| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 11/22 |
| 2005/9/1-2 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:39399 Activity:low |
8/31 Where is the strategic oil reserve located? Government oil sites? Or
hidden underground? And how much are we tapping now and assuming
Louisiana oil is gone for several years, how long would it last?
\- under Ray's Original Pizza in Manhattan. It will last until
12:53pm, Dec 12, 2005.
\_ Bunch of salt caves (4 in total, I think.) -John
\_ Underground tanks in TX and LA. They need to be relatively close
to the refineries.
\_ um, no. CO, UT, and WY
\_ um, yes.
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-sites.html
\_ Are you a terrorist?
\_ http://www.eveningsun.com/Stories/0,1413,140~26155~3036365,00.html
Colorado, Utah and Wyoming
\_ Oil shale. Great. When the price hits a good $80/barrel,
it'll be worth it. |
| 11/22 |
|
| www.fe.doe.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-sites.html Strategic Petroleum Reserve > SPR Storage Sites Strategic Petroleum Reserve Storage Sites Strategic Petroleum Reserve Sites Due to elevated security concerns, detailed information on SPR sites has been removed from this web site. Emergency crude oil is stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in salt caverns. Created deep within the massive salt deposits that underlie mos t of the Texas and Louisiana coastline, the caverns offer the best secur ity and are the most affordable means of storage, costing up to 10 times less than aboveground tanks and 20 times less than hard rock mines. Storage locations along the Gulf Coast were selected because they provide the most flexible means for connecting to the Nation's commercial oil t ransport network. Strategic Reserve oil can be distributed through inter state pipelines to nearly half of the Nation's oil refineries or loaded into ships or barges for transport to other refineries. Strategic Petroleum Reserve caverns range in size from 6 to 35 million ba rrels in capacity; a typical cavern holds 10 million barrels and cylindr ical in shape with a diameter of 200 feet and a height of 2,000 feet. On e storage cavern is large enough for Chicago's Sears Tower to fit inside with room to spare. The Reserve contains 62 of these huge underground c averns. How the SPR Storage Sites Were Created Salt caverns along the Gulf Coast have been used for storage for many yea rs by the petrochemical industry. When the US Government decided to cr eate the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the mid-1970s, it acquired previ ously created salt caverns to store the first 250 million barrels of cru de oil. This was the most rapid way to begin securing an emergency suppl y of crude oil following the oil shocks of the 1970s. To stockpile oil b eyond the first 250 million barrels, the Department of Energy created ad ditional caverns. Salt caverns are carved out of underground salt domes by a process called "solution mining." Essentially, the process involves drilling a well in to a salt formation, then injecting massive amounts of fresh water. In creating the SPR caverns, the dissolved sal t was removed as brine and either reinjected into disposal wells or more commonly, piped several miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. By care fully controlling the freshwater injection process, salt caverns of very precise dimensions can be created. For every barrel of crude oil to be stored in the SPR's salt caverns, it took 7 barrels of water to create t he storage space. Besides being the lowest cost way to store oil for long periods of time, the use of deep salt caverns is also one of the most environmentally sec ure. At depths ranging from 2000 to 4000 feet, the salt walls of the sto rage caverns are "self-healing." The extreme geologic pressures make the salt walls rock hard, and should any cracks develop in the walls, they would be almost instantly closed. An added benefit of deep salt cavern storage is the natural temperature d ifference between the top of the caverns and the bottom a distance of around 2,000 feet. The temperature differential keeps the crude oil cont inuously circulating in the caverns, maintaining the oil at a consistent quality. The fact that oil floats on water is the underlying mechanism used to mov e oil in and out of the SPR caverns. To withdraw crude oil, fresh water is pumped into the bottom of a cavern. After the oil is removed from the SPR caverns, pipeline s send it to various terminals and refineries around the nation. |
| www.eveningsun.com/Stories/0,1413,140~26155~3036365,00.html Study finds large oil reserve under federal land By JENNIFER TALHELM Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON -- The United States has an oil reserve at least three times t hat of Saudi Arabia locked in oil shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released Wednesday. But the researchers at the RAND think tank caution the federal government to go carefully, balancing the environmental and economic impacts with development pressure to prevent an oil shale bust later. "We've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East ," said James Bartis, RAND senior policy researcher and the report's lea d author. However, he added, "If we go faster, there's a good chance we' re going to end up at a dead end. For years, the industry and the government considered oil shale -- a rock that produces petroleum when heated -- too expensive to be a feasible s ource of oil. However, oil prices, which spiked above $70 a barrel this week, combined with advances in technology could soon make it possible to tap the estim ated 500 billion to 11 trillion recoverable barrels, the report found. That could meet a quarter of the nation's current oil needs for the next 400 years. It's unclear how new technologies will affect the land, air and the Colorado River, Bartis said. The study, sponsored in part by the US Department of Energy, comes in t he wake of Hurricane Katrina, which disrupted Gulf oil production and se nt crude oil prices surging. It also comes about a month after the president signed a new energy polic y, which dramatically reversed the nation's approach to oil shale, openi ng the door within a few years to companies that want to tap deposits on public lands. Bartis said he hopes lawmakers will take the study's recommendations into consideration as they make future decisions on oil shale. The US has tried to develop oil shale in the West before. Entire town s in Colorado were created and all-but abandoned after oil prices bottom ed out in the 1980s. The RAND researchers estimate the federal, state and local governments wo uld rake in about $10 billion a year from lease payments, royalties and taxes if the industry produced 3 million barrels a day. Production would also likely cause oil prices to fall by as much as 5 per cent, saving American oil consumers up to $20 billion a year and creatin g hundreds of thousands of jobs. All contents Copyright 2005 The Evening Sun or other copyright holders. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewri tten or redistributed for any commercial purpose. |