[Homesteader]

sorry, you've gone on the ignore list.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
Of course. I'm just pointing out that it isn't very useful to lament about the absence of oilfields producing royalties that might be used for heating assistance in New England without facing the reality that liberal politicians from New England are blocking offshore oil exploration in New England.

Your ignorance of this political reality is surprising....I wonder if lots of people in New England don't understand this simple political reality.

[Tyler_JC]

There was a major oil field found off the coast of Eastern Canada that is currently producing a sizeable amount of oil.

There's no reason to automatically assume that the coast of Maine or Massachusetts is completely devoid of oil.

I doubt there's enough oil there to have a major impact on US heating oil supplies, but it's certainly something to investigate.

Even if we only find a billion barrels of oil...that's $115 billion worth of oil.

[Plantagenet]

Thanks Tyler. Its important to realize that the Canadians are finding oil in offshore areas just north of New England.

Some of the confusion evidenced here about the oil potential offshore from New England may be deliberate obfuscation, but some it probably stems from a lack of knowledge about the nature of the local geology. The offshore geology in New England is completely different then the geology on land.

There isn't a great deal of potential for oil in onshore areas of New England, because the rocks found throughout most of New England are metamorphic and were formed during at least five different mountain building events, including the Late Ordovician Taconic, the Late Silurian to Early Devonian Acadian (420-385 Ma), the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian Quaboagian (370-350 Ma), the Late Pennsylvanian Northfieldian (305-285 Ma), and the Permian Alleghenian (270-260 Ma) (Robinson et al., 1998).

The rocks in the offshore areas around New England are quite different. The structures in these areas were formed during Mesozoic extension associated with the opening of the modern Atlantic. Marine sediments collected in these structures, and such sediments can produce oil. These kind of tectonic areas are called "passive margins" and huge amounts of oil are being found and produced from marine rocks off Norway, Scotland, Nigeria, Brazil, Texas, Louisianna and many other places with similar geologic histories. And, as Tyler shows just above, the Canadians are developing significant oil fields in offshore areas just north of New England.

Structures offshore from New England might be very large--- faulting with vertical displacements as great as 8 km dating to this period occur onland in New England, for instance at the Connecticut Valley Border Fault. Extensional structures of similar size may also occur in offshore areas, but we won't know until geophysical surveys are done. Even then, we won't know if oil is present until we explore further by drilling the large structures. Even then we won't know how much oil is present until we further delineate the structure by additional drilling. And, of course, we'll never know unless Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional dems relent and allow the Congress to vote on ending the ban on offshore oil exploration off the eastern seaboard, and to permit local states to authorize offshore exploration as they choose.

[obixman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('obixman', '
')While it is true that the whole stratigraphic column wasn't drilled - in fact most of the traps were looked at..

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', '
')I don't recall the details but New England had some of the highest density pops (statewide) in the world.

[rider]

Excuse me mos6507, but could you please use the HyperLink button for posting links. It would keep the page from getting a mile wide.

[Tyler_JC]

Mos,

There is far more rainfall in New England than Vegas or LA.

All of that green area is forested because it is so easy for trees to grow here. Leave a piece of land alone for a decade and maples will take over. Most of the forested land is actually pretty empty. There are lots of parks and conservation areas, punctuated by the occasional highway and McDonalds but it's hardly suburbia.

In LA, if it's not paved or irrigated...it's empty.

Boston has a more sophisticated transportation network than Vegas or LA. As a result, Bostonians spend 1/3 less time stuck in traffic compared to LA drivers.

[MarkJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dirthoser', 'A')nyone using heating oil to heat their house has a screw loose.

Electricity is much cheaper in most places, it is made from COAL.

If you buy a heat pump you can heat your house for a third of the cost of electricty

exampl 1 gallon propane costs $2.77 for 100,000 Btu
electricity for that would cost $1.77
and heat pump for that would cost 60 cents.

no matter what your electric costs are, even if they are 30 cents a kilowatt hour, heat pump is the cheapest.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '.')...
Boston has a more sophisticated transportation network than Vegas or LA. As a result, Bostonians spend 1/3 less time stuck in traffic compared to LA drivers.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('obixman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('obixman', '
')While it is true that the whole stratigraphic column wasn't drilled - in fact most of the traps were looked at..

[Plantagenet]

Here's how the Geological Survey of Canada describes the creation of structures during the rifting of the Atlantic Ocean in the Mesozoic (...Canada lies just north of the US, and the rifting occuring at exactly the same time and in generally the same way in New England and maritime Canada.

"The Atlantic ... continental margin (located beneath the continental shelf and slope ) developed along the edge of the ocean basin after the continent ... broke up and the pieces began to drift apart. The initial North Atlantic Ocean was small and shallow; salt and other evaporates which formed when seawater evaporates, precipitated to form thick layers at the bottom of the basin. As the ocean basin widened, sediment that was carried by river systems to the edge of the continent was deposited into the basin. Additional material was added from marine organisms and other sources. Large sedimentary basins developed as sedimentation continued and the compacted layers built up thicker and farther from the shore. Presently, some of the basins along the Atlantic .... margin contain sedimentary rocks up to 15 km thick.

Plant and animal matter were swept into the basin and buried beneath other sediment. This provided the organic material that was necessary to form present day petroleum. The formation of petroleum deposits was influenced by the later development of complex structures and faults within these sedimentary rocks, in response to compressive stresses and the deformation of the evaporite layer."

----------


Someone forget to tell those Canadians that there were no oil source rocks and no structures off the Atlantic coast......ehhh?

[Tyler_JC]

Cube,

I forgot to type "public" but public transportation was what I was talking about.

Older cities like New York and Boston tend to invest more in their public transportation networks than new Sun Belt cities like Dallas or Phoenix.

[basil_hayden]

Plant -

As obixman stated and I'll paraphrase, the most likely targets - something like the Connecticut River Valley - have been explored, I believe the latest round was in the late 1980s.

The structure southeast of Hartford, and most of Rhode Island, consist of suspect terranes similar to the Wrangell (sp?) Mountains in Alaska only the Wrangells are younger. With all of the faulting and upturned fold structures - mashed potatoes - there are no traps, and there's no source below. I don't think there's any oil in the Wrangells either for the same reasons, correct me if I'm wrong.

However if you'd like to waste your money, we can certainly find someone to take it for you and do some offshore drilling, especially if you get Congress involved.

Fortunately, getting back to the topic, in Connecticut the discussion has lead, at least, to a loan guarantee to the small oil delivery companies (less than $5 million) according to a news article on PO's front page. This of course sounds like it won't help the actual poor residents purchase the oil, however heating assistance programs have reportedly grown, just not exponentially as I think we'll need in the next few winters.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '
')That looks like a textbook example of "New Urbanism"

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('basil_hayden', 'P')lant -

As obixman stated and I'll paraphrase, the most likely targets - something like the Connecticut River Valley - have been explored, I believe the latest round was in the late 1980s.

The structure southeast of Hartford, and most of Rhode Island, consist of suspect terranes similar to the Wrangell (sp?) Mountains in Alaska only the Wrangells are younger. With all of the faulting and upturned fold structures - mashed potatoes - there are no traps, and there's no source below. I don't think there's any oil in the Wrangells either for the same reasons, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Plantagenet]

There has been some drilling by the Joides Resolution (the international scientific drilling ship) on one of its North Atlantic drilling legs quite a few years ago. They've drilled off New England, and in other similar areas all across the Atlantic.

The Joides has some decent seismic data to help locate scientific drilling targets....that seismic shows that there are a LOT of structures that involve the sediments on the shelves in the North Atlantic. The claim that they are "flat like pancakes" is a lot of hooey. There are salt diapirs, and there are onlap structures within large grabens. Both would make great targets for oil exploration.

The Joides typically chooses spots to drill that were on structurally "high" blocks on the sea floor precisely to avoid the very deep and thick piles of sediment, and to avoid accidentally drilling into any hydrocarbons....the Joides is a scientific drilling ship, and doesn't have heavy duty blowout protectors and other equipment to protect the ship from "blowouts" if our drilling encountered hydrocarbons and especially gas......the scientific drilling efforts reject lots of potential places to drill precisely because they were worried about accidentally hitting oil and gas.

If Americans want to reject offshore drilling in New England to preserve this precious natural scenic area, thats fine, but people shouldn't falsely describe its geology or falstly claiming its already been completely explored. T'aint so. The ocean is very very big place, and the US had by no means explored all of the outer shelves for hydrocarbons prior to the three decade long closure Congress instituted.

[Plantagenet]

The picture is seismic image of subsurface geology off part of the US eastern seaboard obtained using the "CHIRP" instrument.

Notice the numerous structures and faults.

Notice the sediments are not "flat as a pancake" as wrongly claimed by one poster above, and are not crystalline rocks as wrongly claimed by another poster above, but in fact are sediments that locally are gently folded and slope upwards against topography (i.e. they "onlap") and in places are disrupted by faulting.

Oil sometimes accumulates in these kind of traps...... "onlap structures" weren't really of interest to oil companies in the "old days" but with the advent of modern "seismic stratigraphy" such structures are important targets. These are small structures.....much more exploration is needed to find the biggest ones in deep water.

This is one image along one seismic line from the east coast. It will take hundreds and hundreds of new lines to adequately describe the structures along the eastern seaboard.

Don't believe the Hooey......there are plenty of reasons to do new seismic and look for oil traps, and there is some potential to find interesting targets to investigate for oil on the US east coast. Given the realities of peak oil, the sooner we start on this the better IMHO

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')Given the realities of peak oil, the sooner we start on this the better IMHO

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')Given the realities of peak oil, the sooner we start on this the better IMHO