(cross posted from environmental/energy forum)
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52299 Last week President Obama announced that he would open federal waters off the Atlantic coast from Delaware south, portions of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska to oil and gas exploration and development.
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The eastern GOM is slightly more favorable for oil compared to federal waters off the east coast but not a whole lot more favorable. According to the government, that region has 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. With luck, it may produce a billion barrels of oil.
A billion barrels sounds like a lot of oil, but if it is produced over the course of 30 years, the average production rate is only a bit over 90,000 b/d. In a country that presently consumes around 19 mb/d of liquid hydrocarbons, 90,000 b/d is less than 0.5%.
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Another issue to consider is that offshore oil development, particularly far offshore, can be very expensive. Oil companies probably aren’t going to consider developing fields off the Atlantic coast or in the eastern GOM unless a field is at least 25 million barrels in size. In the Arctic Ocean, it may require a field 100 million barrels or more in size if the field is far offshore. Oil that is in many small and widely distributed fields may never be developed.