The Anonymous Widower

BP’s Oil Find

BP seem to have struck oil.  Or is it gold?  But the technology to get it to market will be awesome.

Many years ago, I remember when they found the Forties Field and how they said they’d never get that oil ashore.  They did then and the Project Management System that I wrote at the time, Artemis, was a great help in the planning of the whole of the North Sea.  It certainly helped us go from a little company to one with global clout.  The strange thing though, is that we probably made a lot of sales because our systems didn’t need the installation of the large mainframe computers everybody used at the time.

So when I see a find like BP have made in the Gulf of Mexico, I smile a bit and thank Aberdeen and its oil industry for my success.

This is what the Guardian said about the find.

BP has reopened the debate on when the “peak oil” supply will be reached by announcing a big new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico which some believe could be as large as the Forties, the biggest field ever found in the North Sea.

The strike comes days after Iran unveiled an even larger find of 8.8bn barrels of crude oil, and the moves have encouraged sceptics of theories which say that peak production has been reached, or soon will be, to hail a new golden age of exploration and supply.

BP, already the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the US, said its “giant” Tiber discovery in 4,100ft (1,250m) of water was particularly exciting because it promised to open up a whole new area.

I tend to agree that the forecast of oil running out is based on doom cults, rather than sensible science.

If you look at a large oil field, it is not actually that large in terms of area, so when you look for it, it’s very very difficult.  And in BP’s latest case, even more so, as you are at depths higher than Mount Everest.

So it’s my belief and this has been confirmed by BP and Iran, that there is a lot of coal out there, but we just don’t have the technology to look for it.

As an aside to this, the Selby coalfield was one of the largest in the UK.  But it was only discovered in the 1960s and that in a country which is probably the most explored in the world.

September 4, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | Business, News | Artemis, Oil