My 1956 textbook warned that at the rate we were extracting oil from the earth, it would all be gone within 20 years. This was 66 years ago.
On November 28, 2018, the USGS published a news release stating, “Estimates Include 46.3 Billion Barrels of Oil, 281 Trillion Cubic feet of Natural Gas, and 20 Billion Barrels of Natural Gas Liquids in Texas and New Mexico’s Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation.“
In the summer of 1966, at the ripe old age of 17, I lied about my age to work on an offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The customer wanted CH4, methane gas, to power its Point Comfort ALCOA aluminum plant generators.
We completed the well at 15,500 feet, true vertical depth (TVD). Three packers were in place to draw gas from three separate formations. Shut-in pressure after flaring the well was well over 15,000 PSIG at the surface.
Throughout my formative years, the common belief was the origin of oil and gas was the result of the decay of plants and animals buried under sediments. The gas reservoirs we tapped were not under sedimentary layers; they were under rock, lots of rock. We drilled through the rock with diamond bits, one bit per day, 40 feet of depth per day, over many days.
Along the way to find the gas, we found oil, but Crown Central Petroleum, ALCOA’s oil company, wanted only gas. Lots of gas. That oil formation was sealed off.
I asked myself, “How did those dinosaurs get down there?”
Methane gas is known as natural gas. Why isn’t the companion oil not called natural oil?
Joe Biden and his environmentalist advisers say we must use renewable energy. What is the meaning of the word renewable? One online dictionary defines the verb renew: to restore or replenish; to restore to a former state; make new or as if new again. Another defines the verb renew: to make like new; to restore to existence; to become new or as new.
Windmills that generate electricity have a life expectancy of 25 years, likewise photovoltaic (solar) panels. How can anyone justify calling wind and solar energy equipment renewable? Replaceable? Yes. Renewable? No.
“But”, you may say, “what about the CO2 in the atmosphere, all that carbon dioxide we humans produce?” If mankind were able to further reduce atmospheric CO2, all life on earth would cease. “But, but, but, isn’t CO2 a greenhouse gas?” Yes, carbon dioxide is in fact a greenhouse gas. Do you not know greenhouse growers use CO2 generators to accelerate plant growth? Why the CO2 generators? This wonderful natural resource is food for plants that become food for people. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has steadily decreased over millennia. When it reaches the survival threshold for vegetation, all life on earth will come to an end.
If your only source of information is the inept federal government that fails to defend our borders, deliver baby food, and spends money like a madman, you probably ought to search for truth elsewhere. By the way, at this moment in time, a stack of 30 trillion one-dollar bills, neglecting compression of the paper, could bridge the distance from the earth to the moon 8 and 1/2 times!
The USGS is a part of the federal government and unlike the politicized Fed, the DOE, the EPA, and the DOJ, the Geological Service researches and publishes following the scientific method.
In summary, oil and methane gas are renewable resources, and carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential natural resource for all life on earth.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
Resources
- NASA: The Carbon Cycle
- CO2 Coalition: 140-million-year trend of dangerously decreasing CO2
- DutchGreenhouses: CO2 Enrichment
- National Geographic Society: Mantle
- Carleton College: Minerals in Earth’s Mantle
- Smithsonian Magazine: How the Earth’s Mantle Sends Water Up Toward the Surface
- United States Geological Survey (USGS): USGS Identifies Largest Continuous Oil and Gas Resource Potential Ever
John N. White 