Re: For Riverwind (Texas Bragging)
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:16 pm
For whatever it's worth, someone has calculated that, had the spacing between oil wells been optimized everywhere in the United States, so that the maximum amount of petroleum could have been economically extracted from each well, at least twenty percent more oil could have been pumped out from the original oil in place. Maybe everybody should have had a well in his back yard.
Incidentally, you'll note that recoverable reserves figures will start to go up if the price of oil stays above fifty dollars a barrel. Large areas of some states are underlain by oil-bearing strata which are too thin, or in which permeability is too low, for oil to be extracted profitably unless the price of oil is above forty or fifty dollars a barrel. Production could become economically feasible in some of those places, with a high oil price. Also, oil production becomes very profitable in the Athabaska Tar Sands region, when oil goes above fifty dollars a barrel, and there is probably more oil in the Athabaska sands, than in all the producing oil fields of the world.
Incidentally, you'll note that recoverable reserves figures will start to go up if the price of oil stays above fifty dollars a barrel. Large areas of some states are underlain by oil-bearing strata which are too thin, or in which permeability is too low, for oil to be extracted profitably unless the price of oil is above forty or fifty dollars a barrel. Production could become economically feasible in some of those places, with a high oil price. Also, oil production becomes very profitable in the Athabaska Tar Sands region, when oil goes above fifty dollars a barrel, and there is probably more oil in the Athabaska sands, than in all the producing oil fields of the world.
