Oil Shortage

[4pyros]

Young kids today would rather rip off a grannies purse rather than work

Yes its sad.

 

[ronsimpson]

So far what I see is those who do not have mineral rights to land thats being drilled on are the ones making the biggest fuss over what ever they can think of imagined or other wise. If you are like me and my family who have a few hundred acres of land plus majority mineral rights and oil stocks that are doing very well the view is considerably different!

That's what is happening here! Those of us with mineral rights are smiling and those who sold off the rights to everything below ground are very unhappy. If you sold off all the oil (or did not buy the oil under your land) then it is too late to stop the owner of the oil form coming and collecting what they own.

In most countries you can get money for the water, oil, coal, iron, gold, etc under your land. Many time this was sold 50 to 100 years ago and the money spent. The land title states what you own and who owns what. It is likely you only have the top 10 feet of your dirt. Wen you got the land you signed that you understand everything below ground level is not yours and the owner can come and get (the oil) when they want. [who reads all the paper work] It is too late to complain about money or 'your oil'.

 

[tcmtech]

Many time this was sold 50 to 100 years ago and the money spent.

Thats one of the biggest and least talked about issues here. There are a good number of farmers and ranchers in the Bakken oil field region that either sold off their mineral rights themselves or their parents or grandparents did it years ago. Now quite a few own up to a few thousand acres of marginal surface land, many with several high yield oil wells on their land too, but get zero payments from them other than the surface land lease for the 2 - 3 acres than each well sites sit on.

Those people also tend to be the most outspoken against over what the oil industry and related support industry does too. Some right down to petty complaining and filing lawsuits over how fast the service trucks drive and how much dust they kick up on the gravel roads never mind how careless and fast they themselves drive though.

On the other side of that issue are the people like me and my family who now own good size chunks of their mineral rights because their parents, grandparents, and even great grand parents made poor designs years ago.
I recently inherited 6.67 acres worth of mineral rights to land that is 60 - 70 miles away from where I live that my great grandpa acquired by buying the mineral rights from one of his old drinking buddy's back in the 1940's or 50's because the guy couldn't keep his head out of the bottle and the bank off his back over a minor loan issue!
The worst part is what the mineral rights where sold for back then was even by todays standards pennies on the dollar value wise. Now I could be looking at yearly payments of $20,000 - $30,000+ or more for the oil under someone else's land all because some drunk farmer couldn't manage his life or money 60 - 70 years ago.

 

[ronsimpson]

A hundred years ago, we could not drill very far down. Much of the mineral rights were bought when, as far as we could see, there was nothing of value down there. Our grand fathers laughed all the way to the bank. Money for nothing! Many of these investors have been waiting 100 years and have no return on the money. Most will never see a return.

In three months the government will demand their yearly $6000.00 in land taxes. If I don't get a real job before then...... It might be 'near sighted' but by spring I will be doing what it takes to last one more year. That is what Grand Dad did.

 

[tcmtech]

I guess for me the tax man is welcomed. For many years I was getting my taxes back because I was considered poor. Around here my cost of living has been so low that what would be seen as poverty level was considerably more than what was needed to live fairly well on.

I have a good friend who always complained with envy about how I got money back on my taxes and his family business paid in nearly a million dollars a year. I always thought that was the dumbest thing to be envious of being if given the choice how many would prefer to make $20K a year and get $1000 back or make several million a year and have to pay one million of it in. Personally I am rather grateful that the tax man sees me as having enough now to be paying in instead of getting back!

If you are rich and it makes you miserable you can always give it a way. If you are poor and it makes you miserable no one else wants it either. Which misery would you prefer to suffer with?

 

[ljcox]

Thats how it gets done here now as well. they go about 8000 feet down then do a sweeping turn to 90 degrees for another 2000 feet or so then follow a 15 - 20 foot thick oil shale vein for roughly another 10,000 feet out.

Does anyone know how they steer the drills underground?

I've seen companies drilling under roads. They go down on about a 20 degree angle & then up on the other side of the road.

 

[ronsimpson]

Does anyone know how they steer the drills underground? I've seen companies drilling under roads. They go down on about a 20 degree angle & then up on the other side of the road.

I know.
1. There is a man with a detector, like a metal detector. He walks along just above the end of the pipe. He can tell where the end of the pipe is and how deep.
2. The end of the pipe being pushed along is not round but eccentric (off center). The pipe will not go strait but in a curve based on which way the eccentric points.
3. The machine that pushes the pipe also can turn the eccentric on the end of the pipe.
4. When the pipe is going too far right the eccentric is turned so the pipe will head left. Then when the pipe goes too far left the eccentric is turned back right.
[much like US politics]

 

[ljcox]

Thanks for that explanation.

I saw the man with the detector & assumed that he was detecting the pipe, but could not work out how they steered it.

I thought US politics only went to the right!

 

[duffy]

The pipe has a "mud motor" that uses the pressure from the cutting fluid to turn the cutting wheels. So with applied fluid pressure and thrust force, the auger doesn't have to turn, and they only turn the pipe to steer.

But this approach leads to something called "tortuosity", because now your straight run is a helix, which causes other problems. There are several different trenchless boring and horizontal drilling techniques, some of them can electronically steer the bit.

 

[audioguru]

Oil is easily extracted from the ground and is refined into gasoline (petrol).
My gasoline prices are not bad since my new car is very efficient. But the prices in Europe is double or tripple!
Extremely higher taxes??

Edit: Or are the governments and oil companies ripping off Europeans?

 

[ljcox]

The pipe has a "mud motor" that uses the pressure from the cutting fluid to turn the cutting wheels. So with applied fluid pressure and thrust force, the auger doesn't have to turn, and they only turn the pipe to steer.

But this approach leads to something called "tortuosity", because now your straight run is a helix, which causes other problems. There are several different trenchless boring and horizontal drilling techniques, some of them can electronically steer the bit.

Thanks for the info Duffy

 

[Sceadwian]

AG, look at the comparable number of users in the region's. Economy of scale.

 

[3v0]

I think that UK and US price for petro/gas is about the same if you strip off the taxes.

 

[Sceadwian]

What about if you add on the typical distances for travel?

Gonna get some different numbers....

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I think that UK and US price for petro/gas is about the same if you strip off the taxes.

Yes, the UK price is almost all tax.

 

[tcmtech]

Then there is the Abiotic oil formation theory thats rapidly gaining a solid foot hold in the geological and scientific communities. Lots of interesting reading if you google "Abiotic oil Formation" such as this one. https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/...c-oil-and-gas-a-theory-that-refuses-to-vanish

If you are wondering the abiotic theory is that crude oil has also formed in the deepest parts of the earths crust from the original hydrogen and carbon ,methane like compounds, that our solar system had vast quantities of during the early parts of the planets formation processes.

I became aware of the concept about two summers ago while working in the local oil fields driving water truck. A good number of the geologists I met seem to have considerable seismic mapping evidence and reasons to believe that our local oil fields are sitting on a super massive abiotic oil formation some 7 - 8 miles down.

 

[duffy]

Abiotic oil formation theory thats rapidly gaining a solid foot hold in the geological and scientific communities

This theory has failed repeatedly at simply telling people where to drill. I wouldn't call 135 years 'rapid' - Mendeleyev and others presented scientific papers on it in 1877. You also have to explain away Biopolymers -> geopolymers -> kerogen -> hydrocarbons. Here read this or at least take a passing glance at the summary -- https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2011/12/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf

 

[tcmtech]

The conceptual theory has been around for that long but ultra deep well drilling is still very new tech and is only now getting to the point of being practical and feasible. Same with the ultra deep seismic high resolution mapping techniques.

30 years ago horizontal drilling with the repeatable accuracy like what is done here now was more of a fanciful dream and money pit than a reality.

Who knows what may come in the next number of years ultra deep oil exploration is happening world wide and just because they don't say they are finding something down their does not mean that they didn't find anything.

Up until a few years ago the Bakken, three Forks, and Goliath oil formations in my state where unheard of anywhere but here. When it did become national and world news that this "massive new" Bakken oil field was found most of us here just sat there and looked at each other and said 'WTF? We have known it was here and how big it was from when they first found it 30+years ago!'

Whats to say that something similar wont conveniently happen again in 10 -30 years when politics may have drifted further in a different direction?

"Oh my gawd! There are massive super deep oil deposits all over the world and we never knew about it until now?" (Well some suspected it it 135+ years ago and a few more knew it actually existed in the early 2000's but hey word travels slow when politics and money are involved.)

Personally from what I have seen and heard first hand from the local geologists if I had $100 million to my name I would not hesitate to start designing and developing a super deep drilling rig right here on my own family property just to confirm or prove wrong what is or is not actually right below us! I just need my present stocks to hit about $20+ a share and I am good to go!

 

[duffy]

Bakken oil field was found most of us here just sat there and looked at each other and said 'WTF? We have known it was here and how big it was from when they first found it 30+years ago!'

Thank you for pointing that out - you knew it was there, and how big it was. Many proponents of the abiotic oil theory point to Bakken jumping from 0.15 billion barrels to 3.8 billion barrels as "proof", but what was being measured was recoverable oil. There were people aware of the size of it, but it wasn't until modern times, when places like Canada are willing to mine for tar sand and Venezuela is suddenly cheerful about their extra heavy tar-like sour crude, that it was considered recoverable.

With, of course, the world's largest hydro-fracking operation.

To get at just 3-4 billion barrels.

 

[Sceadwian]

No theory of the origins of oil will ever matter.

As long as it's there, people will drill, dig, or try to process hydrocarbons into fuel.

It's a moot point, as the true issue is energy storage. Hydrocarbons are the current convenient method for storage, we didn't put the energy there, but we know how to get it out, and we know how much fits in a given space and where to get it, so energy density will always be compared to what's practical and readily available.

To get outside the energy available per mass in hydrocarbons we have to go to nuclear sources.

Given the mass of non nuclear hydrocarbons on this planet vs nuclear, even the benefits of the pure amount of energy available in nuclear sources compared to what we can just dig up out of the ground is mind boggling insufficient.