The price of gas

C J Campbell wrote:

As one news report put it, oil is the most expensive it has been since the
1970's. Ummm, anyone remember what the price of gas was in the 1970's when
oil was pushing $60/barrel? It was less than a dollar a gallon....

NPR mentioned that report and pointed out that, in *real* dollars, gas is about half
what it cost during the last half of the Carter administration.

George Patterson
I childproofed my house, but they *still* get in.

Jay Honeck wrote:

Yeah, but will we be able to afford all that cool technology?

Yep. Just like we were able to afford kerosene when whale oil became too expensive.

George Patterson
I childproofed my house, but they *still* get in.

Does anyone here have any web references that counter that rubbish?

Ben

Yes, haven't you heard about the theories on oil plumes and oil field
replenishment from deeper sources? Read on:

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
The Wall Street Journal

HOUSTON - Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.

Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast
of
Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while,
it behaved
like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island
330's output
peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed
to about
4,000 barrels a day.

Then suddenly - some say almost inexplicably - Eugene Island's
fortunes
reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing
13,000
barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400
million
barrels from 60 million.

Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out
of the
pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed
10 years
ago.

All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene
Island is
rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles
below the
Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility
that oil
may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.

"It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior
researcher
from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Connected to
Woods Hole since 1973, Whelan says she considered herself a
traditional thinker
until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, she
says, "I
believe there is a huge system of oil just migrating" deep
underground.
Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that
it was
deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that
took
millions of years.

Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental notion
that oil
reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence "would change the way
people
see the game, turn the world view upside down," says Daniel Yergin, a
petroleum
futurist and industry consultant in Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and
renewable
resource are not words that often appear in the same sentence."

Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable
oil than
was believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, estimated
global oil
reserves grew 72 percent, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Much of that
growth came in
the past 10 years, with the introduction of computers to the oil
patch, which
made drilling for oil more predictable.

Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's
greatest oil
pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past
20 years,
despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new
discoveries.

It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric
plants to
account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region,
notes
Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.

"Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be right," he says.

Even some of the most staid U.S. oil companies find the Eugene Island
discoveries intriguing. "These reservoirs are refilling with oil,"
acknowledges
David Sibley, a Chevron Corp. geologist who has monitored the work at
Eugene
Island. Sibley cautions, however, that much research remains to be
done on the
source of that oil. "At this point, it's not black and white. It's
gray," he
says.

Although the world has been drilling for oil for generations, little
is known
about the nature of the resource or the underground activities that
led to its
creation. And because even conservative estimates say known oil
reserves will
last 40 years or more, most big oil companies haven't concerned
themselves much
with hunting for deep sources like the reservoirs scientists believe
may exist
under Eugene Island.

Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, a
respected
astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y., has
held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup
continually
manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous
pressures.

As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by
bacteria,
making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the
dinosaurs, he
says.

While many scientists discount Gold's theory as unproved, "it made a
believer
out of me," says Robert Hefner, chairman of Seven Seas Petroleum Inc.,
a
Houston firm that specializes in ultradeep drilling and has worked
with the
professor on his experiments. Seven Seas continues to use
"conventional"
methods in seeking reserves, though the halls of the company often
ring with
dissent.

"My boss and I yell at each other all the time about these theories,"
says Russ
Cunningham, a geologist and exploration manager for Seven Seas who
isn't sold
on Gold's ideas.

Knowing that clever theories don't fill the gas tank, Roger Anderson,
an
oceanographer and executive director of Columbia University's Energy
Research
Center in New York, proposed studying the behavior of oil in a
reservoir in
hopes of finding a new way to help companies vacuum up what their
drilling was
leaving behind.

He focused on Eugene Island, a kidney-shaped subsurface mountain that
slopes
steeply into the Gulf depths. About 80 miles off the Louisiana coast,
the
underwater landscape surrounding Eugene Island is otherworldly, cut
with deep
fissures and faults that spontaneously belch gas and oil.
In 1985, as he stood on the deck of a shrimp boat towing an
oil-sniffing
contraption through the area, Anderson pondered Eugene Island's
strange history.

"Migrating oil and anomalous production. I sort of linked the two
ideas
together," he says.
Five years later, the U.S. Department of Energy ponied up $10 million
to
investigate the Eugene Island geologic formation, and especially the
oddly
behaving field at its crest. A consortium of companies leasing chunks
of the
formation, including such giants as Chevron, Exxon Corp. and Texaco
Corp.,
matched the federal grant.

The Eugene Island researchers began their investigation about the same
time
that 3-D seismic technology was introduced to the oil business,
allowing
geologists to see promising reservoirs as a cavern in the ground
rather than as
a line on a piece of paper.

Taking the technology one step further, Anderson used a powerful
computer to
stack 3-D images of Eugene Island on top of one another. That resulted
in a 4-D
image, showing not only the reservoir in three spatial dimensions, but
showing
also the movement of its contents over time as PennzEnergy siphoned
out oil.

What Anderson noticed as he played his time-lapse model was how much oil
PennzEnergy had missed over the years. The remaining crude, surrounded
by
water and wobbling like giant globs of Jell-O in the computer model,
gave
PennzEnergy new targets as it reworked Eugene Island.
What captivated scientists, though, was a deep fault in the bottom corner
of the computer scan that was gushing oil like a garden hose. "We
could see
the stream," Anderson says. "It wasn't even debated that it was
happening."

Woods Hole's Whelan, invited by Anderson to join the Eugene Island
investigation, postulated that superheated methane gas - a compound
that is
able to absorb vast amounts of oil - was carrying crude from a deep
source
below. The age of the crude pushed through the stream, and its hotter
temperature helped support that theory. The scientists decided to
drill into
the fault.

As prospectors, the scientists were fairly lucky. As researchers they
weren't. The first well they drilled hit natural gas, a pocket so
pressurized "that it scared us," Anderson says; that well is still
producing. The second stab, however, collapsed the fault. "Some oil
flowed.
I have 15 gallons of it in my closet," Anderson says. But it wasn't
successful enough to advance Whelan's theory.

A third well was drilled at a spot on an adjacent lease, where the fault
disappeared from seismic view. The researchers missed the stream but
hit a
fair-size reservoir, one that is still producing.

It was here, in 1995, that the scientists ran out of grant money and
PennzEnergy lost interest in continuing. "I'm not discounting the
possibility that there is oil moving into these reservoirs," says
William
Van Wie, a PennzEnergy senior vice president. "I question only the
rate."

Whelan hasn't lost interest, however, and is seeking to investigate
further the mysterious vents and seeps. While industry geologists have
generally assumed such eruptions are merely cracks in a shallow oil
reservoir, they aren't sure.

Noting that many of the seeps are occurring in deep water, rather than in
the relative shallows of the continental shelf, Whelan wonders if they
may
link a deeper source.

This summer, a tiny submarine chartered by a Louisiana State University
researcher will attempt to install a series of measuring devices on
vents
near the Eugene Island property. Whelan hopes this will give her some
idea
of how quickly Eugene Island is refilling. "We need to know if we're
talking
years or if we're talking hundreds of thousands of years," she says.

"Dean Wilkinson" wrote in message
m...

Does anyone here have any web references that counter that rubbish?

Ben

Yes, haven't you heard about the theories on oil plumes and oil field
replenishment from deeper sources? Read on:

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
The Wall Street Journal

HOUSTON - Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.


Amazing article...thanks for posting.

Jay Beckman
Student Pilot - KCHD
18.6 Hrs ... Nowhere to go but up!

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
Yeah, but will we be able to afford all that cool technology?

It doesn't become "viable" until oil is unaffordable.

Probably not, Jay. I would like to think that capitalism will keep prices
in check. It's always worked in the past. I've no doubt it will work in
the future.

The bonus for us is that we can finally tell the OPEC nations kiss our
shiny, hairy, American asses for good. Let 'em all kill themselves and we
will all live happily ever after.

--
Jim Fisher

"Dean Wilkinson" wrote in message
Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, a
respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in
Ithaca,
N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial
syrup
continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and
tremendous
pressures.

As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by
bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the
dinosaurs, he says.

That is an absolutely astounding hypothesis.

The entire article was some of the more interesting reading I've done in a
while. Thanks.

--
Jim Fisher

in article , Jim Fisher at
wrote on 5/17/04 6:33 PM:

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
Yeah, but will we be able to afford all that cool technology?

It doesn't become "viable" until oil is unaffordable.

Probably not, Jay. I would like to think that capitalism will keep prices
in check. It's always worked in the past. I've no doubt it will work in
the future.

The bonus for us is that we can finally tell the OPEC nations kiss our
shiny, hairy, American asses for good. Let 'em all kill themselves and we
will all live happily ever after.

--
Jim Fisher

Some day, historians will view our current obsession with petrolium much the
same way we look upon ancient commodities such as spices and silk. Just as
we wonder what all the fuss was about, they'll marvel at how much strife has
resulted from this particular natural resource.

In 2004 dollars, the high was $2.50 a gallon. We are very unlikely to
reach that level.

Don't know where you are living, but where I am at the price is over
$2.50 / gal.

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
So oil is now over $40/barrel and this is being blamed for the fact that
gas
is now over $2/gallon and avgas is well over $3/gallon.

As one news report put it, oil is the most expensive it has been since the
1970's. Ummm, anyone remember what the price of gas was in the 1970's when
oil was pushing $60/barrel? It was less than a dollar a gallon....

Cost of refining is MUCH higher.

On Mon, 17 May 2004 19:13:22 -0700, Flyin'8 wrote:

Don't know where you are living, but where I am at the price is over
$2.50 / gal.

You should speak to your state legislators. Gas downtown is $1.9599.
Nationwide it is about the same, last I read (day before yesterday).

Adjust the figures according to account for greedy legislatures. Your
gas would have to rise to north of $3 to be equivalent to 1982.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

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