Huge Oil Reservoir May Lie Under Northern Plains

[austin552]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,349728,00.html

[Rearden]

Yea, but drilling there might kill some gophers or moles.

[IROC]

This is not exactly breaking news. They've known about this for what, decades? (OK, I just checked - 1951 according to wikipedia).

[scottmandue]

Yeah sure... but it would be so much easier to drill in Alaska

[KNS]

I think they're going to save that till the middle east runs out.

[DaveE]

Originally Posted by KNS

I think they're going to save that till the middle east runs out.

That would be my plan, and with Alaska also. Use up the oil in the Middle East and when it's gone we can gouge the world for 2 weeks until ours is gone.

[SlowToady]

They've known about it for some time, but it is only now economically viable to extract oil from it, as it is the shale type which is more costly.

There is also a very large reserve off the Gulf of Mexico that is just now being tapped and IIRC should be done in 2010 or so.

It's not going to lower gas prices though, so don't get your hopes up

[kach22i]

Another thread on the topic with some good links in it.

BS Oil Report?
BS Oil Report?

[Hendog]

They've been drilling that region for decades. When I was a kid in the late 60s, we'd travel from Saskatoon to Winnipeg to visit family. When we got into Manitoba, my folks would get us kids to count pump jacks to pass the time. They'd also get us to count rail cars, but that's got nothing to do with this topic

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Wonder if I can buy some land up there. Hmmm.

[K. Roman]

I drink your milkshake!

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

Wonder if I can buy some land up there. Hmmm.

[K. Roman]

I never knew how much gas you get from a barrel of oil...interesting.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question417.htm

How much gasoline does the United States consume in one year?

There are a couple of different ways to discover the answer to this question, but here is one way to estimate it. If you look at a page like this one, it shows that the United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. If you look at the statistics on a page like this one, you find that a barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons or 159 liters) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons (75 liters) of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day. That truly is an amazing amount of liquid, but when you consider that there are about 100 million households in the United States, it is only 4 gallons per household per day. Each family doesn't consume that much, but a huge number of families are doing it.
In a year, therefore, the U.S. consumes about 146 billion gallons (about 550 billion liters) of gasoline!

There are two ways we typically see oil and gasoline moving around: tanker trucks and oil tanker ships. A tanker truck can typically hold about 9,000 gallons (34,000 liters) of gasoline. It would take 40,000 tanker trucks to carry the gasoline the U.S. consumes in one day. A large tanker ship like the Exxon Valdez carries about 1.26 million barrels of oil, so it takes about 14.25 of these ships to carry all of the oil that the U.S. consumes in one day.

Where does all of that gasoline go? When it burns, it turns into lots of carbon dioxide gas. Gasoline is mostly carbon by weight, so a gallon of gas might release 5 to 6 pounds (2.5 kg) of carbon into the atmosphere. The U.S. is releasing roughly 2 billion pounds of carbon into the atmosphere each day.

One thing that's been in the news lately is the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It currently stores about 570 million barrels of oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico. Given that the U.S. imports about half of its oil, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds about a 60 day supply of oil if all imports were suddenly cut off.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by K.Roman

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question417.htm

Cool link, I'm not going to run a Snopes check on it, am I?

[futuresoptions]

Now all we need is some new refineries created.... Nope can't do that, it would create jobs and lower the price of gas.... Thus solving a problem which would mean we don't need politicians, which means they won't do it because they need job security...

[tcar]

Yes, the refinery problem is huge. Environmentalists....

[Seric]

Originally Posted by tcar

Yes, the refinery problem is huge. Environmentalists....

+54


And...as I've been saying for years, why use up all ours when we can use someone elses'. Someday all that money that they made and blew on Formula 1 circuits, man-mad ski slopes, insanly tall buildings and whatever else is bought with our money right now...will have to shoot it all back to us at 10 times the price.

Unless the Russians are right about deep core drilling and oil replenishment.

[Tim Polzin]

Oil sands. Over 4.6 billion barrels recoverable just in the Imperial lease.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands

Tim

[daepp]

For all of the anti-war types - what would oil cost if Iraq or Syria or Saudi Arabia ever fell to Iran?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Oh, so it IS a "war for oil" now. . . Please tell me more.

[daepp]

I'm just sayin'