Bloomberg: Petrobras Oil Hunter Fights to Keep Finds for Brazil.
Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Guilherme Estrella found an undersea lake of oil that may transform Brazil’s economy forever. Now, the exploration chief for Petroleo Brasileiro SA is at the center of a debate over who will profit from it.
At stake is how much of Brazil’s newfound riches will be controlled by the state and how much will end up in the pockets of Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other oil companies hungry for new sources of crude. Estrella wants to make Western oil companies little more than hired help for government-controlled Petrobras, as his company is known.
“Petrobras is our space program,” ...
Few people have been involved in the discovery of more oil than Estrella, said Gerrard Demaison, a former Chevron Corp. geologist who is president of Capitola, California-based Petroscience2000.
“This guy’s work was prophetic and essential for finding the oil Brazil has today and making Petrobras what it is,” Demaison, 76, said in a telephone interview. “I would put him alongside the great petroleum geologists of the last century.” ...
“If he’d stick to geology, he’d be fine, but I’m afraid his political ideas and those of his allies are going to damage the industry and put the country’s energy future at risk,” said Amaral, now a senator. “We need investment.”
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7 comments:
What about the burning of this oil and the CO2 output?
It would seem that the Socialists are far more interested in capitalist profit than the environment. Al Gore should know, he used to have half a million dollars invested in Occidental Petroleum.
Brrr...
It's fricking cold...
I had a conversation recently about "global warming".
I opened with the concern that "global warming" proponents had started saying global cooling was part of global warming AND I added this kind of argument is asinine and I wouldn't sit still for that kind of bullshit.
You can't have it both ways.
The conversation shifted. But it came back to "global warming" because...er...well...it's snowing out here. And it rarely snows this early out where I am.
Anyway, I noted the whole North American continent above the Mason/Dixon line is in the deep freeze.
The other person's rejoinder was to say that the vinyards of Spain are moving South (Now, I don't know it that's true or not, I only know this person offered it as a reason for "global warming"), and that shows "global warming", I kid you not.
Well, I had a "cow" with that one. The person went on to offer, it gets colder in some places, while it gets warmer in other places.
I responded, the whole Northern half of the North American continent is freezing AND the vinyards of Spain are moving South and you want me to believe that shows "global warming"...?
"Asinine" passed from my lips...
(It's whole lot easier to type out "asinine" than to call out someone to their face that their idea is "asinine", but that's what it may come to, if this man-made "global warming" is going to be dispelled as the myth it is.)
Another person admitted it was getting cooler "down here," but warming at the poles. This is the new hypothesis, but we haven't been tracking temperatures and ice packs at the poles long enough to know squat.
I'm telling you, "global warming" is the new Animal Farm. "Four legs good, two legs better."
Don't let these people get away with the madness.
"Sheer madness, I tell you!"
SOCIALISM WILL NOT FINANCE DEEP OIL; CAPITALISM WILL
Guilherme Estrella may be able to find oil and he probably understands oil is abiotic, but he doesn't realize Socialism doesn't generate the capital to finance deep oil.
The oil majors won't finance somebody else's oil.
Will private banks lend if the return is skimmed off the top for Socialist aims.
Well, yes, if the capital loaned is payed back with interest as agreed by contract.
But Socialism has a history of not paying back its loans.
With that, deep oil will stay under the sea in huge pools...waiting for capital and, yes, Capitalists.
Too bad, the ol' man doesn't understand that like he does where to find oil.
PETROBAS SAYS PRE-SALT OIL VIABLE AT TODAY'S PRICES
Petrobras CEO Says Tupi Oil ‘Viable’ at Current Price, December 22, 2008 (Bloomberg) -- " Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, said the offshore pre-salt oil fields, including Tupi, the largest discovery in the Americas since 1976, remain viable even after crude prices plunged.
“The pre-salt is viable at $40 to $50 a barrel,” Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said today. “We are also in an environment where the costs of production are likely to fall, we don’t know when, but they are likely to fall.”
The economic law of supply and demand works in the oilfield services sector, too.
Couple the above reality with the following summary of technology and it becomes apparent the pre-salt oil (abiotic oil...oops, all oil is abiotic) will be viable even in a soft world market for oil and that won't stay that way forever, anyhow.
Truth be told the technology is very new, but as EVERY technology matures and becomes more wide-spread, the price comes down substantially.
(The new technology in offshore oil is multi-directional drilling bits [Kinda like a "Roto-rooter", but can drill its own "pipes".]. These will allow multiple well heads in the same field. Also, in aid of exploration, if it's felt that an oil deposit was "just missed" the bit can "back up" and adjust to the new desired location target without resetting the entire drilling platform.)
Even with lower prices, good things are in store for the oil industry in the form of advancing exploration & development technology.
MULTI-DIRECTIONAL DRILLING BITS (The Real Story)
This article from an industry trade magazine outlines the new technology: Threading the formation ‘needle’s eye’, Navigating Becoming Less Tricky (AAPG Explorer) -- "Drilling wells that often penetrate a number of miles deep into the earth and, in many instances, angling the wellbore to ultimately attain a horizontal position is now so commonplace it’s become kind of a ho-hum event."
...
"Advanced reservoir navigation and geosteering techniques are key to successfully drill and complete horizontal and multi-lateral wells with enhanced accuracy and with maximum pay exposure.
These techniques enable detection of remote boundaries in real time to allow the drilling team to upgrade the models that describe and predict the environment laterally from the wellbore."
...
"He noted the tool essentially is a GPS system for subsurface navigation."
Hitting the sweet spot -- something an oil geologist wants to do everytime.
GUILHERME ESTRELLA: LIAR
The point of the Oil Is Mastery post is that Socialism will retard production of Brazil's pre-salt oil.
But this writer has come across something else that needs pointing out: Guilherme Estrella is a liar when it comes to the "source" of Brazil's pre-salt oil.
It is stated in this article: Jubarte field opens Petrobras’ pre-salt production, Project is a milestone for Brazil, December 08, (Offshore) -- "According to Guilherme Estrella, Petrobras E&P director, the lake that formed during the beginning of the separation of the continents some 120 million years ago allowed the deposition of source rocks (Lagoa Feia formation) that originated the reserves now starting to be produced in the southern Atlantic Ocean."
...
"As a result of research about the formation of the South American and African continents by Petrobras geologists, more than $1.5 billion was invested by Petrobras in the past couple of years to drill 15 wells that reached the pre-salt formation with 100% success in finding oil."
Guilherme Estrella maybe a Socialist, but he's obviously no dummy. The above statement is put out for the ignorant and uninformed.
Any self-respecting oil geologist or general geologist, for that matter, knows that a shallow lake did not and could not form where he claims one did form.
The pre-salt layers are at least 16,000 feet below the current sea level, no geologist with a straight face will tell you that a lake would form 16,000 feet below the current sea-level.
All the geological evidence points to much higher sea levels in the geological record 120 million years ago (if the oil is even near that old) with fossils of fish and shell fish being found ON the continents and North America being partially covered in shallow seas at the time the continents came apart.
The salt layers as Mr. Estrella well knows are not the product of evaporation (a child's myth), but are the product of supercritical water deposition. The depth of the salt layers is clearly deeper than where evaporation ever took place.
Again, Mr. Estrella is no dummy, he understands the geological structures underwhich the pre-salt oil is found.
But for public consumption and ignorant oil geologists he has chosen to put out a theory of how the oil formed that can't possibly have taken place based on the geological evidence.
I guess it's not surprising, but then Mr. Estrella has to be exposed as a liar.
The sad thing is that it would be best for the long-term health of the oil industry if the truth of oil's origin was known by the general public.
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