happycajun

Oil Is Still the Key to U.S. Economic Future

Nice article Fitzman. The shale plays & the horizontal drilling/completion technology ushered in with the shale plays will keep natgas price decoupled from oil (or at least very loosly tied) at historical ratios. Another factor is LNG - a significant amount of import capacity has been sited, predating the shale plays, and will contribute to supply side.

Your Oil Stocks Aren't Coming Back

Mr. Brown, you show a profound ignorance of the business. You cannot compare a pure play upstream company to an integrated to a drilling company in the first place - at least not on fundamentals. And fundamentals is where you must start. Tech companies of the 90's all set out to own 90% of the same unknown pie - there was no market for what they all sold to investors. Oil & Gas - has been around & will be for some time to come. Some of us who remember the crash of '85 understand. Mah' as sallamah y'all.

Obama 'Shines' Natural Gas

Whippet, don't understand your statement that Nat Gas emits more CO2 than "long chain" HC's. For sake of simplicidty, assuming pure Methane or CH4, and comparing to a common fuel of a "long chain" in the simple monomer alkane family - propane or C3H8 shows that a mass balance assuming pure combustion by oxidation yields less CO2 per unit of energy released.

CH4 + 2O2 --> 2H2O + CO2 and about 1000btu/ cubic foot
C3H8 + 5O2 --> 4H2O + 3CO2 and about 2300btu/ cubic foot

Thus, burning propane produces 2.3 times the energy, but 3.0 times the CO2.... about 30% more CO2 per unit of energy.

I could be wrong, it's hard for an old lawyer to recollect this chem 101 reaction balance stuff.....

Obama 'Shines' Natural Gas

You call that CHANGE, that's just business as usual, drilling nasty holes in the ground and burning hydrocarbons into CO2! Unsightly rigs in beautiful beachfront viewscapes uglifying things - not like the renewables such as windmills off the coast of Hyenas's port (oops, bad example). Besides, drilling for anything is a horrific BUSH policy, and the obamanation must break cleanly from any and all such heretical act. Finally, WHO in the nat gas industry loudly supported our lord high master and savior? Don't hold your breath, nat gas makes too much sense as part of a cohesive energy policy and is not "new" or "change" enough - it just ain't "YES WE CAN" enough.

Why "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Does Not Translate Into Effective National Energy Policy

I must admit, I enjoy watching the world's chicken littles running around shouting about the sky falling and all, without a clue what to do about said problem. I love hearing people who don't know $h!t about that which they advocate (borrowing a form of encryption from the !D!0T above who is fearful to continue with life) ranting about what NOT to do. "Fearing for my country" sounds distraut over realities that I saw back in the '70s. Hell, I'll bet that the clown doesn't even realize how stupid his/her solution sounds, asserting that "the only solution is to actually change the way we live." Well duhhhh, that happens with the passing of every minute of every day. HOW are we going to change? WHAT does that mean? Hell, as his/her name demonstrates, he/she is only scared, not uncommon through history.

Carbonate - don't get too worked up. We'll make money off of the 1d1ots (I would just say idiots, but I get some satisfaction from mimicking ol' fearful) along the way! Now, I take exception to your assertion about some foreign countries having lower environmental standards - some have the same high standards, they just don't enforce them! You and I both know that a dozer and gradeall can do wonders with 5 million barrels of oil and a bunch of sand - hell, that is what you call stabilized drift sand.

Alan - there is those of us who understand, and there is them that don't. This whole thread of commentary addresses the rather sophisticated statistical analysis of the author, noting in particular that he knows nothing of the underlying subject matter as evidenced by the complete absense of discussion of natural gas. In that analysis, the author concludes that drilling won't "solve the probleml." Without defining what "the problem" is, I believe that a majority of the commentators have pointed out that drilling is PART of any solution of an ENERGY problem. But hey, what do I know, I'm only a lowly engineer. Who happens to be an attorney. Who has spent a decade or so in the Middle East. I'm sure I'm not as smart as ol' scared ass "Fearing" is. Alan, you live in Houston Tx, thus you are obviously backward. Carbonate, based on your name, you have G&G knowledge, thus probably live in some backward place like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, or some other such hell hole. We are all inferior - so let's not argue, we need to just go make $$$$$$$. The other folks? They will be the source of that $$$$$$$!

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Why "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Does Not Translate Into Effective National Energy Policy

Alan makes an excellent point - "drilling technology" in the last decade has not really made the old process cheaper - the developments in horizontal drilling and particularly in completion methods have improved the economics of development in certain circumstances, but "drilling" is certainly not cheaper. Lost expertise and increased demand have increased the cost of drilling. A conventional vertical completed well in a traditional oil sand has not become cheaper as a result of technology in the last ten years. I would appreciate hotforoil citing his/her sources for those assertions.

Improved seismic interpretation (which dates back more than 10 years) has permitted discovery and development of relatively small oil reserves. But these are all incremental technologies that improve what has always been done, and the loss of expertise has more than offset the improvement. Horizontal drilling has been more of a paradigm shift in allowing development of the gas shales such as Barnett, Haynesville, Fayetteville, etc.

I personally believe that real technological innovation will come from smaller companies (largely using "retired" expertise from the majors) taking risks, and then the larger producers using M&A to acquire the fruits of their efforts - not unlike the model that larger computer tech leaders have done (Oracle, Microsoft, AMD for example). As we used to say, sometimes it is more economical to acquire reserves with the checkbook than the drillbit, but it is always better to "find" oil.

Why "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Does Not Translate Into Effective National Energy Policy

Nowhere do I see any reference to Nat Gas, or is your "oil" volume actually BOE? I don't think so, because 10MBOD back in 1970 was OIL not BOE. Today, Nat Gas plays in increasing role in domestic production, and yes, it is drilled for. This is rather puzzling that you do not mention gas, when you do go out of your way to discuss workover rigs - which are not considered "drilling" by anyone in the upstream business.

Drilling in the U.S. will never make us "oil independant." Drilling internationally has its ultimate limitations. Alternate energy talking heads arrogantly believe that they somehow invented the concept in the last five years - when in reality geothermal, oil shale, oil sands, wind, nuclear, coal gassification, coal liquifaction (GTL - Fischer Tropsch), and numerous other techniques have been tried for a very long time, with only limited commercial success. The reason - simple - abundant "CHEAP" oil keeps killing the alternatives. As the inevitable growth in demand exceeds the ability to supply, the alternatives become more economically viable.

Ethanol is a political toy. "Bio-diesel" likewise. The ultimate supply will be delivered via electricity in all likelihood. The motive force to provide the electricity will be natural gas, wind, nuclear and coal in the immediate timeframe. Later on - fusion???? who knows - but to get there, we will be "drilling-baby-drillin... or fighting world war III over the oil in the remaining producing basins.