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32 comments on Drilling on Wall Street

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ThatsItImout on June 26, 2006 - 6:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Good informative stuff, Dave, but your stuff usually is, you should try to get a deal with Gas and Oil Journal...technically as good or better than their stuff! :-)

I am surprised that more observers didn't see this for what it is, especially when you combine it with COP (Conaco Phillips) recent deal for Burlington Resources, and start breaking out the old "dash for gas" slogan.

Despite some hysteria, there is still a lot of natural gas in the world, and if you can go deepwater and go unconventional, still a good deal in North America, over and above the onshore conventional gas we have.  Our problem is NOT that we are in any way "out of natural gas" but instead that the growth in consumption has been so great in a relatively short span of years.  But natural gas, even at $6.00 to $7.00 per MM/btu is a good margin product, and if it goes back to somewhere around $10 plus, it's like printing money for the gas producers, even if you factor in the expense of deep water drilling.

The nation can stand natural gas prices up to $10.00 per MM/btu on a long term basis....not comfortable, but it can be done, since apparently most everyone else in the world is starting to suffer on price and supply right along with us (except for the big OPEC gas producers like Qatar).  At over $10.00 on a sustained basis, as Alan Greenspan testified a couple of years ago, it becomes a threat to the economy, construction and industrial trades.

So the question is not, as some seem to think, "Will we run out of gas and the lights go dark?  (No), But instead, we should ask, "What are the odds that we can keep natural gas prices at what is now the new "sweet spot" of over $7.00 but under $10.00 per MM/btu?"

Why is that the "sweet spot"?  Wouldn't it be better if it were at $3.00 or $4.00 bucks?  ANSWER: NO.

At too low of a price, waste grows even more prolific, and the return on investment in deep water drilling, LNG projects, the Arctic pipeline, and development of 'stranded" and "unconventional gas" becomes impossible to repay the capital costs of the projects.

So when we say, "Cheap oil is a thing of the past", we should probably just go ahead and add, "and if your dreaming of a return to cheap natural gas, get over it."

In closing we should recall one thing:  Right now, there are two major industries that still must wish and dream with all of their heart of a return to cheap natural gas, despite all indications that it will not happen:  The tar sand oil industry, and the ethanol fuel industry.  Kinda' ironic, ain't it?  :-)

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

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oilmanbob on June 26, 2006 - 7:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
 The biggest natural gas exploration plays in the United States are the Missippian/Devonian shale plays ie the Barnett Shale/Fayetteville Shale/Woodward Shale, the coalbed methane, and the deep and tight Cotton Valley, Bossier sand plays.
They all make expensive gas. I know the Barnett Shale is averaging about $4.00 a MCF, and maybe someone has the figures for costs on the other plays. I know the coalbed methane is a horizontal play and probably expensive since the wells have a low volume long lived flow, and the Cotton Valley/ Bossier are deep and require fracs, also expensive.
   I agree that there is plenty of natural gas left, but its the expensive stuff. $6.00 or more is needed just to pay out the wells and have a decent profit.
  One thing about the habitat of oil. Its almost all found at depths between about 2,000 ft and 10,000 ft. Yes, I know there is lots shallower, but it tends to be heavy and not have enough pressure to drive it through the rock into the wells. Deeper the oil tends to get naturally cracked by the heat and pressure into natural gas. Since we can now drill and produce gas down to at least 20,000 ft. technology has more than doubled the amount of prospective gas. Expensive gas.
  What we are calling peak oil is cheap,light,sweet crude that is easy to refine. The holy annointed saviors of the refining industry and automotive industry, tar sands and oil shale kerogen, coal to liquids although common aren't cheap to recover or process, and the CO2 is killing all of us.  We have  craven politicians pandering to everyone and not telling the truth. The mainstream media won't tell the truth because of the advertising budgets of the car and gasoline industries. We are going to have to change our ways quickly or we are all face a world that is very bleak.Six Billion People!Its the real root of peak oil.    
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davebygolly on June 26, 2006 - 11:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Six Billion People! Its the real root of peak oil."

This is true. Very few are willing to face up to it. Everything else, every conservation step is a wasted unless we also address this issue. It's completely obvious.

We either bring world population under control at our own inititiative or nature does it for us. But it would take an uprecedented degree of mutual cooperation between countries, a world-wide education campaign, a change in our world culture.

It won't happen yet. Disaster of some scale will befall us. But I am not a long term pessimist. At some point, realism will prevail. There have been many world-wide bodies functioning in the second half of the 20th century addressing global problems, maybe not with great success always, or even mostly. But their existence shows what's possible. It's just a matter of how much suffering it will take to get our full attention.

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Prodigal Son on June 27, 2006 - 12:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
In a way, the world faced a similar situation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- isolation had ended and we were confronting, for the first time, the prospect of living together on a steadily shrinking globe. That first experiment ended with world war followed by depression and another world war. We've climbed out of that hole to even greater heights..only now we face the same old problems in a world of declining resources.
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Nagorak on June 27, 2006 - 1:47am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's not the root of the problem though.  There are only approaching 300 million in the U.S. and we use 25% of the world's energy.  World population is not the problem, because much of the world doesn't use oil and gas, and the rest while using some, use much, much less than we in the first world do.  

Most countries that are developing into industrialized economies see the need to address population growth.  Not all of them do, and not all of them will, but if they don't, they are the ones that are going to suffer.  The amount of oil a country can afford is based off of its relative wealth, not its population.  If India has 2 billion people, each person will get half as much energy.  

In the end the whole situation will be self regulating.  We can increase efficiency and use better technology to get by with less energy.  Beyond that, if the energy is not available we'll end up going without.  The burden will not be equally felt, but countries like India and China will feel great incentive to solve their population issues (as China already is doing).  If the first world is any guide, basic economics will do the rest, as population is beginning to decline in the first world, sans the United States.  

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ThatsItImout on June 27, 2006 - 2:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Nagorak,

Thank you for pointing out what should be to most people self obvious, but somehow never is.

I would go even further than your excellent sentence, "The amount of oil a country can afford is based off of its relative wealth, not its population.", and add a corallory:
"The amount of oil a country must afford to have compared to it's relative  wealth is based on it's relative waste."

Let's deal with those two facts, and keep our eyes on that prize first, before we attempt to socially reengineer the world, which has always had dubious chances of success anyway.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

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BrianT on June 27, 2006 - 9:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You make a good point. Continually we hear that peak oil is co-related strongly with peak economic output. As you state, most of the world's population is using little to no oil. Look, post-peak, the % of the world's population that will be using little to no oil will steadily increase. Under the oil usage/economic growth argument, these persons are contributing little to economic growth currently, so why would steadily adding to their numbers crash the global economy? The persons on the planet that are creating wealth are going to have access to oil for a very long time as the % of the world's population that has no access to oil steadily increases. This will not faze Wall Street in the least (in fact they will love it as downward pressure will be put on wages globally).
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32 comments on Drilling on Wall Street

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