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Originally Posted by Degsy  Yes, and then I'll give you the telephone number for greenpeace and you can ask them if we should stop killing whales or not. |
ummmm not sure what whales have to do with anything...
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Originally Posted by Degsy PIRG? Look up AKpirg's website and you'll see that their agenda is heavily tainted by the tree-hugging dreamers who think everything can run on hydrogen by next tuesday. gimme a break.
If I want to know how much oil is in Alaska, I'll ask the oil and exploration companies who are spending BILLIONS in trying to find out exactly how much is there and exactly where it is. These companies don't give billions away to fund a couple of billion barrels. My bet (from a little research and settling on a rough medium estimate from estimates on both ends of the spectrum) is ABOUT 10 Billion barrels (give or take a billion or two).
Now, conservative estimates put the reserves in Iraq at 200 Billion barrels, which means there's probably 300billion or so, all told. So, yeah, there's a shitload of oil in Iraq, but there's plenty in Alaska to keep us going for several decades, even if we stopped buying oil from Canada (our biggest oil supplier) today. |
1)
Alaska Oil Field's Falling Production Reflects U.S. Trend
2) (from wikipedia of all places)
The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels daily. If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil reserves were used to supply 5% of the U.S. daily consumption -- most is imported from Canada (19%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (11.5%), Nigeria (10.5%) and Venezuela (10.5%)[11] -- the reserves, using the low figure of 4.3 billion barrels, would last approximately 4300 days, or almost 12 years. Using the high estimate, the reserves would last approximately 11800 days, or 32 years. If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was used to meet 100% of U.S. demand, it would last for 215 days under the low estimate, and 525 days or just 1.4 years if it contained 10.4 billion barrels.
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lots of things to consider. just a very few:
it'll take a decade or maybe a little less to get a decent volume of oil flowing out of alaska per day.
the pipeline isn't nearly big enough, which means shipping via sea.
it's spider-web drilling, meaning smaller fields, but all over the place. lots of roads to build and transporting.
i'm sure there's a large span of numbers, but from what i've seen 10billion barrels is towards the upper limit.
might wanna reconsider the whole "stop buying oil from canada" statement. there's no way alaska could sustain that volume very long, let alone produce it at that rate.
the question was never if there's any oil in alaska. it's there. it won't last us very long though. and define "several" decades....
question is, is it worth it? from what i can see we've already got one foot planted in iraq. in the same time it would take to get a trickle of oil flowing out of alaska that will last us 32 years with a high estimate, there will be MUCH more coming out of iraq, which will last much longer than any of our kids will have to worry about.
i'm not for drilling in alaska because i just don't find it very practical in the long run. something about ripping up the wildlife reservation for a trickle of oil bugs me too, but where i stray from all the crusty-asses and their wind farms, is when i say that stability in the middle east and iraq maximizing it's oil production is the best solution for the WORLD, not just the US. and i thought you were from overseas degsy. don't you know a lot of countries are already paying an arm & a leg for oil? the iraq oil isn't just to help out THIS country...