Pique Oil
Ever since oil hit $147 a barrel last summer, analysts predicting "peak oil" - the point at which oil production begins sliding inexorably - have had a field day. Perhaps it's true, but the earth doesn't seem to want to cooperate, at least not yet.
BP yesterday announced the discovery of a "giant" oil field in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, 250 miles south and east of Houston. BP's partner in the venture is PetroBras, the state-owned Brazilian oil company that itself has made such huge strikes off the shores of Brazil that that country will likely become an oil exporter in a few years. While BP is coy about the exact size of the new field, I am privately told by sources that it could rival BP's existing Thunder Horse field in the GoM, which is the second largest in the US, after Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The technology involved in reaching this oil ought to boggle the mind: The platform sits nearly a mile above the ocean floor, while the oil and gas sit nearly seven more miles below that, under layers of rock and salt. The technology to go after these deposits, which are under enormous pressure at temperatures in the thousands of degrees, simply can't be bought "off the shelf." Energy companies file literally dozens, sometimes hundreds, of patents on each of these projects. The commitment of shareholder money, on something that is anything but a sure bet, is simply staggering.
I say "ought" to boggle the mind because no one seems much impressed with these amazing technological feats anymore. We used to be. The Trans-Continental Railroad, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Panama Canal, the Empire State Building, the Grand Coulee Dam, etc. (Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the latter.) Like so many things, the thrill seemed to drain away in the 1970s. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, an engineering marvel, even today, was passed only when then-Vice President Spiro Agnew cast a tie-breaking vote in its favor on July 17, 1973. (The-freshman Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware led the opposition to the pipeline, BTW.) Americans seem to take such things for granted today, which is sad.
The Tiber strike, of course, only underlines what this country is likely missing in the areas offshore where drilling has not been allowed for over three decades: the eastern GoM off Florida, the coast of California and ANWR. It also underlines the cluelessness of America's bipartisan don't drill/no nukes/wind-and-solar-will-save-us energy "policy" that benefits no one but the sheiks who run Saudi Aramco.