Friday, February 11, 2011

New Technologies Open Up Oil And Gas Reserves

In one of my macro sections this week we read a chapter from the book The Economics of Macro Issues about technology. It mentions how better techniques have expanded our proven reserves of resources like oil. Some more cases of this were in the news recently.

One was New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US from the Associated Press. Here is an excerpt:

"A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers."

Something similar has happened with natural gas. See IEA doubles global gas reserves estimates from the BBC. Here is an excerpt:

"The world may have twice as much natural gas than previously thought, according to the rich nations' think tank the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The world may have 250 years of gas usage at current levels thanks to "unconventional gas" from shale and coal beds, Anne-Sophie Corbeau, senior gas expert at the IEA told BBC News."

It also has a nice picture explaining the new technique (I pasted it below). The authors of The Economics of Macro Issues also have a book called The Economics of Public Issues. Here is an interesing excerpt:

"In 1914, for example, the Interior Department announced that there was only a ten-year supply of oil left. That same department told us in 1939 that there was a thirteen-year supply. Then in 1951 we were told that oil wells would run dry in the mid-1960s. President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s said that we would use all proven reserves of oil in the world by the end of the 1980s."


No comments: