Originally posted by: kage69
Wow... I haven't seen that many strawmen in a loooong time.
My thoughts exactly after reading your reply!
You're comparing reserves to consumption. Nice. Per the link in the OP the Gulf reserves are estimated at 3-15 billion barrels. Sounds a lot like ANWR's estimated reserves. (Except ANWR estimates are slightly higher and top out at 16 billion)
Yes I worded that poorly, and yes I'm aware of the difference between reserves and consumption, thank you. It's just that one element in the comparison (ANWAR) is far from certain as far as capacity estimates. They're ALL over the place. I guess if we give the OP story more time, it'll follow suit, who knows. I threw out the one figure concerning ANWAR that many agree upon, sue me.
Anyway, there has been a ton of obfuscation and flat out lying over ANWAR from those with a vested interest in the development. Example: The Interior Dept, after it's initial attempt to sugar coat and pump up the first survey in 87, later admitted that the odds were 5:1 against finding any economically recoverable oil, 15:1 against finding as much as six months' national supply, and over 100:1 against another huge Prudhoe Bay-sized find. Independent analysts using realistic assumptions later found that the expected reserves would be closer to six days' national supply and that the producers would lose money. The only point of agreement was that the Refuge's biological core, the Coastal Plain, would be screwed. Seems silly for a cache that won't have a sizeable impact on our needs. If the jobs that would be created are really the driving factor, then they should just come out and say it instead of trying to sell everyone the 'it'll cut our foreign dependence!' song and dance.
Bottom line, we won't know how much ANWAR holds until we pump it out, but then that's another point to consider - all these estimates we hear are about the entire region, not the portion that's up for drilling.
Next you try to compare an ongoing project to a start up project. If you started both at zero, you'd be in production in about the same amount of time. The gulf find has been in the works for a while now. If you started THAT project today, you wouldn't be pumping oil for years.
Are you not aware of how ocean drilling works? Oil companies move rigs around as they need them, rig transfer to drilling can be measured in months or even weeks. I fail to see how that is comparable to setting up a landbased drilling operation in one of the most remote areas of the world, which is subject to regular brutal weather. I've got 3 friends working on rigs as we speak, one is an administrator in the North Sea, and the other two are roughnecks in the Gulf, down by the Destin Dome drilling for 'sweet crude.' Their input on this matter is in stark contrast to your opinion as far offshore drilling goes. If Exxon started to build a Hibernia class rig today just for this latest Gulf find, then yes, it would take quite awhile. Given how much seems to be down there, added to our rather immediate need for it, I doubt that's the route they would take. Not with dozens of rigs already in the Gulf and elsewhere.
Then you compare operations from countries that are nowhere nearly as heavily regulated for safety as the US sites are... let alone Prudhoe (with the obvious EXCEPTION of BP) Also, the oil pumped out of the ocean has to be transported just like the oil pumped out of the ground and with the same safety concerns.
I'm not disputing that American firms operate better than their foreign counterparts, I'm just saying they're by no means perfect, the BP incident being an example. I think that the Alaskan pipeline still being in service so many years after it was meant to be retired says a lot. You're one to speak of strawmen though aren't you? Do you really think I was under the impression oil from ocean sources didn't need to be transported??? I've been on several rigs, in both hemispheres, and know a few people who practically live on them full time - it's the land based operations I'm not too familiar with (as I previously admitted).
And transportation of the oil is not the only concern of offshore drilling. On several occasions off shore rigs have encountered gas pockets that have sunk or nearly sunk entire platforms. When drilling off shore you have all the dangers of on shore drilling plus the added variable of the ocean. Off shore drilling is NOT safer than on shore drilling.
Of course it isn't, but the major disasters that have happened involved the breaching of tankers, not rigs. Current day rigs are quite clean and very safe, blowback isn't the danger it used to be thanks to computer controlled bypass valves and state-of-the-art fire suppression systems - but like most endeavors nothing is absolutely perfect. Of course, there's a pretty big difference between being on a rig in the North Sea or off the Grand Banks to say, southern Mexico. Go visit some drilling operations in Northern Africa and then tell me how safe it is, but do yourself a favor and take a vest. And a bodyguard.
"Some guy... not sure... mumble mumble... back track..."
It was a sarcastic remark made over dialogue I heard on the news, and I'm not backtracking - I definetly recall a statement to that effect, I just can't remember who said it. Don't really G.A.S if you don't believe me. If I come across the quote you'll be the first to know.
Drilling hasn't affected the polar bears. In fact, they rarely come up in the discussion of species that need to be protected from drilling. If anything, in my experience at Prudhoe, they get a lot of free meals from the camp dumpsters. Caribou come up all the time but as we all know their populations have done nothing but skyrocket since drilling commenced.
Yeah it's the CFCs supposedly, but they are a large animal indigenous to the area in question and have not been doing good at all, contrary to your previous claim. They need to be protected PERIOD, and I don't think the byproducts of oil develepment in the region will assist in that effort. I'd be less concerned about caribou than I would be terns, foxes, seals, fish, plankton, a wide variety of vegetation, you know those kinds of things. Or are large species the only ones that matter? I wonder what would happen to the caribou if suddenly the species of lichen they favor were to die out. And bears eating from dumps is baaad. Sure they might pack on a few extra pounds courtesy of discarded Twinkies and processed cheese, but they tend to be less threatened by humans when they get into that habit. End result is usually someone having to get a gun.
Tanker safety has nothing to do with on-shore drilling. Tanker safety is tanker safety. (This would be strawman... what? Four?) And tankers don't care if the oil they carry is from an on-shore or off-shore rig. The likelyhood of an accident is all the same and is completely unrelated to where the oil came from.
You brought up spills, specifically devasting ones. Devasting spills have historically come from tankers crashing into rocks, something quite relevent to tanker safety. I'm really sorry you can't make this connection and instead try to frame it as a strawman, but that's not my problem. "Tankers don't care blah blah..." LOL, who the fvck cares? My god, for someone so sensitive about strawmen it's startling how many of them you produce!
Starting to get the impression debating with you is pointless if this is how you behave.
What's more, that same 200,000 gallon spill on the water would have covered an enormous area and devestated the wildlife in the local area. On land it covered an acre or so.
Hehheh, what was that you said about backpeddling earlier?
I'll take this to mean you acknowledge you didn't have a clue what you were talking about when you equated the Prudhoe spill with the Exxon Valdez accident. 200,000 = 52
million ? Um, what?
So yeah... bee effin ess. Try again.
Try again so you can employ the same things you accuse me of doing, all the while ignoring the gist of what I'm saying so you can throw out your little kiddie phrase?
:laugh: I'll pass, I've wasted too much time on your kind in this forum as it is. You want a bigger check from the state and possibly a new job, I get it.
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