posted
I pretty optimistic that breakthru's in science will occur. Fusions a substitute energy that could meet what current use demands. http://web.gat.com/
However this won't help that most "goods" are almost solely made from petrolium.......
[This message has been edited by Jomama (edited 04-23-2002).]
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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"16 percent of so-called near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) larger than 200 meters in diameter are likely to be binary systems"
"Astronomers have long speculated about the existence of binary NEAs, based in part on impact craters on Earth. Of about 28 known terrestrial impact craters with diameters greater than 20 kilometers, at least three are double craters formed by impacts of objects about the same size as the newly discovered binaries"
A global impact event would be like putting the muzzle of a 12 gauge right in your mouth and pulling the trigger - very messy but instantaneous. I foresee a long, drawn out wasting of the human race. Like having cancer or a parasite that slowly spreads through your body, poisoning every cell, consuming everything. Large doses of radiation or medication keep it at bay, but it eventually kills you after what seems like eons of suffering. How ironic.
posted
What's the number on the Alaskan oil reserve? Apparently 90% of the worlds oil comes from the middle east. Open up the Alaska reserve and only 87% comes from the mideast. (I may be wrong, but I understand it's very little, or unknown).
Of course, I have no idea, and I'm just pleased to be working for a company that's part of the solution. Yeah, yeah you've heard it before...but it's true.
Bring on the asteroid? Nah, I'll just take a quick death when a bus explodes next to me on the highway full of civilians.
posted
In truth, no-one knows for certain how much oil is there (if any). They did do a very limited amount of seismic surveys and thats where the #'s get thrown around by both sides (the min amount by the enviros & the max est. by the pro-drillers). If these est. are correct it would only reduce foreign dependence by 2-4%. I know 2 geologist who work for BP and they said that they are serious guestaments though. They also said that much of the oil under ANWR could be extracted anyway, without placing anything inside ANWR's boundary, they have the capability to basically drill sideways or at an angle, so the pad could be outside ANWR, and then drill at an angle underneath it. Like I said the oil companies themselves have basically stayed out of it and haven't pushed for it.
It does look promising that they're gonna build a natural gas pipeling alongside the trans-alaska pipe, it'll then cut into Canada which has a substantial nat gas infrastructure already, and I think the intended terminus is Chicago......
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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A huge swath of the Alaska Arctic west of today's oil fields could yield more than 10 billion barrels of oil, five times as much as previously thought, a new government report estimates.
The study of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska said it is unlikely that a Prudhoe Bay-sized field lies beneath the reserve. But if oil prices are high enough, smaller pools of oil could be developed and Alaska would have another significant oil province.
The numbers U.S. Geological Survey officials released Thursday for NPR-A, an area roughly the size of Indiana, are comparable to their estimates of the much smaller Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain east of the North Slope fields.
Last month, amid opposition from environmentalists, the U.S. Senate defeated a proposal to allow oil companies to explore the coastal plain.
But unlike ANWR, nearly 1 million acres in NPR-A are open to oil drilling. And on June 3, federal land managers will take bids for rights to explore 3 million more acres in the northeast corner of the reserve.
State leaders hope new oil leases, exploration and updated estimates will push drillers west of the state's prolific but declining Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields.
"Hopefully, they will now go after the oil because the state is facing a future of lower oil production," said Chuck Logsdon, the state's chief petroleum economist.
Geologists have long believed the reserve holds vast oil accumulations. After all, crude seeps generously to the surface along the Arctic Coast. But more than 100 wells drilled since the 1940s have yet to yield any production.
In 1980, federal geologists' mean estimate of NPR-A oil was 2.1 million barrels.
The new study provides a mean estimate of 10.6 billion barrels. The USGS said there's a high probability of at least 6.7 billion barrels that technically could be recovered, with a low probability of at least 15 billion barrels. They also predict the reserve holds a mean of 61.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Their estimates include oil in federal, state offshore and Native land.
The amount that could be recovered would vary widely with the price of oil. Oil companies wouldn't produce any oil at prices below $21 a barrel. At $25, the USGS estimates 3.7 billion barrels produced.
By comparison, oil within existing North Slope fields totals about 20 billion barrels. Companies have tapped more than half of that since oil began flowing down the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 1977.
In making their new estimates, geologists were armed with data from new oil fields just outside the reserve and new exploration technology.
Alpine, a 429 million-barrel oil field just east of NPR-A that started up 18 months ago, played a key role in the updated analysis. Geologists believe the reserve contains sandstone structures like those found around Alpine.
Phillips Alaska Inc., the oil company that runs Alpine, is also betting on the reserve. It has punched nine wells in the northeast corner since 1999.
Last year Phillips said it discovered three promising oil prospects that are about the size of Alpine. Details on those discoveries, however, remain confidential, and Phillips hasn't said what it found at three wells drilled this year.
State oil experts said the new estimates confirm NPR-A is a promising frontier in a state where oil production peaked 13 years ago. Oil fees and taxes to fund nearly 80 percent of the state general budget.
NPR-A could help offset declining oil fields like Prudhoe, where production is falling about 10 percent a year. The state's new revenue forecast anticipates oil will begin flowing from the reserve in 2007, with perhaps 75,000 barrels a day by 2010.
Still, the federally owned reserve wouldn't pump as much money into Alaska's budget as oil produced on state land. The state and federal governments would split NPR-A royalties equally, Logsdon said.
Tapping the reserve remains a huge chore. The oil is probably in hard-to-find traps scattered over hundreds of miles. And companies would have to extend pipelines from their eastern oil fields to siphon oil from the reserve.
The development challenges don't escape U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska. He called the report heartening but added that ANWR's coastal plain remains the nation's best onshore prospect for a huge discovery.
"Development in the coastal plain would be far more concentrated, likely improving the economics and certainly lessening the environmental impacts," Murkowski said Thursday.
A 1998 federal study found the coastal plain could hold up to 16 billion barrels, with a mean of 10.4 billion barrels.
The refuge could hold several giant oil fields, each ranging from 500 million to more than 1 billion barrels. NPR-A might have only one field of more than 500 million barrels, according to the Geological Survey.
The report also says it would cost less to produce oil from ANWR.
When oil fetches $20 to $30 a barrel, the amount of economically recoverable oil in ANWR is 3.2 billion to 6.3 billion barrels.
But in the same price range, the amount of recoverable oil in NPR-A is between zero and 5.6 billion barrels. Alaska North Slope crude closed Thursday at $27.11 a barrel.
posted
BP bowing out of ANWR lobbying group HURT: Oil giant's pullout will take $50,000 yearly from Arctic Power's pocketbook.
By Liz Ruskin Anchorage Daily News
(Published: November 26, 2002) Washington -- As the lobbying group Arctic Power gears up for yet another year of trying to persuade Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, Alaska's second-largest oil producer has dropped out of the effort.
BP Alaska told Arctic Power last week that it would no longer contribute money to the group and that the company's representative on the board was resigning.
"It's not a message about ANWR at all," said BP Alaska spokesman Paul Laird. "It's simply a business decision that BP made that it no longer wants to be part of the debate."
He said BP paid annual dues of $50,000.
"It's definitely a hit financially," said Kim Duke, executive director of Arctic Power. "It's disappointing."
The news was cheered in the Washington offices of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
"We've been targeting BP for four years to get them to finally live up to their green logo and green image," said Athan Manual, director of U.S. PIRG's Arctic wilderness campaign. "This is a really big step."
Arctic Power, devoted solely to opening ANWR, gets most of its funding from the state. Last year the Legislature granted it $3.5 million.
The 19 million-acre refuge in northeastern Alaska is closed to drilling, but Congress has struggled for years over whether to open 1.5 million acres on the coastal plain.
The House last year passed a bill opening ANWR, but the Democrat-controlled Senate did not. The fight will begin anew in 2003, but this time with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the White House.
Manual said Arctic Power lost more than money with BP's withdrawal.
"I think it undercuts (Arctic Power's) credibility on the Hill," he said. "Their prestige and influence is diminished a bit."
Duke said she sees BP's move as another sign that Alaska isn't as important to the big firms operating there as it once was.
BP has significant operations elsewhere in the world.
The oil giant has been scaling back its Alaska work force and said it won't explore far afield from its existing North Slope wells.
"The companies have such an international focus now," Duke said.
Still, she can't imagine BP would walk away from ANWR if Congress decides to allow development there.
"I think once it's open, they would definitely be involved," she said. "It's the biggest onshore prospect in the entire country."
Environmentalists hope BP will decide it can't afford the bad publicity that would accompany the development of an area that's become the poster region for the conservation movement.
BP has been working for more than two years to remake itself in a greener image. It has embraced solar energy and changed its motto to "Beyond Petroleum."
Meanwhile, BP's chief executive, Lord John Browne, announced in March a new worldwide policy of not funding political activities or political parties.
Laird said the company will stay out of the debate but not necessarily out of ANWR itself.
"When and if a decision is made to open it, we'll evaluate the decision on the basis of whether it's going to be commercial for us and whether the opportunities in ANWR are competitive with investment opportunities elsewhere in the world," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at 1-202-383-0007 or lruskin@adn.com
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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NPR-A options on table HEARINGS: Public can express opinions on oil reserve Thursday.
More Information
By Wesley Loy Anchorage Daily News
(Published: February 11, 2003) With oil drillers effectively locked out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another mammoth chunk of North Slope tundra is drawing more attention -- and conflict.
Like ANWR, the vast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the west could harbor lots of oil and gas, and oil companies would like to get at it. But conservationists, particularly those concerned about the reserve's rich bird life, say mixing oil fields and feathers won't fly.
The debate could heat up Thursday in Anchorage, when the federal Bureau of Land Management will hold a public hearing on options for opening a new 8.8 million-acre swath of the reserve.
"There's a wide diversity of opinion about what is the best way to use the public land," said Curt Wilson, chief of planning and environmental coordination with the Alaska BLM office.
Wilson helped draft a 1,000-page environmental report on options for using the reserve's midsection, known as the Northwest Planning Area. This would be the second of the reserve's three zones to be studied for possible oil and gas development.
Alternatives range from making the whole area available to oil and gas exploration to none at all.
The BLM hasn't yet chosen a preferred alternative. And it won't until Nov. 3, when the agency hopes to publish a final decision. In the meantime, people are encouraged to weigh in with written or oral comments, Wilson said.
President Warren G. Harding created a 23 million-acre reserve by executive order in 1923, citing the "large seepages of petroleum along the Arctic coast of Alaska."
The coast held plenty of oil, all right, but it was found a good 60 miles or so east of the reserve at Prudhoe Bay in 1967.
Oil has since been pumped from other fields on Prudhoe's flanks, but none has come from the remote petroleum reserve. Developing oil and gas from there likely would require hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines to tie it into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
Some apparently successful drilling was done recently in the reserve's northeastern corner. In 2001, oil company Conoco Phillips, the state's top oil producer, announced it had found three promising oil and gas prospects there.
Overall, the reserve is hardly pristine. After Harding's executive order, and over a span of six decades, the U.S. government conducted drilling programs in what formerly was known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve. That drilling found only a few small oil and gas fields.
Last year the U.S. Geological Survey issued a new estimate of the reserve's oil and gas potential. It likely contains between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, with industry likely to move 1.3 billion to 5.6 billion barrels to market so long as oil prices are $22 to $30 per barrel, according to the estimate. It adds that the reserve likely also holds vast stores of natural gas.
For the oilmen, a tantalizing feature is the Barrow Arch, a potentially oil-rich geologic vein that cuts across Prudhoe Bay and west through the reserve, including the middle zone now being considered for development. The industry spent $100 million in 1999 for exploration leases in the reserve's first, or northeast, zone. Industry players were disappointed that the Clinton administration excluded from that sale 600,000 acres overlying some of the Barrow Arch because the wetlands are nesting areas for brant, Canada geese, peregrine falcons and other birds.
The BLM's environmental study says oil and gas exploration and development would destroy, at most, 1,500 acres of soil and vegetation.
Once the public review process is complete, the BLM hopes to hold an oil and gas lease sale for oil explorers in May or June 2004, Wilson said. The state and federal governments would split proceeds from those sales.
The public hearing will run from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday in Loussac Library's first-floor conference room. BLM staffers will be around for questions beginning at 5:30 p.m.
To see the environmental assessment, visit the BLM in the federal courthouse, 222 W. Seventh Ave., or go to aurora.ak.blm.gov/npra/. For more information, call 907-271-3318.
Reporter Wesley Loy can be reached at wloy@adn.com or 907-257-4590.
Audubon's alternative NPR-A: Compromise would allow oil and protect wildlife, group says.
By Doug O'Harra Anchorage Daily News
(Published: February 11, 2003) Scientists with Alaska Audubon have written a "wildlife habitat" alternative for oil and gas exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Proposed as a compromise, the Audubon plan would leave most of the high-potential oil and gas area open to development while blocking or restricting leases in habitat most sensitive to waterbirds, threatened spectacled eiders, caribou and polar bears.
"We charged ourselves with identifying the highest, most valuable wildlife and fish habitat," said biologist John Schoen, chief scientist for Audubon in Alaska. "This is our best cut on protecting those areas while being sensitive to oil potential."
"We think there's a lot of room for a careful approach that's going to leave a significant area open for oil and gas leasing," added Stan Senner of Audubon Alaska. "We think that's a different kind of note than what's previously been heard from the environmental community.
"Usually it's 'draw a line in the sand and no more.' That's not going to work here."
Audubon scientists plan to present their alternative as part of the public comment on a 1,000-page draft environmental impact study that will govern the next wave of oil exploration across Alaska's Arctic. The group has also conducted a broader study of biological resources in the entire 23.5 million-acre petroleum reserve, with recommendations for special management areas to protect wildlife.
The federal Bureau of Land Management is conducting the study process. BLM planner Curt Wilson said that he has not read Audubon's proposals but that the agency is willing to incorporate new scientific information into a final plan.
"We usually get very, very serious substantive comments from environmental organizations, from the borough and state, and from the oil companies," Wilson said.
What's termed the Northwest Planning Area of NPR-A holds 8.8 million acres of tundra and lake-dotted wetlands.
It stretches from just west of existing oil leases near Teshekpuk Lake to Icy Cape on the Chukchi Sea, from the bluffs along the Colville River to Point Barrow. It includes the villages of Barrow, Atqusuk and Wainwright, and important subsistence grounds. There are deep lakes, nesting sites and rivers with anadromous fish. Across its vastness is woven a complex ecological tapestry populated by waterbirds, raptors, brown bears, wolves, musk oxen, caribou, whales, seals and polar bears.
The northeast corner of this area is of particular interest. It holds about 1.1 million acres that federal planners say has high to moderate potential for oil and gas development, depending on the price of oil. Yet much of this zone also contains some of the most sensitive biological habitat.
While the three BLM alternatives vary widely in the total amount of area open to oil and gas leasing, two of the three choices would open all or most of this high-potential area to exploration. A third alternative would close all but 2 percent of this area to leasing, a choice that planners say will probably mean no development.
"We tried to build alternatives so we cover the extreme range, from full development to almost no development," Wilson said. "That allows us to chose something in between without having to start over again."
The Audubon proposal arose from a study of biological hot spots across the entire region, compiled over the past two years by a team of scientists using hundreds of studies and reports. The $125,000 project has produced detailed maps showing wildlife concentrations and habitat use. Co-sponsors are the Nature Conservancy of Alaska and the Conservation GIS Center.
For the 8.8 million-acre NPR-A northwest area, Audubon recommended creating special management areas along Kasegaluk Lagoon to protect beluga whales; along Peard Bay to protect shorebird and waterfowl nesting habitat as well as polar bear denning areas; along a southern portion of Ikpikpuk River with high densities of peregrine falcons; and along Dease Inlet with habitat used by birds, marine mammals, bears and caribou.
No oil leasing would be allowed on about 2.1 million acres; surface activities would be restricted on about 260,000 acres (mainly Dease Inlet); and special stipulations would apply to about 368,000 acres where yellow-billed loons and the threatened spectacled eiders nest.
The conservation proposal would prohibit leasing on about 405,000 acres where it overlaps the high-potential oil exploration grounds. But the proposal would still allow oil and gas exploration on about 65 percent of that land, Schoen and Senner said.
"We're trying to come up with a commonsense approach," Schoen said. "We don't oppose development. We want to make sure that development is planned and has minimal impact on biological resources."
Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com and 907-257-4334.
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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