Swiming in oil.

I read 1/5 of that is the estimate of what might be there-100 Billion barrels, and it is in a very difficult to get at area geologically.

The U.S. Poised to hit New Oil Gusher

"Figure on at least five years before the oil starts flowing in large volumes. A lot of work will need to be done first. In addition to installing drilling gear, firms must build supporting infrastructure, including roads, pipelines as well as new water, sewage and sanitation systems to meet the needs of workers and other area residents."

I guess its better than ruining the California coastline or pristine Alaska wilderness, but we need to be looking into developing alternate energy way more than we are at this point.

I don't know anything about this.. However is this field liquid oil or some kind of "tar sand" or "oil shale"? There are a number of deposits of "oil" where it's more like tar and it takes a lot of work/energy/time/resources/technology to turn that tar into a usable product. There are vast quantities of "oil" in those deposits but the extra work required represents overhead which diminishes the energy gain. That is you have to spend more energy to turn tar into oil than it takes when it's a liquid oil deposit.

There are a number of considerations around whether to continue using oil.

Availability / peak oil

Geopolitical fernagling and shenanigans that result in blowback like illegal wars in the middle east

Pollution and ecological harm

Health harm because burning oil produces poisons that have been implicated in dozens of diseases

Financial harm to the U.S. due to massive imports of foreign oil

etc..

There are a lot of reasons to stop using oil. Really. Lots.

Invest in a Lithium E-bike, Lithium E-motorcycle, Lead E-Scoot, or a 45 MPH lead E-car conversion...

Its good that someone found a big pool of oil inside the US, that being said...

The price of fuel is determined by the commodities futures market auctions, supply and demand at its most brutal.

There hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the US in the last 30 years, and there aren't any slated for the near future.

ALL existing US oil refineries are working 24/7, so any new oil would have nowhere to go. 2008 is the first year that the US began importing refined fuel (13%) for lack of refining capacity. ND might un-hook us further from the middle east (Canada and Mexico are actually the US's biggest oil suppliers) but ND won't affect the pump price.

If the next president was forced to admit that more refining capacity was needed to meet national interests, the president will wave his/her magic wand...and it will then take a few years to build a new "state of the art" refinery that meets the new EPA/OSHA standards (good luck getting a new refinery approved on the habitat of some rare endangered mosquito)

The new oil will be refined into gasoline and diesel in Canada, and then sold on the world market at whatever people are willing to pay (China, India?).

Buy a 4-cylinder turbo diesel, and add a WVO kit so it can run diesel, bio-diesel, or vegetable oil (free french fry oil).

North Dakota oil finds notwithstanding, the steaming-ripe manure is about to hit the spinning air-distribution device.

PS, also look for big trouble with water supplies and electricity generation, you read it here first!

With the price of oil going through the roof, the price of everything else has gone crazy too. That includes all the alternative energy technologies. We need a stable reliable energy source so we can build these alternatives.

I think we need a different thing. I think we need concerted Research & Development of alternate technologies .. and that history has proved that the amount of R&D dollars put into alternates is directly correlated with the price of oil. High oil prices directly make the alternates more attractive because if the oil price goes high enough the alternates are cheaper than oil.

I think the only way the alternates will see significant R&D is if the oil price remains high.

I think that burning fossil oil carries with so many bad side effects that we need to stop that practice.

I think that burning fossil oil carries with so many bad side effects that we need to stop that practice.

I agree completely. Global Warming is only one of the nasty byproducts of oil consumption.

We need to move to a sustainable model. An energy infrastructure that is based on extractive industries will always be unsustainable.

Given how fast we are using oil, it's not even very significant. It doesn't really matter how much oil we find, unless it magically replenishes itself it'll be gone in so little time.

My history is not great, but what happened to all the trees in Europe? When the vast USA began chopping down and sending lumber off, the world had a big source of lumber. But, it could very easily be gone, and we could have lumbered out every forest in the US if we didn't institute a sustainable program.

My history is not great, but what happened to all the trees in Europe? When the vast USA began chopping down and sending lumber off, the world had a big source of lumber. But, it could very easily be gone, and we could have lumbered out every forest in the US if we didn't institute a sustainable program.

Well, there are lots of trees in Europe. But that doesn't mean there aren't areas in Europe which were overforested.

Humans have this tendency to ..ah.. rape an area until its resource is used up, and then move on to another place and repeat the process. Last year there were news articles about how the world is going to run out of fish in the ocean by 2050, by the same process. Namely overfishing causes (in time) a collapse of a given fishery (such as the Cod fishery off New England or the other fishery off Monterey) and when the fishery collapses people just move on to the next one. The scientists predict this will play out on a global scale with the collapse of fishery after fishery until there are no fisheries left.

I tried to think of a better word than 'rape' because I know ChasS will likely chastise me for using naughty words. But I really can't think of a better word for this.

This isn't a new phenomenon. I once read about a civilization in the Agean.. perhaps Crete. They were the rulers of the Bronze Age being the only ones who knew how to make Bronze. Or something like that. Their civilization lasted for about 100 yrs. Modern archaeologists were studying the area around their main palaces and found this slag pile next to the main armory. They calculated the size of the slag pile and then calculated the number of trees required to be burnt to smelt the amount of metal represented by that slag pile. They then calculated how many years of forest it took to produce that many trees. They came up with 90 years of forest. Recall that this specific civilization lasted 100 yrs. Therefore the conclusion was they burned up their forest to make a strong army, and when their forest ran out their army had no weapons and it took awhile afterward for their military strength to give out.

I agree completely. Global Warming is only one of the nasty byproducts of oil consumption.

We need to move to a sustainable model. An energy infrastructure that is based on extractive industries will always be unsustainable.

Basically the root problem for mankind is population. Credible estimates have us at over twice the max sustainable population of the planet with our best technologies. Over 6 billion people consume (all things lumped together) an equivalent to 50% of the solar energy hittng the planet (our only real source of any kind of energy). Consider that the averge plant is about 2% efficient at converting that solar energy to resources for our use. It becomes clear that any step towards sustainability has to include drastic population reduction and caps to keep it down. I don't know how that can be accomplished. Do any of us?

Only about 300 years ago there were ~ 1 billion people on the planet. For 160,000 years there were 1 billion or less people on the planet! (5,500 years for any creationists in the mix). It took only 130 years to double that to 2 billion. The latest billion added took less than 30 years. The next billion added is projected to happen even faster. Clearly any true "sustainability" is a zero sum game under current conditions. Without the earths stored solar energy that we burn through like there is no more tomorrow, world wide famine is a given.

Don't get me started on water. How many of us know that the bread basket of the US is irrigated with one of the largest aquifers in the world? We drain it down about 25ft per year at current extraction rates. It replenishes naturally at 1 foot or less per year. Projections are that it will be too brackish or virtually dry in as little as 50 to 100 years. What happens to the world food supply without this irrigation water?

The freefall we find ourselves in can't be stopped with renewables or sustainable practices. It can be slowed some which gives us a little more time to face and address the real problem, overpopulation. If we as a species don't address this and correct it, nature eventually will. It won't be pretty as that begins to happen.

Aerowhatt

Aerowhatt, I think your math is way off. Area of the state of NM where I live: 315,194 sq. km. Each square kilometer contains a million square meters.

Square meters in NM: 315,194,000,000 or over 315 billion sq. meters.

With existing solar panel technology which is about 10-15% efficient, we can generate over 100 watts per square meter for about 5 hours a day (which is conservative for this location). So, 20.83 watts average in power. That's 6.56 trillion watts average, and in 2004 the average power consumption of the human race was 15 trillion watts according to wiki (who knows how accurate that is, maybe close).

Meaning, with existing solar cell technology (nothing special), the land area of NM can generate 43.7% of the world's energy used from solar at 2004 energy usage rates. The world's land area is 148,940,000 km². The area of NM is .21% of the world's land area.

Where in NM are you? I live in NM also.

The energy use figures don't include food and other none renewable (at least at the rate we are using them) truly unquantafiable resources such as aquifers. Which is one reason food was so prominent in my discussion. If one looks at gas and electic meters at peoples homes and businesses. Deliveries to retail gasoline stations and the like. It is a fraction of what each of us really uses.

Wikipedia is one of the the worst sources for anything as well. An open source encyclopedia, come on. Look up something controversial and see what kind of political bent you end up with.

I agree with the urge to believe that population isn't an issue that the planet can support it sustainably. We all want to think and argue that because there is no solution period. How do you get everyone to limit breeding. It's just not going to happen until people are starving to death. Even then, will they? In countries where people are starving to death currently breeding is not curtailed significantly by the dire circumstances. As hard as it is to accept or wrap our minds around it's the reality.

You can cover the whole planet with solar panels (every roof) and have enough electricity. Let's do it, it's a start! But you can't eat electricity. You can't make fertilizers from it. You can't grow food with water from dry or brackish aquifers. We are using huge amounts of oil to produce the yeild per acre we are now. When it's gone or too expensive we are screwed, well hungry anyway. We are using water supplies that took tens of thousands of years to collect in the span of a couple of centuries. When the aquifers are gone, what then? Nobody looks at it or talks about it, because there is no what then. The planet can maybe support sustainably about a third of what we are supporting now. I'm not any happy about it either, but it is true.

Aerowhatt

People have been predicting the end, since the beginning of time. IMO If it happens, it won't be caused be people. It will be caused be something completely out of human control.

Just google "doomsday predictions" that should keep you busy, until the end (of your life, not the world.)

People have been predicting the end, since the beginning of time. IMO If it happens, it won't be caused be people. It will be caused be something completely out of human control.

Just google "doomsday predictions" that should keep you busy, until the end (of your life, not the world.)

Funny, I haven't seen a single comment in this subject on the end of the world. Just the precarious state of our dominance of and thriving on it if we don't wise up.

Aerowhatt

Aerowhatt,

This might be a naive assumption but isn't our water supply basically a closed system? Thus it's a distribution problem not a production problem. Living in one of the Great Lakes states I'm obviously far less attuned to the problem than you are in NM. I do also think that we should be allowed to sell "our" water to the world at $100 per barrel ;-) But jokes aside when those aquifers dry up won't that be when someone gets serious about a major water distribution network?

I agree in general with you that overpopulation is probably the biggest problem but I don't think that doesn't means one shouldn't look at issues like peak oil, fighting wars for oil and global warming because of the burning of oil. These issues are more immediate than overpopulation. In fact, if seas rise by the amounts predicted that in effect "speeds up" overpopulation because vast communities will be displaced and there will be less land to populate.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Actually it is a production problem. It took tens of thousands of years for the planets natural evaporation cycle to produce the fresh water and let it stockpile in the aquifers. We use it at a rate 2500% faster than it was produced or can be produced by the natural processes. The aquifer in the US is not the only one on this dead end road to being dried up by agricultural output. The option of artificial processes to produce this amount of fresh water are unrealistic at best. The energy requrements are stellar. Let alone the additional energy and infrastructure to transport this fresh water to the crop freindly areas of land from coastal areas. Which is really a moot aspect since it's simply impossible to produce fresh water 2500% faster than the earth does.

I agree that we should be looking at peak oil, global warming and toxic polutants from burning all of this solar energy stored up over millions of years of natural production. In fact though, population should be the priority because it is what has required the recent rampant use of this energy. Calling attention to peak oil and the finite nature of all stored energy resources is very productive and should also be a priority since it removes the illusion that we can or should attempt to sustain present practices. I'm all for proliferating renuable sources of energy as much as possible. At the very least it buys us some time to face the facts about population. It is also where the 2 billion or so people that the planet can actually sustainably support should be getting their energy needs met. Once the rest of the population has disapeared. Likely we will not seriously address this overpopulation issue in time. So renewables at some point will be the only source of energy for those that survive. Yes we should be installing renewables as fast as we can. While we still have the non renewable reserves to be able to accomplish it.

Bottom line is that overpopulation is the biggest problem mankind faces. It's the fastest growing problem we face. It's the hardest to address of any of the problems that we face.

Aerowhatt

overpopulation is the biggest problem mankind faces.

People have been saying that since the 1970's and technology keeps giving us new ways to supply the growing world population.

People have been saying that since the 1970's and technology keeps giving us new ways to supply the growing world population.

Yes and all of those ways technology helps us support this growing mob are more effective ways to exploit stored energy and water that took hundreds of thousands of years for the planet to produce. Installing a bigger pipe, draining the tank, doesn't change the fact that the tank will be drained and therefore empty.

Forest for the trees here! I don't blame you for keeping your head in the sand. Plus on the upside. If you don't believe in reincarnation you won't be around for most of the consequences anyway. Carry on, don't worry be happy!

As the infamous Forest Gump said. "That's all I've got to say about that!"

Aerowhatt

You got it wrong alltogether:

If anything, then we are DROWNING in oil. Due to it's low weight we would not be able to swim in it!

http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_liquids.htm

For example: Crude oil (Texas) has a SG of 873.

This means a 80kg person would only displace 69.84kg of crude oil.

This would have the same effect as if that person would try to swim in water with a 10.16kg weight belt on. Which would kill even the strongest swimmer very soon, I believe.
Not to mention the fumes you'd be inhaling if you managed to get your head above oil.

That should clarify the issue once and for all!

Mr. Mik

Aerowhatt, I think you may be right. I have succumbed to this form of reasoning. I try and save resources. I leave my apartment heat at 65, and most of the time at 60 during the winter. I just finished cleaning and reusing a distributor cap on the car I drive, because it's a waste to throw it away. I try and save resources and make the most of them whenever possible. I don't like the fact that I'm burning gasoline. I'm finishing the modifications to my electric motorcycle, and I plan to maybe electrify a car.

But, here's what I posted on another thread:

No matter how hard one tries to conserve, they are still using resources and contributing to the overall problem. In other words, it is still much better for the planet if you never existed in the first place. Its kind of a humbling thought.

And, I don't care. We are alive now. What do we do? This realization that you and me, and everyone else on the planet is a problem may be true, or it may just be overly negative thinking and flawed logic. It may be just as delusional as ignoring our impact on the planet. What gives you the right to dictate that people are better off not existing? It may be that we can accomplish some amazing things, or we can focus on every negative thing about human existence. Maybe, the excessive population will figure out a way to survive thus demonstrating it's right to exist.

We may very well be destined to suffer consequences of overpopulation. That may be our reality. But, I am tired of caring too much about it. Maybe the world will be just fine without your drastic population control measures to make it ok, and maybe your measures are not only wrong but nightmarish in their implications.

We may very well be destined to suffer consequences of overpopulation. That may be our reality. But, I am tired of caring too much about it. Maybe the world will be just fine without your drastic population control measures to make it ok, and maybe your measures are not only wrong but nightmarish in their implications.

I don't recall putting forth any drastic population control measures? Frankly I have no idea how one would, or could, go about it? Except to educate on the issue and let each person choose what they themselves are willing to do. To hope that they do! I don't remember saying that it would be better off if none of us existed either?

I think a lot of mankinds potential. However that potential must be exercised within the confines of what is truly renewable. What is truely renewable is the energy that comes from our sun and all the ways it manifests itself on this amazing planet. To whatever degree we can find inovative ways to capture convert and utilize that energy. To whatever degree we can be efficient in it's use. That's the level at which we can truly live sustainably and prosper and advance. Last I heard the sun will be around a while and so all is good.

The problem is that if we don't call attention to how non sustainable where we are now is. Then we definately will miss the chance at the future suggested above. We can't let ourselves as a species be the guy stumbling across the bar parking lot deluding himself that he is OK to drive home. We can't get there from here unless we change course sooner rather than later.

There is one PV panel plant here in the US that uses 85% solar electricity to make solar panels. But we have to remember that the panels, that make that electricity, to make panels were maunfactured by non renewable means (coal). I think it rocks that this company is doing this. It's the kind of choice we as a society need to be making at every opportunity. While we still have enough stored energy to help us make it happen.

Population is still the root problem for our future. If we blindly say technology will fix it (like the drunk in the parking lot) and have a bunch of kids each and/or not talk about it. Well, we already know where that leads. If we face the facts that there is a finite amount of truly renewable resources being created daily. If we face the fact that we blow through ~2500% of that truly renewable amount daily. If we keep our heads out of the sand and face facts with a positive "can do" attitude. Perhaps in a few generations we will have all made choices that will walk us back from the gloomy edge we are currently running full speed towards (globally).

It's usually pretty easy to look at bare naked reality and get overwhelmed or depressed. That just leads to the need to put our heads back in the sand to cope. Ultimately, ingnoring the problems and doing nothing to help solve them.

I don't accept that. I refuse to do that. I refuse to worry endlessly or get depressed. What I do is to look out for myself and those I love taking every truly renewable choice that I can. In doing so I help the people around me as well by default. I'm raising one of the next generation to think in a similar way. Even better, he is not my biological offspring. I have no offspring of my own. A choice I made 30 years ago because I was lucky enough to have my head pulled out of the sand by someone who truly had a realistic positive vision for mankind. It's a choice that can be made without giving up the rewarding family life we perhaps want. It's only garanteed doom and gloom if we ignore it and do nothing. If we keep our head in the sand!

Aerowhatt

People have been saying that since the 1970's and technology keeps giving us new ways to supply the growing world population.

My first raise in the working world was 13%. Had I planned my spending and savings habits on annual raises of 13% I'd be homeless and broke now. Counting on unforeseen and unforeseeable technology to bail us out of a mess that we are creating is on a scale grander than mere living in denial. If we ease back the population and manage our resources more wisely we should be able to continue our civilization. If technology comes along to make this easier we'll be pleasantly surprised. If it doesn't we might manage to survive anyway.