Oil is not a Fossil Fuel

[turnkey4099]

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

While it might be a stretch for the last part - all the dino-origin theorists haven't explained how all those dinosaurs dug down 15 kilometers into the earch before they died. Just because a theory was present for 100 years doesn't make it correct.

Dinosaurs contribution is minor if any. As for how they would have gotten down there? a couple hundred years of geologic exploration has shown that.

Abiogenic origin of oil is a "theory" that would have overturned over a century of geologic, chemical, biological and maybe a few other scientific fields of study. If it were anythign but a pipedream it would have been reported in a reputable scientific publication, not some out of the way paper noone has heard of.

"Theory" in science requires proof, evidence etc. The "theory" quoted in that paper is not a scientific but the common "theory" used in lay discussions, IOW a WAG (Wild *** Guess)

Harry K

 

[tommu56]

We spend billions of US dollars every month importing foreign oil when we could keep that money working in our country by developing and using our natural gas resources wisely.

Converting our transportation fleets over to CNG would be a true economic stimulus which would actually do something productive and beneficial for the American taxpayer.

It would cut our air pollution, keep our money in our country and there is ample quantity of it to provide for our needs for decades to come.


Natural gas is available on almost every street in America through a network of 1.5 million miles of distribution pipelines across the country.

CNG is the bridge to better fuels of the future.

Natural gas as a transportation fuel is a sure way to break our dependence on foreign oil and keep billions of our dollars working here everyday.

I agree too!
Lets get the gas going my lease is waiting my pocketbook is open too (and prety much empty)but with the price drop alot of compamys are balking about drilling or even singing leases now.

tom

 

[dmccarty]

I think both of these little tidbits are from the Wall Street Journal over the last month or so.

Tidbit 1. Most of the oil that has been found 2/3 to 3/4s is still in the ground. Its not economically worthwhile to pump more of the oil from the fields. That means there is a lot of oil out there that will be pumped out when the price of oil gets high enough.

Tidbit 2. In the search for organisms to covert biomass to oil one of the most promising critters was found in Saudi Arabia. When this thing is stressed/starved in produces oil. This was is really interesting to me but they did not talk about the obvious question to ask, "Did this algae/bacteria create the oil in the Middle East?"

A bonus TidBit. HUGE fields of natural gas have been found in the US especially in LA. Just a few short years ago we were hearing how the US was out of natural gas.

Oh what the heck I'll just through out something else. Supposedly .13% of CO2 in the atmosphere is man made. Don't know if that exact very specific number true but I have read human generate CO2 is a small part of the CO2 in the atmosphere. And the large contributor of global warming is water vapor. I'll use the word supposedly again, supposedly 95% of global warming is from water vapor. Stop taking the showers!

Later,
Dan

 

[The Dougster]

This thread is going to live forever it appears....

There is an abundance of oil.... The problem comes in getting it out of the ground. Permeability, porosity and the grade of oil all play a part. There are oil fields discovered and drilled into many years ago that are still producing but there are many, many other oil fields that come on strong and then fizzle out. Secondary recover methods have been used for many, many years and therein lies the solution in retrieving remain deposits. It takes a tremendous amount of money to research secondary methods and then to put them into practice. Someone mentioned the price of oil having it's influence on the recovery of oil deposits... Well, duh! The presence of oil shales is nothing new but obtaining that oil is totally dependent on the price of oil and the development of recovery methods.

 

[DieselPower]

I think a couple of people have finally hit the nail on the head. There's still oil in the ground and lot's of it. The problem is how much will it cost to retrieve it.

Think of it this way. Would you drive 20 miles one way to fill up your car with gas because it's 2 cents a gallon cheaper. Sure you might save 30 cents but it cost you $4 to get there and back. The same is true of oil exploration and recovery. Why spend 2, 5 or even 10 times or more trying to extract extremely difficult to recover oil when you can just drill a new well head elsewhere and pump it out cheaply. They would be more than happy to recover that hard to get oil if at the same time you didn't mind paying $10 a gallon for gas to fill up your gas guzzler.

Something else that is often forgotten is that all crude oil is not created equally as I stated earlier. Light sweet stocks are easy to refine and rather economical to produce finished products. The heavy sour stocks are much more difficult to refine and therefore cost a lot more to refine. There's a boat load of medium to heavy stocks still in the ground around the world. The problem is the massive cost of the refineries that are needed to process that stock.

 

[two_bit_score]

Good Mornin two_bit_score,
I believe that you have hit on some very good advice here !

Actually many transportation fleets have converted to CNG. Certainly many more could be converted over. It is a very clean way to power alot of vehicles that run on our roadways everyday.

Hopefully more focus will be put on this energy source in the near future !

Afternoon scottie,
To me, natural gas as a transportation fuel just makes so much sense. Yes, there needs to be an expansion of the distribution system and a retooling to produce OEM CNG powered vehicles. But, aren't we trying to sitmulate the economy? That would certianly do a lot of stimulation. I think we could use some of the billions of dollars a month we spend on foreign oil.

Charlie Munger was recently qouted as saying at the Brekshire Hathaway meeting, "If you have enough energy you can solve a lot of other problems."

We have an aboundant domestic supply of natural gas so let's get busy solving some problems.

 

[two_bit_score]

I agree too!
Lets get the gas going my lease is waiting my pocketbook is open too (and prety much empty)but with the price drop alot of compamys are balking about drilling or even singing leases now.

tom

How many companies would bring production facilities to America is they were given a BIG discount on the energy necessary to run their plants? Not only would they cut their production costs but their transportation costs of shipping the goods here to sell. We would put a lot of Americans back to work and bring in needed investment in our country and economy.

Not only that but the money paid for the gas to our own landowners, like you, would significantly boost the economy.

We need to demand that the politicians wake up and start to use Natural Gas for the benefit of our country.

 

[Reg]

It's origin may be interesting and it's quantity may be vast, but both are irrelevant to it's problems as a fuel.

That we may cook the planet and life on on it before running out of oil is probably what we should be most worried about.

 

[two_bit_score]

For anyone interested in supporting Natural Gas as a transportation fuel, among other uses, here is some legislation you may want to look into. Contact your Congressman and Senators and inform them of your support.

H.R. 1835 is known as the NAT GAS Act of 2009 and will provide incentives to move fleets and heavy trucks away from imported gasoline and diesel to clean, domestic natural gas.

It is said that we have enough natural gas in the huge shale deposits under Appalachia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas to MEET ALL OF OUR NEEDS for well over 100 years.

H.R. 1835 is the best tool we’ve had in decades to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

You might also want to look into joining the Pickens Plan.

I really believe that wise use of our Natural Gas resources can be a great benefit to our country right now if we act right now.

 

[MossRoad]

Plate tectonics... oh wait... that theory has only been around since the 60's so I guess it's not set in stone like the dinosaurs-to-hydrocarbons-is-the-only-way theory. Although that doesn't explain why NASA found hydrocarbons on Titan. So I guess dinosaur space travel is the next 'logical' explanation for where those hydrocarbons came from.

Hey, It could happen!