $12-13/mmBTU. Last year we were putting it in at $7-8. Guess what's going to happen to home heating bills this winter???? When grandma's gas bill doubles, the Dem's will be screaming again!

Again, I love the idea of nat gas; I'm a big investor in many companies focusing on nat gas. But it will not be a single solution to our problem.