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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Slagle who wrote (63662)	5/9/2005 3:03:09 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

My geological interpetation is oversimplified, of course. Blanket formations eventually have boundaries set by faults, tilting, and or thining out. I believe parts of Saudi Arabia have some long anticlines without much curve to them. There's a blanket formation called the Clinton sands in Ohio that cover a significant fraction of the state. You have a 98% chance of striking oil in sevral counties. However, the formation is only a few feet thick - so production comes in at a few barrels a day, and then declines. At one time promoters used it becaused they could claim high success rate. The investor/sucker would also get a few checks out of the deal, plus the tax write-off. Promoters would sell the deals at promoted cost, and pocket their money up front. *********** The Caspian disapointment was (and still is) reported pretty widely in the trade and engineering magazines which cover the oil industry, and I beleive in the FT and WSJ. Doesn't make a good story for most media - to nuanced, doesn't fit in good news / bad news categories. The pipeline --> need for Afghan war has been covered well in an article in the Atlantic monthly and similar publications. ******************** This gives us some prespective on why Dick Cheney's meetings with the oil industry had to be secret. Secrecy is useful if you are planning wars. There is also critical competitive information being discussed - what the seismic looks like for offshore West Africa, Deep Gulf, evaluations of Western Iraq, old data from Libya, the water cut in Ghawar, etc. Evaluating what Russia could pump was likely a critical part of this, and it is likely some of that information was not obtained by conventional means. ************************