I don’t think we really have to worry about that anytime soon.

Alright I know that statement is from 2004 but reading this story about Brazil’s recent discovery of a deep water oil field of 5,000,000,000 to 8,000,000,000 barrels of oil made me think of it.

Funny how that makes Brazil a major player in the world oil market able to stand up to Hugo Chavez:

While Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, has known of the field for more than a year, it only finished assessing its full potential in recent months. It announced on Nov. 8 that the field held some five billion to eight billion barrels of crude oil and natural gas.

The announcement has everyone in the region, and beyond, taking notice. A field that size — the biggest in the world since a discovery in Kazakhstan in 2000 — is a potential political game-changer for Brazil.

…

oil There is little doubt that the find gives Brazil new influence against energy players like Bolivia and Venezuela, and not just in the economic competition among energy suppliers, but in the political arena as well.

…

Mr. da Silva basked in the sudden possibilities, declaring that “Brazil would obviously participate in OPEC,” the global oil cartel, and already felt free enough to weigh in on its politics, saying that the organization should reduce oil prices.

…

Meanwhile, Petrobras, which has developed into a leading expert on deep-water oil exploration, will have to work hard to tap the find.

To coax the oil from Tupi, engineers will have to drill up to 16,000 feet below the sea floor through salt and rocks, in water depths of up to 10,000 feet, an undertaking that is at the frontier of the industry’s technological ability, according to PFC Energy, a consultancy in Washington.

Even if the field turns out to be a good deal bigger than Petrobras has estimated publicly, Brazil still could not match Venezuela’s 80 billion barrels of oil reserves. The Tupi field, if it holds at least 5 billion barrels, could push Brazil past 17 billion barrels.

but when the US has a known field of 25 to 50% greater size which is easier to extract it’s exploitation will do nothing to lower prices or decrease foreign oil dependence:

“It underscores what we’ve been saying all along, that oil drilling in the refuge would do next to nothing to actually meet America’s energy needs,” said Justin Tatham of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental organization active in protecting the refuge from development. “… We’re still going to be reliant, if not more reliant, on foreign sources of oil.”

…

With the 876,000 barrels the refuge could provide a day, the reliance on imports would drop to 66 percent of domestic consumption, the EIA analysis said. The study said it would likely have little impact on world oil prices — perhaps reducing the price by 30 to 50 cents a barrel if prices were in the $27-a-barrel range.

…

No one is certain how much oil is beneath the Alaskan coastal plain. In assuming 876,000-barrel-a-day production, the EIA assumed the “mean” estimate provided by geologists of 10.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable reserves. Geologists say there could be less or much more. Environmentalists argue that much of that oil may not be economically recoverable if oil prices decline.

source

Oil, Energy, ANWR, Politics

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 6:00 am by Chad and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.