ANWR development vs. energy efficiency:
...whenever an oil crisis appears, we reach for the shelf entitled "Project Independence" and dust off the remedies of opening up prospective lands, now denied, for exploration. We take a second look at alternative forms of energy, and we once again discuss the need to become more efficient in our use of oil. But then the crisis passes, as this one will, and these remedies are returned to the shelf, to once again gather dust, to be revisited upon the occasion of the next crisis...
anwr.org
The North Slope oil fields currently provide the U.S. with nearly 25% of it's domestic production and since 1988 this production has been on the decline. Peak production was reached in 1980 of two million barrels a day, but has been declining to a current level of 1.4 million barrels a day.
Should leasing be permitted and subsequent commercial discoveries be made, it will be an estimated 15 years or more before oil and gas production from ANWR reaches market.
anwr.org
the USGS estimated in 2000 that, assuming a price of $24 per barrel, there is:
a 95% chance of finding 1.9 billion barrels (BBO) of economically recoverable oil in the Arctic Refuge's 1002 Area;
a 5% chance of finding 9.4 BBO; and
a 50% chance of finding 5.3 BBO.
Reported estimates of 16 BBO from the 1002 Area and adjacent private lands and offshore State waters do not factor in the costs of developing the oil field.
At prices less than $16 per barrel, there is reportedly no economically recoverable oil in the 1002 Area.
r7.fws.gov
19.5 million acre Refuge is the size of South Carolina;
scenery, from US Fish and Wildlife Service:
r7.fws.gov
Since the development of the Prudhoe Bay field, geologists have known that the trend for gigantic oil deposits extends to the eastern part of the North Slope. However, the environmental movement in the U. S. Congress was successful in 1980 in expanding the eastern one-third of the North Slope designated as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), from 3.64 million hectares to 7.7 million hectares. At the same time, 0.6 million hectares of the Arctic Coastal Plain area, the "Designated 1002 Area" along the coast, was designated for further study, after which exploration drilling would only be permitted by a future Act of Congress....The pipeline has already operated for 25 years, the design life, and is expected to be uneconomic after about another 20 years, unless new oil is connected to it. Industry argues that new small-footprint technology means that less than 800 hectares of land would be used for development, with minimal environmental effect. The U.S. House of Representatives, and the President, are in favor of ANWR development, but it requires a 60% majority in the U.S. Senate to prevent indefinitely long delay of legislation by filibuster, and this majority cannot be reached by those favoring development. It seems that a national emergency in oil supply would be needed to open ANWR to petroleum development.
arcticcentre.urova.fi
Oil and Gas in ANWR? Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources 3/03:
The 1002 Area consists of 1,500,000 acres of highly prospective terrain in the northeastern portion of the North Slope. The region is situated between the prolific North Slope oil fields to the west and the petroleum-rich Canadian Mackenzie Delta province to the east....
...somewhat more than 6 BBO could be economically produced from the 1002 Area at today’s $28.00 - $30.00/barrel price. An oil price of about $15.25/barrel would support exploration for and development, production and transport of only a few hundred million barrels...
Directional control of the drill bit is an engineering marvel. A drilling engineer can now plan a well-bore
trajectory that will penetrate one or more small targets, identified by the 3-D seismic, at distances of more
than four miles from the drill rig location. Application of this “extended reach” drilling method - “designer
well” as it is sometimes called - allows numerous exploration and development wells to be drilled within a
radius of nearly five miles from a single drill pad....only do these engineering advances reduce the surface area of individual drill sites, they also reduce the number of drill sites required.
dog.dnr.state.ak.us
simply upgrading the quality of replacement tires to match that of tires that come as standard equipment on new cars would save 5.4 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years -- 70 percent more than the total amount of oil likely to be recovered from the Arctic Refuge over the same period. Updating fuel efficiency standards to reflect the capabilities of modern technology would produce even greater savings. Increasing fuel efficiency standards for new passenger vehicles to an average of 39 miles per gallon over the next decade would save 51 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years -- more than 15 times the likely yield from the Arctic Refuge
nrdc.org
...between 1975 and 2001, manufacturers developed a new generation of energy-efficient refrigerators that consumed 75 percent less electricity than ones built before, saving 60,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity and reducing power plant emissions. Constructing power plants to produce this 60,000 MW would have cost $50 billion, compared to the refrigerator industry’s investment of less than $1 billion to produce these more efficient refrigerators. Similar advances have been achieved with clothes washers, windows, fluorescent lighting, and heating and air conditioning systems.
nrdc.org |
