Energy companies are lining up for their shot to drill in the Dakotas and Montana after a new government report revealed that a massive geological formation stretching across the states contains twice the oil and three times the amount of natural gas than was originally believed.
While the new estimate is drawing smaller companies to the game, the larger players like Schlumberger, Halliburton and Continental Resources are pushing forward with ambitious multi-year plans to stake their claim in the industry.
Continental recently announced a five-year plan to triple its production by 2017. The company’s growth is based on success in North Dakota and Montana as well as in parts of Oklahoma.
In 1977, crack president Jimmy Carter warned that we were about to run out of oil.
Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce … Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can’t go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.
Proposed Energy Policy . Jimmy Carter . WGBH American Experience | PBS
Two years later, President Carter was attacked by a killer bunny while fishing.
While home fishing in Georgia during a summer when his popularity was at low tide, President Jimmy Carter’s small boat was “attacked” by a mysterious swimming rabbit, which the president warded off with a paddle.
All known oil reserves will be exhausted by the year 2000… I remembers the videos my class was forced to take back in the ’80’s.
It’s a never ending blow from way back when, of the fossils own hot gasses coming back to haunt them. And their newly trained fossils of tomorrow to continue! 😆
This study likely estimates 1P reserves only. When you include 2P and 3P the estimated volume of in-place reserves is significanly higher. Said another way; there’s a butt load of oil in the ground and we aren’t going to see the end of it for a long long time.
I have an OLD, USED book called “Muddling Toward Frugality – A Blueprint for Survival in the 1980s”; it was written in 1978 by a university professor. A 2012 version is also available. He says the high price of oil (in the 1970’s) should be paid by high income earners; the blessed poor will be exempt, of course.
It is really quite sad to read – to think that someone can be as stupid as this clown was when he wrote this drivel. Apparently, he has retired and is living “sustainably”; and written a “followup” book. Talk about living in an ivory tower – for all of his life!!!
His book is ALMOST as bad as “The Population Bomb” Professor Paul R. Ehrlich.
So I take it is person hasn’t moved to a country of his desire yet.
this person….
Ya know like someone named Maurice err something.
Hansen will crap an oil barrel when he sees it.
Our great, great, great, great, great cyborg grandkids are doomed.
“In 1977, president on crack Jimmy Carter warned that we were about to run out of oil.”
There fixed that.
So ‘president’ Carter beat-up a small, desperate, drowning rabbit ?!
Media spin-doctoring at its very best.
That rabbit’s great, great, great, great, great cyborg grandkids are laughing at you. That was the Jim Thorpe of rabbits, and it took all the oars in the boat to fend him off. (And any fool can see it’s not drowning–it’s swimming like Johnny Weismuller… I don’t suppose anybody remembers Atomic Rabbit? He had U235 carrot pills in his belt buckle…No? Well, never mind. And don’t get me started on Mighty Mouse–Carter would have been up the creek without a paddle if he had met HIM.)
((Then there was the inky dinky spider, which everybody now swears was the itsy bitsy spider…the incompetence today is near universal.))
Jimmy Carter thought it was the government’s job to manage scarcity. Jimmy worked hard to create scarcity.
I think Jimmy’s 55mph NATIONAL speed limit forestalled the oil apocalypse.
Show me a donk pol, and I’ll show you a guy with a pet apocalypse that he’s going to save the world from. Never let an impending apocalypse go to waste.
The pic shows how smart he is. No life jacket and alone.
No easter eggs for him.
Aw, gee whiz…(whine)! Who died and made you Mom? (I love Easter eggs, you see. I like to think of them as an inalienable right, I guess.)
Three evil words.
Department of Education.
Everybody keeps missing the point.
I have no problem using a 3 cylinder 1.2 L skoda which gives me almost 400 Km per tank in a seriously congested city. I don’t care that much if there is enough oil around or not, or if crazy rabbits are comming, what I care for is that the cost of filling up that has double for me in the last 7 years.
And before any one starts making funny comments about such a car, remember it is allowed on German autobahns and can easly do 140 km/h if the need arise, had the 3/4 starts for EU safety, but was not allowed in the USA for monopoly reasons
What the USA lacks is a willing to make better, more fuel eficient cars, companies never had the incentive.
Maybe we just value human life more…
“According to the Brookings Institution, a 500-lb weight reduction of the average car increased annual highway fatalities by 2,200-3,900 and serious injuries by 11,000 and 19,500 per year. USA Today found that 7,700 deaths occurred for every mile per gallon gained in fuel economy standards. Smaller cars accounted for up to 12,144 deaths in 1997, 37% of all vehicle fatalities for that year. The National Academy of Sciences found that smaller, lighter vehicles “probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.” The National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration study demonstrated that reducing a vehicle’s weight by only one hundred pounds increased the fatality rate by as much as 5.63% for light cars, 4.70% for heavier cars, and 3.06% for light trucks. These rates translated into additional traffic fatalities of 13,608 for light cars, 10,884 for heavier cars, and 14,705 for light trucks between 1996 and 1999.
How many deaths have resulted? Depending on which study you choose, the total ranges from 41,600 to 124,800. To that figure we can add between 352,000 and 624,000 people suffering serious injuries, including being crippled for life. In the past thirty years, fuel standards have become one of the major causes of death and misery in the United States — and one almost completely attributable to human stupidity and shortsightedness.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/death_by_cafe_standards.html
so Europeans are wrong then, having big fugly heavy cars is the way to go, not making better cars or change driving habits
Sorry you did not understand the results of the study. Better luck next time. 😉
Um, hate to rain on your parade here, but…
Schumberger and Halliburton are oil field services companies. The former logs, the latter drills and fracks. Neither owns and operates wells.
As for the new estimate, the 7.4Bbbl is TRR, not P1 (proven) or P1+2 adding probable.The upward revision comes mainly from including for the first time Middle Forks along with Bakken.
This is the second largest tight oil formation in North America after the Monterey ( which may not be predicable due to faults, folds, and the fact that much of it only just entered the oil window since so ‘young’. To put the Williston basin (bakken and Middle Forks) in context, the remaining P1 of the Saudi Ghawar field by itself is 65Bbbl. Ghawar is well past peak production, with rising watercut. If output is carefully managed down, it lasts about to 2035 before being fully exhausted.
Funny how folks who study climate so carefully evidence such woeful lack of knowledge about oil and gas geophysics.
So Carter was correct. We did run out of oil in the 1980s.
For Rud’s knowledge enhancement,
Below is a link to Halliburton’s product list. I see your point, There is only 99.9% overlap with oil exploration and oil well operation. That other 0.1%, nothing to do with operating oil wells.
http://www.halliburton.com/ps/Default.aspx?pageid=1&SRC=Footer
Pfft! Over 7 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken/Three Forks formation is a baby compared to this biggest oil field ever in the US announced today by Pioneer Natural Recources, the Midland Basin located east of the West Texas Permian basin, 50 billion barrels of oil. Twice as big as the Eagle Ford and 4 times bigger than Prodhue Bay.Link here; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/pioneer-rises-on-forecast-beat-more-drilling-dallas-mover.html.
Drill Baby Drill.
Not just Carter, all these guys were right!
History of ‘Peak Oil’
(http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/oil/5oilreservehistory.html)
• 1857 — Romania produces 2,000 barrels of oil, marking the beginning of the modern oil industry.
• 1859, Aug. 25 — Edwin L. Drake strikes oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania
• 1862 — First commercial oil production in Canada, also 1863 in Russia.
• 1862 — Most widely used lamp fuel (camphene) taxed in US at aprox. $1 a gallon; kerosene taxed at 10 cent per gallon. (Kovarik, 1997)
• 1863 — John D. Rockefeller starts the Excelsior Refinery in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1879 — US Geological Survey formed in part because of fear of oil shortages.
• 1882 — Institute of Mining Engineers estimates 95 million barrels of oil remain. With 25 million barrels per year output, “Some day the cheque will come back indorsed no funds, and we are approaching that day very fast,” Samuel Wrigley says. (Pratt, p. 124).
• 1901 — Spindletop gusher in Texas floods US oil market.
• 1906 — Fears of an oil shortage are confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Representatives of the Detroit Board of Commerce attended hearings in Washington and told a Senate hearing that car manufacturers worried “not so much [about] cost as … supply.”
• 1919, Scientific American notes that the auto industry could no longer ignore the fact that only 20 years worth of U.S. oil was left. “The burden falls upon the engine. It must adapt itself to less volatile fuel, and it must be made to burn the fuel with less waste…. Automotive engineers must turn their thoughts away from questions of speed and weight… and comfort and endurance, to avert what … will turn out to be a calamity, seriously disorganizing an indispensable system of transportation.”
• 1920 — David White, chief geologist of USGS, estimates total oil remaining in the US at 6.7 billion barrels. “In making this estimate, which included both proved reserves and resources still remaining to be discovered, White conceded that it might well be in error by as much as 25 percent.” (Pratt, p. 125. Emphasis added).
• 1925 — US Commerce Dept. says that while U.S. oil production doubled between 1914 and 1921, it did not kept pace with fuel demand as the number of cars increased.
• 1928 — US analyst Ludwell Denny in his book “We Fight for Oil” noted the domestic oil shortage and says international diplomacy had failed to secure any reliable foreign sources of oil for the United States. Fear of oil shortages would become the most important factor in international relations, even so great as to force the U.S. into war with Great Britain to secure access to oil in the Persian Gulf region, Denny said.
• 1926 — Federal Oil Conservation Board estimates 4.5 billion barrels remain.
• 1930 — Some 25 million American cars are on the road, up from 3 million in 1918.
• 1932 — Federal Oil Conservation Board estimates 10 billion barrels of oil remain.
• 1944 — Petroleum Administrator for War estimates 20 billion barrels of oil remain.
• 1950 — American Petroleum Institute says world oil reserves are at 100 billion barrels. (See Jean Laherre, Forecast of oil and gas supply)
• 1956 — M.King Hubbard predicts peak in US oil production by 1970.
• 1966 – 1977 — 19 billion barrels added to US reserves, most of which was from fields discovered before 1966. (As M.A. Adelman notes: “These fields were no gift of nature. They were a growth of knowledge, paid for by heavy investment.”)
• 1973 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions due to Middle Eastern politics.
• 1978 — Petroleos de Venezuela announces estimated unconventional oil reserve figure for Orinoco heavy oil belt at between three and four trillion barrels. (More recent public estimates are in the one trillion range).
• 1979 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions due to Middle Eastern politics.
• 1980 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 648 billion barrels
• 1993 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 999 billion barrels
• 2000 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 1016 billion barrels.
• 2005 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions and heavy new demand
• 2008 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions and heavy new demand, global economies collapse when oil reaches over $140 USD/bbl.
Oil reserves have declined from 95 million barrels in 1882, to well over a trillion barrels in 2011. We will probably run out in a few centuries at the rate we are consuming the oil. A simple solution for high efficient vehicles is already available – as soon as someone figures out how to install air conditioning and all wheel drive on a motorcycle…. No, it is not an error in numbers or statement – just a little sarcasm.
Peak oilers have morphed into Warming Alarmist – some have stayed in BOTH camps – these are the truly religious, who always hold that the end of the world is nigh, a la Harold Camping.
They all fall under the ‘Doomer’ moniker, a la Malthus.
Let’s burn it all and see what happens.
Thanks Gator!
The peak oil cultists have fascinated me for decades.
Can you even imagine what it must have been like at the end of the stone ages when humanity ran out of stone? Or the end of the Bronze age when all the Bronze was used up? /sarc (Do I really need the sarc tag?)
If we are to “run out” of something, we find a substitute. Econ 101. Yet the peak oil kooks continue ad nausium.