Brazil has begun selling off its "gift from god".............billions of barrels of undersea oil. As you might recall, this undersea oil was discovered off Brazil's coast back in 2007. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (mouthfull, if you can pronounce it), credited it to divine providence stating "God is Brazilian".
Let that not deceive you.........not all discoveries are serendipitous (my thoughts). This oil in the Tupi field that has been discovered is like so many other oil patches undersea. They are drilling as much as 5 miles down to extract oil that has been lying dormant under sheets of ice or salt as much as 1 mile thick. The risks involved may not even be worth the effort. But man will continue in his quest even if the risks are monumental.
This oil in the Tupi field could indeed boast Brazil as one of the top oil-producing countries. It will make fortunes for those involved so you know that corruption will be lurking deep within and man's greed and quest for money and power will bring enormous risks for all involved.
When the crude begins to flow, some experts are saying that Brazil has understated those risks, many of which we saw played out by the deep sea drilling off the Gulf coast of Mexico this past summer and the oil spill. Those oil rigs that were leased by BP were drilling 5 miles below the water and extracting it required multiple feats of engineering..........shifting ocean currents, near-freezing temperatures and crushing pressure on the sea floor. Not to mention miles of sand, stone, mud and salt which stand between the drillers and the oil.
The Tupi fields are known as the "pre-salt" region because the bulk of the oil is locked beneath a formation of hardened salt as much as 6,500 feet thick. That is over 1 mile (5,280 feet) thick. The closest part of the field is about 200 miles southeast from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro on a patch of sea floor where the water is already more than a mile deep. The mile thick salt layer is smashed between nearly 9,800 feet of rock and other sediment, which obviously creates special challenges for drill bits. A petroleum engineer said the hardness of salt could be comparable to the hardness of granite and that extracting it could be safely surmounted but would be as difficult as those challenges presented by deepwater drillers in the Gulf of Mexico.
No one knows for sure how many barrels of oil are locked deep down there but based on test wells drilled so far, the Brazilian government is betting tens of billions, which COULD, but unlikely I think, put them on par with Iraq @ 5.5 million bpd. Before this discovery, Brazil did not even rank in the top ten oil-producing countries but in 25 years (if we have not had a nuclear holocaust yet), Brazil will be up there in neon lights!
But this is why I believe in peak oil. Many people think that those who believe in peak oil think the earth is running out of oil. Obviously I do not believe that. What I do believe is that the we are clearly running out of cheap, quick, abundant oil that is easily extracted-all of the oil that is close to the surface of the earths crust has already been extracted. The earths crust looks like swiss cheese and the oil that is being extracted now is so far down below the earths surface that it is costing billions and billions and billions of dollars to extract, with no guarantees that the oil can be extracted or can even be found for that matter, even with sophisticated technology like sonar. We get a large import from the tar sands in Canada for oil consumption here in America, however it needs to be refined and that costs much more money and it is not nearly as beautiful as light, sweet crude from the Middle East that is pure in body and needs no further refinement.
M. K. Hubbert, a former shell geologist, predicted peak oil theory in 1956. He predicted the U.S. would peak at around 1965-1970 @ 10.2 million barrels per day, to which we did (we have been on a production slide since and now produce roughly 5-6 million barrels per day). We exported all our production years ago but to our peril because now we are dependent upon Mid East oil. The oil embargo of the 70's over the Arab-Israeli war pushed back global oil production to about 2005 when gas prices spiked, although Hubbert predicted global peak production in 2000. Hubberts theory of peak oil was mocked and laughed at by most so-called educated leaders and scientists.......but who's laughing now!
The most favorable oil obviously comes from the Middle East. But this is why we have such global instability (ongoing conflict between the Arabs and the Jews)! Most nations have stated outright that oil is the lifeblood to their economies and that it is a matter of national security. Men/Nations go to wars over such resources. In fact, most wars have been fought over oil! So how does oil play a role in the future? And how does it effect you and your family? Well I can tell you that most folks do not even know that ALL our plastics and polyester clothing (synthetics), from medicinal items and pharmaceuticals, to so much more comes directly from a portion of a barrel of oil after it undergoes more refinery. Just think about that.........every time you pick up a plastic bottle and where polyester clothing, or put on makeup to doll up you face to look glamourous, you are actually wearing black gold!!!!
If you are interested in understanding how oil in created (quite fascinating indeed), read a good book by Kenneth Deffeyes called "Beyond Oil". He delves into the creation of sediment and rock and goes into the chemical chain and molecular structure of black gold from its genesis. Deffeyes is a former geologist and also believes in peak oil. You can also go through my oil posts from previous years about the tough barrels in oil production and a brief adaptation from Kenneth Deffeyes book.
I am a book lover and I sure hope that we never get rid of books. Forget Amazon kindle...........there is nothing more pleasurable than reading a good, insightful, thought provoking and educational book!
*******update and correction to this post. The U.S. peak production was actually 10.2 million bpd, not 25 million bpd.**********