Sunday, October 25, 2009

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

Summary: Even though oil is harder to find nowadays, it is possible thanks to the technology that keeps on improving. This year, more than 200 oil discoveries have been made by big and small oil companies. This brings excitement for the industry as well as anxiety because of the fear that lower prices might injure the exploration. Companies are trying to keep up with the exploration while trying to reduce the costs. Thanks to this exploration drive companies have also found natural gas reserves and one of them could be Venezuela’s largest natural gas field.

Comment: We know that we need oil and people believe that there’s still a lot in the ground but it’s very expensive to explore and extract. It is reasonable that companies will explore more when the prices are high and that they won’t when the exploration is not worth the price. So, maybe there’s more oil left than we think, and the day when the price is high enough to explore the most difficult places will come.

3 comments:

Orbi Dayrit said...

I agree that with the abundance of finds, the urge of exploration will subside, but I still believe that major companies will still invest money in hopes to find the next big oil reserve. However, the smaller companies will stop exploration in fear of loosing money when the price of oil begins to fall. There is still a lot of oil left to be found in the world, and the business tycoons will always be on the search while the smaller companies will search when payoff is maximized.

Colt Kaiser said...

This article just goes to show that that even though we think our oil shortage is something that will affect us in the very near present. What many people don't realize is that we could continue on our course now and still be able to produce oil for at least a couple hundred years. This however is counterproductive to our overall goal of becoming dependent form foreign and eventually oil all together. That's why these new sources of fossil fuels are good in the fact that they provide us more sources but hinder our search for better and more environmentally friendly forms of fuel. We all know that gas prices will continue to rise and it should not take times of outrageously high prices to inspire investment in exploration which is what we really need in the fuel industry. Climate change is a huge part of exploration in alternative fields and it should not be left to only times of crisis.

Xochitl said...

I think that the money that is being spent on oil exploration should be used to find more ways to be more environmentally friendly. Oil is turned into gasoline which pollute the air. Everyone knows this, yet we refuse to take the Metro. Instead of spending time, money and energy on exploring the ocean grounds for oil, our main focus should be on global warming, carbon emissions, etc.; gas/oil prices are going to go up anyways, so why bother?