Oil

[Stewy]

(03-03-2022, 02:59 PM)GMDino Wrote: (I only deleted the quote to save space.)

Thanks for insider and expert analysis.

Things do get over simplified when it comes to social media.  

I'm still leaning toward my original point which was: We don't keep all our own oil, and I'll add there is little to nothing any POTUS can do to directly lower prices.

You're welcome.

Making a stink about the fact that we export our oil is pointless and misses the mark.  And, as I hope I showed, has nothing to do with past current or future oil prices, which was a large portion of his point.  He wants to blame republicans, when literally the controls on oil prices are far too multi pronged to say any one thing is the reason.  I will say that we should tax exports.  Seems kind of silly that we don't, so I'll give him that one point.

You can blame Biden for being an idiot who doesn't understand how oil prices work, but he's in good company with the rest of his administration and frankly most of the world, but ours is a long term investment industry.  Even if ALL restraints were removed on producing out national oil and gas assets, and we could lease on any Federal Lands or waters, it would take 3-10 years to have an affect on the US oil output.  That is mostly because all of the low hanging fruit (easy to find and produce) has been found.  To find more O&G we have to go into more hostile (cold/North Slope Alaska or Chuckchi Sea - Arctic, etc) or even deeper waters.  This requires in many cases development of facilities and equipment that doesn't currently exist and must be innovated to support a project.  This can be very expensive and delay getting oil out of the ground.  

Example:  I am an expert in the Lower Tertiary Play in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico.  It has about 3.5 billion barrels that have been discovered, with only a small amount of that currently producing.  There is one portion of the deepwater basin that has reservoirs that sit at extreme depths with extreme pressures.  The pressures are so high in the reservoir, that equipment that can handle 20,000psi pressures at the well head (at the surface), essentially didn't exist until last year.  The first 20k field was discovered in 2009.  It took a huge industry consortium working together, spending hundreds of millions of dollars (no help from the govt) to develop the wellheads to work at those pressures at the surface and be safe.  They exist now, but it literally has only been in the last year, that these discovered fields could progress.

Summary:  Decisions now will not affect production tomorrow.