Energy Security

[Ken White]

Sabotage or judicious blocking due to ground water concerns?

I'm not giving Exxon a pass -- nor am I ready to agree to 'sabotage' based on the linked article. Obviously you can state your opinion but if you know more than that article outlines, I for one would be interested.

[Rick M]

Thanks, Ken

No, I don't know any more than this article indicates.

UpstreamOnline is a mainstream industry site and I have not known them to post information that appeared titillating or highly speculative. I assume that when they post something, they have done some homework on it.
In this case I'm not sure I like their headline "ExxonMobil may be fined $1b"... we are a long way from that outcome, with determination of guilt standing in the way.
A simple statement like "Exxon accused of sabotaging Texas wells" would have more accurately described both the issue at hand and its legal status.

Meanwhile, these are serious allegations against one of the world's most powerful corporations, and Mr. Patterson would have to be very foolish to make public accusations with little to back them up.

These accusations are worthy of investigation.
ExxonMobil should feel the same way.

Surely it is in the public interest that the Commission allow hearings on this issue.

[Rick M]

This Statesman article (from Dec. 2007) provides some background and cites specifics of court testimony:
http://www.statesman.com/news/conten...1230exxon.html

[Ken White]

unknown phenomenon -- got in the way of common sense and the Texas Supreme Court wiggled out of a decision in a case that the State would like to see go away. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between the two poles. Agree the Commission should hold the hearings, a case this old is bound to have produced reams of data and evidence. Be interesting to see what the Railroad Commission does.

Approaching the age of the shale that floats the oil, I see nothing new or really shocking here. Little stupid or crooked people do surprises me, unfortunately. Humble / Esso both were pretty rapacious and their offspring Exxon should be expected to be no different. Corporations and People are prone to do what they can get away with. Here we theoretically have a big, bad Corp vs. a little guy -- but little guys also have been known to cheat, lie and steal. Generally Governments and the Courts keep the large and the small from going too far but they slip up occasionally. Courts and Commissions, regrettably, are also prone to human foibles.

People just aren't as nice as we'd like...

Thanks for the links. Curious to see how this works out.

[Rick M]

A team of researchers has recently examined the data (of which there is precious little) relating to energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), or net energy.

Their study begins by stating, “Few issues, maybe none, are as important to industrial societies and their economies as the future of oil and gas supplies…. We no longer find large, cheap and easy to exploit reserves…” (p. 2).

The authors then point to a greatly overlooked aspect in the energy debate: “A critical issue missing from this debate is not how much oil is in the ground, or even how much we may be able to extract, but rather how much we can extract with a significant energy surplus. In other words, what we need to know is the net, not gross, energy available” (p. 2, emphasis added).

This research is an attempt to quantify what common sense tells us must be true: if we are drilling more, finding less, and the fields which we do find are either smaller, in more difficult locations, or of a lesser quality, then it stands to reason that it will cost not only more money but also more energy to find, develop and produce that energy.

They conclude that "global supplies of petroleum available to do economic work are considerably less than estimates of gross reserves and that EROI is declining over time..." (p. 1).

Their study is modestly entitled “A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Invested for Global Oil and Gas Production.”
Their pioneering attempt to quantify the decline in EROEI is a welcome addition to the literature.
This link provides the abstract and the link to the complete study (14 pgs):
http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/2/3/490

More general information on EROEI may be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI