$100 A Barrel Oil is on the Way

#1,151
#1,151
Velo Vol said:
What do you want him to do? Wave a magic wand and create a 10 billion barrel oil reserve 10 miles from Houston?
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I'm pretty sure he is being sarcastic since so many on the left were railing about Bush being in bed with big oil and being responsible for the high gas prices at the pump.
 
#1,153
#1,153
Velo Vol said:
What do you want him to do? Wave a magic wand and create a 10 billion barrel oil reserve 10 miles from Houston?
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about 3 thousand miles or so northwest of Houston, there's a barren wasteland known as ANWR that has plenty of oil.

the US also has more than enough natural gas, but it isn't getting exploited either.
 
#1,154
#1,154
While I think that there is a lot of potential in our natural gas reserves, I think we are just beginning to understand at what environmental cost this gas will come. I think that we'll be able to recover a lot of the gas, but the water usage / water contamination issues won't be insignificant. This obviously isn't the Beverley Hillbillies form of oil/gas.
 
#1,157
#1,157
As long as we have enough oil, we won't have to worry that much about doing it, but I would think coal to liquids, natural gas to liquids, and biofuels are three alternatives if we want to stick to liquid fuels and the only problem is that we don't have enough oil.
 
#1,160
#1,160
What happened to nuclear reactor cars?

1958_ford_nucleon.jpg
 
#1,161
#1,161
OrangeEmpire said:
Is there any other practical alternative to liquid fuel?
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I don't think that electric cars are super-practical at the moment, but they're not a pipe dream either.

There are safety concerns about gaseous fuels, like CNG or hydrogen - but they're not completely prohibitive, IMO.

If we want hydrogen, it's hard to imagine it being sustainable via current means of hydrogen production (largely steam methane reforming). Water-splitting photocatalysts for hydrogen productoin would be an incredible innovation...a holy grail in a lot of ways.
 
#1,162
#1,162
TennTradition said:
While I think that there is a lot of potential in our natural gas reserves, I think we are just beginning to understand at what environmental cost this gas will come. I think that we'll be able to recover a lot of the gas, but the water usage / water contamination issues won't be insignificant. This obviously isn't the Beverley Hillbillies form of oil/gas.
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actually gas drilling removes the impurities from the water to get to the gas. there hasn't been a single domestic oil spill from drilling btw.
 
#1,164
#1,164
OrangeEmpire said:
What happened to nuclear reactor cars?

1958_ford_nucleon.jpg
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No one wanted to haul around the cooling systems.

Interesting related story...as you pass between highways 58 and 9 on I-40 heading into Knoxville, you can see two metal towers off to your left with cables between them. Those towers were actually used to hoist mini-nuclear reactors up into the air to perform the physics experiments necessary to assess the feasibility of nuclear-powered aircraft. The most obvious use would be something like the doomsday plane that would need to stay in the air for a long time. The project was woefully unsuccessful, though, as far as I can tell. Again, cooling systems bite us in the butt.
 
#1,166
#1,166
droski said:
actually gas drilling removes the impurities from the water to get to the gas. there hasn't been a single domestic oil spill from drilling btw.
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The recovery techniques for the new gas reserves being discovered in PA and similar states are highly water intensive and could stand to pollute the water table...or so I've read. It's a concern, not a fact, and these methods are still being felt out.

Are you saying that you clean the water before you inject it into the reservoirs? What happens to the water then?

Are you just throwing the oil spill note as a side-aspect?
 
#1,169
#1,169
TennTradition said:
Its space-propulsion was nuclear-based, right? Not the launcher?
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You are correct, we got a treat one night the former head of Nevada Test Site and Area 51, same person, came and talked to us and let us ask him questions.

The nuclear space program was fascinating but as soon as JFK died all money stopped coming in for the project.
 
#1,170
#1,170
Cool - that would have been neat to see/hear about.

I worked on a nuclear space-propulsion project for a little while. It's one of our few good options for deep space exploration (by unmanned craft, for example) if we want to actually land and take back off again.
 
#1,171
#1,171
You have no idea................ it was an amazing four hours.

The director believed we would have been to mars and back if the research had been funded.
 
#1,173
#1,173
i'm not sure where this person is getting his information. if we truly believed economic growth was going to be strong oil would be well over $100 and going higher because of the significant drop in production the past 2 years.
 
#1,174
#1,174
droski said:
i'm not sure where this person is getting his information. if we truly believed economic growth was going to be strong oil would be well over $100 and going higher because of the significant drop in production the past 2 years.
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I confess that I don't understand/see a disconnect, as well.
 
#1,175
#1,175
droski said:
i'm not sure where this person is getting his information. if we truly believed economic growth was going to be strong oil would be well over $100 and going higher because of the significant drop in production the past 2 years.
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Could lower demand be tempering the price? I'm wondering if there has been some long-term reductions with hybrids and new fuel efficiency standards set forth by Obama. There have also been some big offshore finds lately. Combine all that with the fact that we aren't even in a peak driving season yet and I'm not so sure it is purely based on economic growth projections.

I could see it jumping north of $100 this summer though.
 
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