"New" oil field

Two links

With improving technology and increasing cost of foreign oil, the big companies are finally reexamining domestic reserves that were previously deemed too expensive to extract, and therefore ignored. Back in 1951 the Bakken formation was discovered, but fell into that "not worth it" category, because oil was so cheap back then. Now with horizontal drilling capabilities and oil well over $100 a barrel, this field could start producing at a cost of about a 15-20% of that.

This presents several problems, but first, the silver lining: Gas prices might go back down for a while. Might. The oil companies are already gouging us for as much as we'll pay, simply because they can. As evidence, I point to the posted profits from 2007. ExxonMobil alone admitted to a profit of over $40 billion last year. Assuming 300 million people in the US, that's over $130 for every single person. And that's profit, not gross. (That's also what they admitted to, who knows how much more they're not admitting to.) That's what was left over after all of their operating expenses, advertising, distribution, payroll, etc. So what's to say that decreased oil costs (to them) will mean lower prices for the consumer? Sure, it'll drop a bit, but I guarantee they'll post record profits again.

It will also help alleviate the impending recession/depression, though by the time the oil wells come online in any significant quantity, it may well be too late. It'll also likely postpone, for a little while anyway, the country imploding on itself.

So the down side.

There's the obvious environmental impact: The more oil that comes out of the ground, the more oil ends up in the atmosphere and in the oceans.

The longer we put off the crash, the more severe it's likely to be. This oil boom will lull people into thinking that everything will be OK, that these times of shortage were only temporary, and that when they start up again the next time we'll just find something else to keep ourselves going. But these resources are by definition finite. The world situation in general and the domestic economy in particular are progressively getting worse (which is part of what's now making the Bakken oil field profitable), and it can only go so far. The fact that most people are oblivious to it just means that they won't see the end coming.

I'm also curious to see what this means for the Lakota. Though it wasn't widely publicized by the corporate media (I believe USA Today was the only major paper to carry the story), a lot of attention was garnered from independent bloggers and other sources for the Lakota seceding from the US, based on the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The territory they're claiming covers parts of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and both Dakotas. Now compare that map to the one on the second link at the top of this entry.

Given the extent of the oil field, I can write off one of my initial responses, that this was concocted as an excuse to charge into Lakota territory and commandeer it for the sake of the all-powerful economy. Not that that won't happen anyway, but I can't still believe that that's the reason for making the story up. What I foresee happening is that the corporations will unofficially start pumping in the new Republic of Lakotah, which will eventually lead to war. It'll be interesting to see, regardless.