An overlooked corner of West Texas is believed to contain billions of bls of new oil

[Onkel Neal]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/inve...ery/index.html

Apache (APA) revealed the huge find this week after more than two years of stealthily buying up land, extensive geological research and rigorous testing.
The Houston company estimates the discovery, dubbed "Alpine High," could be worth at least $8 billion.

Apache believes the new shale play spans at least five formations, contains over three billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of rich natural gas.

Peak oil gets farther away.

[vienna]

The main problem is the tendency for Texas-based oil concerns to just sit on their finds within Texas rather than exploit; part of the reason is the very, very high depletion charges and fees levied by Texas for pumping out petroleum products; another is the widely suspected, but never acknowledged desire by Texas oil concerns to exploit any and all oil in other states and areas while hoarding their own stores; by doing so, the belief is the Texas companies will be "the last men standing" if, or when, other oil sources are depleted. They will, in fact, become a US version of the Saudis and be able to dictate terms by meting out the remaining oil as leverage. As of 2008, Texas oil depletion charges and fees were the highest, by far, in the US and Texas oil interests have spent millions in an effort to prevent other oil producing states from raising their fees to anywhere near those of Texas. In 2006, here in California, where the state charges and fees are rather low, there was a ballot initiative to raise the state fees to a level near Texas' rates; the Koch brothers financed a counter campaign, providing a fund of US$19,000,000 to defeat the initiative. The initiative didn't pass, preserving cheap oil exploitation for Texas concerns. It seems "Drill, baby, drill!" to achieve US energy independence only applies if the drilling is done outside of Texas...

However, the ever increasing rise of alternate energy (solar power, more electric vehicles, etc.) are putting a strain on the ambitions of Texas oil, in particular, and the world oil market, in general. I wonder what it would be like to be sitting on a vast pool of oil and having no place to sell it for the price one anticipated?...



<O>

[Rockstar]

Granted transportation consumes the vast majority of oil. But even if all cars went electric in twenty years. Oil will still be needed to make the batteries, plastics, paints, insulation, real faux leather interiors, tires and lubricants. In otherwords pretty much everthing needed to build and maintain the wonder car.

Oil is always going to be around therefore we will always find a use for it, if you ask me Texas knows this and is preparing for the future.

edit: lets not forget the rockets and propulsion systems required to send gps satellites into space for the cars navigation system. Oh ya with public and private transportation nolonger consuming oil think of all that fuel we'll now have to propell our tanks and fighter jets into battle.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Oil is always going to be around therefore we will always find a use for it, if you ask me Texas knows this and is preparing for the future.

The US knows this and is the reason the US burns up "others" oil fields. Specifically the Middle East. One day the balance of oil power will change.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

The US knows this and is the reason the US burns up "others" oil fields. Specifically the Middle East. One day the balance of oil power will change.

As a parallel, TX knows this and is the reason it burns up other state's oil resources, going for the "last man standing" endgame. This tactic is one of the reasons the Obama administration questioned the TX oil companies holdings of Federally-administered oil exploitation leases in states other than TX that were not being used; the government basically imposed a "use it or lose it" standard on the leases and cancelled some of the leases outright; the oil companies were, shall we say, not amused...




<O>

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by vienna

As a parallel, TX knows this and is the reason it burns up other state's oil resources, going for the "last man standing" endgame. This tactic is one of the reasons the Obama administration questioned the TX oil companies holdings of Federally-administered oil exploitation leases in states other than TX that were not being used; the government basically imposed a "use it or lose it" standard on the leases and cancelled some of the leases outright; the oil companies were, shall we say, not amused...




<O>

Texas is burning up other states oil? Then where does the gas for my car from?

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by vienna

The main problem is the tendency for Texas-based oil....<O>

Not exactly Texas based, Founded in Mpls, Minnesota where the heart still is; I can't believe he's still at it at age 94! http://trib.com/honor/wwii/they-served-with-honor-st-lt-raymond-plank-ucross/article_06a68d1f-d195-5ae2-afa7-ebf52534efa7.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Plank

Under Plank’s leadership Apache expanded its oil and gas operations internationally and built the company from its original $250,000 capitalization to a market capitalization of over $30 billion. Plank invented the Master Limited Partnership and made it a personal and company mission to expose corruption at Enron and within the energy merchant trading sector. Plank attended the Blake School in Minneapolis and credits his Latin instructor Noah Foss and other Blake teachers with providing the educational basis and academic discipline necessary for a successful life. Upon graduation from Yale, Plank returned to his hometown of Minneapolis and with two partners formed Northwest Business Service, an accounting, tax and small business advisory firm. Through this enterprise, he became familiar with the types of investments then being offered in oil and gas exploration and production. Recognizing that investors’ interests in this field could be better served through a different concept, Plank and two childhood friends, formed Apache Corporation in 1954 with $250,000 in investor capital. Apache offered its first oil and gas investment program in 1956.

One tough Blake School '39 grad

[vienna]

I wasn't referring to Apache, specifically, just the Texas-based oil industry, in general. The fact Texas-based oil companies are very actively exploiting in, it seems, any other state but Texas has been used to bolster the belief in Texan oil hoarding. Added to the hoarding is the heavy expenditure by those companies to lobby against any of the other states levying fees anywhere near those levied in Texas; California was only one example...

(BTW: The main reason I know as much as I do about the CA situation is I worked on the anti-fee increase project for a CA GOP consultant firm; very eye-opening, in may ways...)...

True, there will always be a need for oil products, but, as car mileage performance goes up, alternate fuels are developed (hydrogen is most likely to be the next big push), and US consumer taste and awareness of environmental issues increase, the market for oil products as it stands now will be radically changed. Added to the mix is the growing recycling industry; if a previously manufactured petroleum product can be easily recycled, the market for the manufacture of items made from oil will reduce. Where before oil products, and many other products, were seen as fully disposable, the trend is to recycle and reuse rather than continue building up bigger landfills...



<O>

[Aktungbby]

(hydrogen is most likely to be the next big push),

Why I'm seriously considering turning in my '86 Camry and '05 Corolla, each with 240,000 miles, on a new Mirai this very week. I'll still have be careful about the fuel stops as the only stations are 40 miles in either direction. The refuel 'infrastructure' is admittedly slim. The hydrogen tanks are pressurized and get 300 mi to the tank. The rebate from CA & Toyota, the fed tax credit together with a 15K fuel debit card made it a 'good deal'. And!!! I can ride the diamond lanes w/o any problem!

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

Why I'm seriously considering turning in my '86 Camry and '05 Corolla, each with 240,000 miles, on a new Mirai this very week. I'll still have be careful about the fuel stops as the only stations are 40 miles in either direction. The refuel 'infrastructure' is admittedly slim. The hydrogen tanks are pressurized and get 300 mi to the tank. The rebate from CA & Toyota, the fed tax credit together with a 15K fuel debit card made it a 'good deal'. And!!! I can ride the diamond lanes w/o any problem!

That's really interesting.. didn't know they were this far. But after all the 100-year-old Otto engine can still be powered by hydrogen, instead of mineral-based fuel.
Only problems are tank and infrastructure, as mentioned. And the design
Seems a lot of (german) car manufacturers have been sleeping ..

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

Why I'm seriously considering turning in my '86 Camry and '05 Corolla, each with 240,000 miles, on a new Mirai this very week. I'll still have be careful about the fuel stops as the only stations are 40 miles in either direction. The refuel 'infrastructure' is admittedly slim. The hydrogen tanks are pressurized and get 300 mi to the tank. The rebate from CA & Toyota, the fed tax credit together with a 15K fuel debit card made it a 'good deal'. And!!! I can ride the diamond lanes w/o any problem!

I think, duh I can still think You ought to get a van with regular fuel due to what if there was an earthquake and you needed gas would be easier to get gas than where you would with hydrogen. If you really want hydrogen check with the Ca auction every month in Sacramento for a used one that they don't want anymore and then ask them why they don't want it anymore.

15 hours a day! Get a van man Find a rest stop and rest
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[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by vienna

I wasn't referring to Apache, specifically, just the Texas-based oil industry, in general. The fact Texas-based oil companies are very actively exploiting in, it seems, any other state but Texas has been used to bolster the belief in Texan oil hoarding. Added to the hoarding is the heavy expenditure by those companies to lobby against any of the other states levying fees anywhere near those levied in Texas; California was only one example...

(BTW: The main reason I know as much as I do about the CA situation is I worked on the anti-fee increase project for a CA GOP consultant firm; very eye-opening, in may ways...)...

True, there will always be a need for oil products, but, as car mileage performance goes up, alternate fuels are developed (hydrogen is most likely to be the next big push), and US consumer taste and awareness of environmental issues increase, the market for oil products as it stands now will be radically changed. Added to the mix is the growing recycling industry; if a previously manufactured petroleum product can be easily recycled, the market for the manufacture of items made from oil will reduce. Where before oil products, and many other products, were seen as fully disposable, the trend is to recycle and reuse rather than continue building up bigger landfills...



<O>

thank you for your knowledge and input vienna

I thought you were from California ... how does someone from California know so much about Texas?

[Rockstar]

Well the U.S. may well be on its way to becoming the cleanest fuel burning, solar power producing, trash recycling, environmentalist tree hugging nation in the world. But the rest of the world is far from attaining environmental nirvana and will need oil to function well beyond the foreseeable future.

Id wager that once we become independent from foreign and domestic oil. We'll have cornered the market by continuing to produce oil, creating a glut that will keep prices down and other oil producing nations in the poor house.

The U.S. and Texas will have the world by the balls.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

thank you for your knowledge and input vienna

I thought you were from California ... how does someone from California know so much about Texas?

I am from California, originally from up North in San Francisco (Fillmore District, Noe Valley, & Outer Mission) and ended up here in Los Angeles (Hollywood). The reason there is so much knowledge about Texas available in California is because Texas seems to have a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to California; California is always in the top ten of the world; according to the most recent report I could find, if CA were a separate nation, it would rank number 6, overall:

As for the global rankings, the overall U.S. economy was No. 1 last year at $17.95 trillion. China was No. 2 at $10.98 trillion, followed by Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.
California was next at $2.46 trillion. France dropped to No. 7, followed by India and Italy.
Brazil, gripped by a deep recession, tumbled all the way to 10th.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/...e83780667.html

The rankings are subject to interpretation, so your mileage may vary...

Texas, the last I saw was ranked 12th overall, but it used to be right behind CA in the rankings. Part of the decline is due to the fall in oil prices and the resulting 'depressed' economy of TX...

Texans has long been tinkering and interfering with CA politics and state/local governments. CA has huge oil deposits and TX companies had a wide rein over exploiting the oil early in the 20th century, but, by the mid 60s, the citizens and voters had had enough of the pollution and destruction caused by oil drilling; strict laws were passed imposing strict limitations on the oil industry's impact on the environment. It should be noted the oil companies were drilling everywhere and anywhere. I spent two years at a high school in downtown Los Angeles, and there were oil rigs in a field just opposite the school; there is a very ritzy, high end shopping mall on the border of Beverly Hills and, when it was being built, a slice of the land had to be walled off and disguised because of a couple of active wells that the oil company responsible would not give up; it should also be noted that prior to the construction of the shopping mall, the site was the location of a children's amusement park, but the oil company drilled anyway...

Because of the strict laws, TX companies and individuals have spent huge amounts of money trying to either get the laws reversed or amended, or trying to get candidates sympathetic to oil interests elected to office; so far, the effort has not been successful; new and stricter laws have been enacted, and the candidates, almost totally from the GOP, have either failed to win, or, if they did win, have be ineffective...

The sums of money expended by TX interests is staggering; we, here in CA, don't really mind: if they want to add strength to our economy, who are we to deny them the chance to 'spend, baby, spend' within our borders; TX dollars are just as good as anyone else's. I mentioned the 2006 election project I worked on; here is a link describing the initiative and the facts of the election:

https://ballotpedia.org/California_P..._Oil_Tax_(2006)

If you look carefully at the list of opponents, you will note there is no mention of any oil industry individuals or organizations; however if you look at the list of contributors in opposition, the list is all oil interests, many of them either directly based in TX or allied to TX oil interests...

Additionally, TX has been making very aggressive efforts to poach businesses from CA, even to the point of then-Governor Rick Perry making trips to CA to wine and dine CA business executives to lure them to TX. He has some little success, but the critical businesses have remained here in CA and many have expanded. I recall seeing a TV news report where the reporter asked a CA tech executive if he would ever entertain a move to TX; he said, given his sector, tech, was headquartered in the North in the SF Bay Area and in the South in the Santa Monica/Playa Del Rey seaside area, he really didn't think his employees would relish a move to what he referred to as a 'bit of a desert'...

So, we here in CA tend to have a bit of knowledge of TX just because they just won't leave us alone. Oh, by the way, don't be so hard on Long Beach: they really have come a long way from the days when I first saw it in the 60s, although I do kinda miss the old funky Pike...




<O>

[Jeff-Groves]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

I thought you were from California ... how does someone from California know so much about Texas?

Wishful dreaming of getting out of Californication?