Re: this is about oil. It's always about oil

----- Original Message -----
From: "Elson Boles" <boles@svsu.edu>
To: "Mark Jones" <jones118@lineone.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2001 9:43 PM
Subject: RE: this is about oil. It's always about oil


> Ted Rall wrote:
>
> > > Geologists estimate that sitting beneath the wind-blown steppes of
> > > Kazakhstan are 50 billion barrels of oil -- by far the biggest
> > > untapped reserves in the world.
>
> You claim that:
>
> > some of Ted Rall's statistics are wildly wrong. According to
> > Julia Nanay (a director at The Petroleum Finance Company Ltd. in
> Washington)
> >D.C., writing in 1998:  Kazakhstan's proven oil reserves are between 8
and
> 10 billion barrels,
> > but estimated onshore oil reserves are between 15 and 30 billion
barrels.
> The
> > offshore potential is not yet known, but drilling has started
> > this October.
>
> Yet, clearly, Nanay and Rall's references to "geologists" are not at
odds.
> Nanay states some estimates by some geologists, and concludes that
potential
> is unknown.   Thus your claim that Rall is "wildly wrong" is
> unsubstantiated.

Elson, TengizChevroil has been trying to export oil for 15 years, since
Soviet times. Last year they managed to export around 750 000 bbls/day
accoring to EIA figures, far less then the 4m bbls they were planning. The
difference between 'proven reserves' and estimates can be the difference
between 90% probability of recobery and 5-10% probability. Yes, there is
oil and gas but this kind of wild talk is suspects: and it doesn't muc
surprise me to hear that Ralls is a politicak cartoonist employed by the
State Deprtment, itself given to wild and excessive boosterism of Caspian
oil, for its own highly dubious purposes. I've been writing to WSN and
elsewhere for 5 years on ths is issue and my views are in the archives.The
devil is in the details when it comes to oil reserves, and there is no
shortage of details.And Rall is wildly wrong to equate Saudi reserves
(260bbn bls, ie 10 years world supply, with existing infrastructure and a
long history of making it happen, with Kazakh, Azerbaijani and other
littoral states who have yet to do more than talk and with proven rserves
of less than the North Sea. .
>
> > According to Opec, Saudi Arabian oil reserves at 260bn bbls are almost
ten
> > times larger than the figure for Saudi reserves which Rall cites, and
are
> > orders of magnitude larger than Kazakh reserves. These are hardly just
> > details. It's important to get the basic facts right.
>
> How cant the basic *facts* be right if they unknown but largely, albiet
> educated and informed, *estimates*? These are not estimates! They are 90
% probable and accepteded as such bu the DoE EIA, by Oped, and by the
Paris-based Energry Infirmation Authority.
>
> Your argument (about soon depleted oil reserves) is an entirely different
> one.  You miss Rall's point entirely: that there are newly discovered and
> uncertain quantities of oil reserves (which does run counter your
thesis),
> that Unocal does desire to build a pipeline running though Afghanistan (a
> fact), and that this is, if nothing else, at least one of the items
> factoring into the US toppling Taliban and putting in a user-friendly
> regime.

Unocal may want to build a pipelene, and the Taliban wanted it to. But the
bottom line is that Unocal can't buy off dissent or presuade the right
bureacurats, warlords etc, because there just isnout oil to bribe them
with. Let's of people are trying to bargain with the locals and make their
lines happen, but it won't be so easy, not whoever is in power.

Mark