[PlannerBee]

Someone still pumps gas for you?

[threadbear]

So I missed April Fool's by one day. Hung up on a technicality.

Actually though, Buffet is a pretty humble guy, strangely. And Soros, seems like a kind of nice man, whose pretty devoid of pretense. Both of them feel utterly free to be themselves, not in service to their ego. It's people like that you have to listen to. So, I can actually picture them pumping gas, and enjoying it.

[ozkrenske]

Bostindazz,
You have to look at oil fields all over the world as a whole pile of balloons filled with oil. ( big balloons, granted, but please accept it for now as an analogy) Now initially only a few were known and only the easiest to find were accessable, these were small balloons and close to the surface. These were tapped initially by just a few wells. Technically from the first day of production these fields were depleting or the balloons were going flat. But it didn't look like it, pressures were pretty well maintained and more wells were added as demand grew. This continued in most fields until critical points were reached and pressures began to drop (often this can happen locally within the same field), So more and more wells were drilled to maintain output.

At a certain point it became necessary to start developing other fields and obviously the easiest to find and cheapest to develop were used first. Then some of the first trully massive finds began ( see Gawar in Saudi Arabia ) and these appeared to be able to maintain production pressures etc for a very long time. Of course while we have been slowly draining these massive fields we have also been completely exhausting many smaller fields. Some of these fields were drained more rapidly by introducing new technology to keep there production up. Long slant drill holes were used, then herring bone and finally lateral or horizontal drilling ( more hole within the oil body allows more oil out faster ). Then when that didn't seem to be enough the world started pumping other stuff in to help push the oil out. Of course what these tech innovations do is not increase the oil able to be gotten but instead increase or maintain output at the expense of future output. The Fields died in short periods of time due to being technologically pushed faster than they would of if left 'natural'.

Now many of these smaller mature fields have become what I would call aged or decrepit a lot quicker than they would of without tech and so. Back in the mid late 80's they started to put more wells into the massives and then use tech production improvement methods to make up for slow down in older fields. Now the massive fields (that have been treated as eternal by some) are showing that they are in decline or the signs of it.

So what we have now is a very interesting situation where almost all the worlds cheap to develop fields are very passed their peak productions. This has been caused by trying to squeeze every drop out as fast as they can before starting more expensive developments. So in the near future a very large number of expensive to develop fields are going to have to be developed quickly, simply to stop the drop off in these older fields. Costs are rising even as the income from scarcity inflated prices is flowing in. I therefore see many problems and certainly a pretty well consistent increase in oil prices.

Now interestingly enough the same ideas apply to natural Gas wells but in an even worse way. Their natural production curve is very steep up and down. What prevents them from running out quickly is the limit of the number of wells in the field but once the field is pumping as quick as it can it often takes only months for the field to go from fully on to almost off production wise.

[gego]

I can only say that anyone who gets his information from a petrol station attendant, turly deserves the future he is about to experience.

[threadbear]

And someone who takes spelling lessons from a petrol attendant, turly deserves what he gets too.