New oil discovery in US could make us energy independent

Welcome to the board.

Whats your point?

 

You get my vote for most appropriate screenname.

 

After thinking about it, I've decided that I'm still OK with drilling through caribou to get to oil.

 

en masse. You're stupid not to know that.

 

You were doing so good until you ran out of all those big words someone wrote down for you. Should have stopped before you tried one on your own.

 

Upon further reflection, I've decided that I am stil OK with drilling through baby seals, playfully clapping their flippers while sitting atop the very last caribou, who is (somehow, someway) lounging atop the very last blue whale (beached, of course, because the melting ice as moved the shorline in so far) to get to oil.

I've also decided that science illiteracy in this context means you haven't drank the Kool-aid.

 

All this talk re: Ruskie tech and abiogenic oil is ridiculous. The Russians drilled to 42K ft. (way short of their goal) because they had nothing better to do than watch the Berlin Wall collapse. There was no economic incentive to make a profit so they didn't care how long it took and expensive it was. Our own MOHO project, drilling to the top of the mantle, was cancelled due to expense, not technology, if I remember correctly. And as Red says, the US has always and continues to lead the way in drilling tech. To suggest otherwise proves one's ignorance.

Also, as far as we know all oil and natural gas, C1 -C5, is organically derived. Source rock and depth are the key determinates of the type of hydrocarbons present. If the source expelled oil, it will be trapped as such within the oil window. Burial below a certain depth (increasing heat) will crack that trapped oil into gas condensate, and below that into methane, called the gas window. Deeper burial will yield CO2. The temperature gradient varies in different basins, but the pattern is the same. Oil is simply not found in deep, hot environments.