9:16 PM LINK
The second site that comes up for "Gulf Coast Drilling" on Google is Gulf Coast Environmental Defense web site. They provide this enviro-fact-rich page about the environmental damages of drilling of the Florida Coast. They also opine that very few Florida jobs would be created, being that all the drilling infrastructure is based out of Mobile. They state that the fish industry would close down for at least two years, and that even if no spills occur, having the reputation as an "oil town" could kill tourism.
This last point is an interesting argument. It think it's quite valid. Houston has that reputation, and no one thinks of going to there to experience the Gulf Coast. This is despite the fact that Galveston is basically a suburb of Houston, and was a century ago a famous beach resort. It never quite recovered after the 1900 hurricane destroyed it, but I had never thought of Houston's then-growing oil-town reputation as being a factor in keeping it from coming back to its glory. The beaches in Texas are considered nicer farther down the coast.
8:07 PM LINK
I type "Gulf Coast drilling" into Google. The top site that comes up is RigMatch Information Services, which touts itself as "Your Online Inteeligence Service for the Oil and Gas Industry"
It has a search engine for Gulf Coast drilling permits. I wouldn't even know what to type into this search box. On its site, it proclaims:
f you need the earliest notice of drilling activity in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, RigMatch daily permit reports will keep you on top of the industry - you'll have advance knowledge of who's drilling what, where and when..
RigMatch also has an "Offshore Rig Locator" form. This looks like fun indeed. The pull down menu has five types of rigs from which to choose:
Drill barge
Drill ship
Jackup
Semisub
Submersible
There are twelve areas of the world from which you can search for offshore rigs. The Gulf of Mexico is one of them, along with such places as the Pacific Rim, East Coast Canada, West Africa, Latin America, Far East, Eastern Europe, and others
Now for the fun part. There are different "operating statuses" from which you can choose on the pulldown menu. They are
Accomodation
Cold Stacked
Drilling
En Route
Inspection
Modfication
Production
Read Stacked
Under Construction
Waiting on Loc
Workover
I'm going to look at "All Types" and "All Statuses" in the Gulf of Mexico Region and see what it returns for me...
Hmmpphf. The form is broken. All I get from any search is "The Parameter is Incorrect."
Looking at the URL of the GET request from the form I notice actual spaces in the parameter "Gulf of Mexico" Holy smokes! Did the webmaster actually test this form. That's a rookie mistake. Who they hell did they pay to do this web page.
So I fixed the URL by hand by putting plus signs in the URL between the words "Gulf of Mexico" and loading the search page. Now it works! Click here to replicate my successful search.
I got 278 hits for offshore rigs with permits in the Gulf of Mexico. One hundred are listed on the first page. It seems like most are in the catgory "Jackup." The status varies, but it seems like "Cold Stacked," "Ready Stacked," and "Drilling" are the most common statuses.
I type "Cold stacked" in Google. As suggested by the list above, it is the phase between between in the construction yard, and being en route. I get the idea that "Cold stacked" means that construction of the pieces is basically complete, and the thing is waiting to be shipped whenever it is needed.
I have to know what a "Jackup" rig is. According to this definition page, it is a "A self-contained combination drilling rig and floating barge, fitted with long support legs that can be raised or lowered independently of each other." There's a picture of one here.
Wow. The name is so appropriate. It looks like a triangular platform that is literally jacked up on a three giant tire jacks for a car. The triangular shape makes sense, as being the most stable, for the three-legged stool effect.
7:41 PM LINK
Heading to the Gulf
Another place in the U.S. that people talk aobut opening up for drilling is the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, this is already oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. What some want to do is expand the drilling.
How much oil is there, in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly nothing like the 600 billion+ barrels that are supposedly on the lip of the Persian Gulf. Probably nothing near the 7-10 billion barrels that may be recoverable from ANWR.
But how much? Of I go to find out. First I'll look in Google.
11:28 PM LINK
The Petroleum Honor System
How do we know that there are 260 billion barrels of proven reserves in Saudi Arabia? We know because this is the number reported in the Oil and Gas Journal at the end of the last reporting cycle, which lists the proven reserves country-by-country in their last issue of each year. These numbers are taken as near gospel in the petroleum industry.
But where do these numbers come from? Does Oil and Gas send out petroleum geologists to make careful surveys and report back their findings? Not exactly. They report that Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves because that's what the Arabian government tells them.
That's right. The figures in Oil and Gas are simply those reported to them by each national government, around the world.
11:29 PM LINK
"Another Middle East"
In reference to the Caspian, sometimes people claim it might be "another Middle East." What they mean specifically is that it might eventually hold nearly the same amount of oil reserves as the Persian Gulf area.
This is probably stretching it. But the terminology would be justified if the Caspian basin turns out to yield several hundred billion barrels.
Of the 600 billion barrels in "proven reserves" in the Persian Gulf area, about 260 billion are in Saudi Arabia.
With some quick arithmetic, that means that Saudi Arabia sits on about one-fourth of the world's proven preserves.
It also means that Saudi Arabia has a little over ten times the proven reserves of the United States.
That's how lopsided things are: one nation controls one-fourth of the world's petroleum supply.
That nation happens to be an extremely conservative religious kingdom that guards the shrines to which a billion people aspire to make pilgrimmages.
How weird!
11:31 PM LINK
Quick Fact: Sixty Percent
Most of the oil remaining in the world is in the Middle East. More specifically, most of the oil remaining is right around the rim of the Persian Gulf.
Specifically, about 600 billion of the 1000 billion barrels of proven reserves in the world are located within a hundred miles of the shore of the Persian Gulf, or in the Gulf itself.
