Some oil tidbits
 

10. PESSIMISTIC PEOPLE - 33% of Americans believe there could be a collapse of the country's economic markets within the next 5 years (source: USA Today).
11. REALLY DEEP - A Louisiana-based company recently resumed drilling on a previously abandoned oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. As of 7/17/08, the drilling had penetrated more than 6 miles into the earth (32,550 feet), the deepest recorded drilling ever. The well was unplugged and drilling resumed as a result of the industry's high current oil prices (source: Wall Street Journal).
12. JUST DRIVING AROUND - 44% of the crude oil consumed in the USA is refined into gasoline for our cars and light trucks (source: Department of Energy).
13. NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED - The production of crude oil that occurs in the USA today (5.1 million barrels a day) is the same level of production domestically as it was in 1949 (source: Department of Energy).

What happened to 1 thru 9? On #11 have they stuck oil yet or are they drilling thru to the center of the earth?

Only 7,994 miles to go, more or less.

Hope its not on a fault line....helluva hole to fill.

NOT THE SAME - The S&P 500 was up +4.4% per year (total return) for the 3-years ending 6/30/08. Ten years ago, the S&P 500 was up +30.2% per year (total return) for the 3-years ending 6/30/98. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks that is generally considered representative of the US stock market (source: BTN Research).
2. STOCKS AND BONDS – Bonds were up +7.1% (total return) for the 1-year ending 6/30/08, more than +20% better than the S&P 500's trailing 1-year performance of a 13.1% loss. At the end of the 2000-02 bear market, the spread between the trailing 1-year performance of bonds (up +8.6%) and that of stocks (down 20.5%) was more than +29%. The Lehman Brothers Aggregate bond index, calculated using 6,000 publicly traded government and corporate bonds with an average maturity of 10 years, was used as the bond measurement (source: BTN Research).
3. RED, NOT BLACK - The S&P 500's YTD total return performance has been negative every day this year. The stock index has been in the red since falling 1.4% on the first trading day of the year (source: BTN Research).
4. MUNICIPAL BONDS - In November, 1994, Orange County (OC), California filed for bankruptcy protection after the value of their investment portfolio fell by $1.5 billion as a result of incorrect interest rate bets. No municipal bankruptcy since then has been larger in size. However bondholders of OC debt never missed a coupon payment and no bonds ultimately defaulted (source: Franklin Templeton Investments).
5. DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT - As the financial security of bond insurers has been scrutinized due to the nation's credit difficulties, fewer new municipal debt offerings are being issued with bond insurance. Only 21% of new municipal bonds issued in the 2nd quarter 2008 were insured, less than half of the 47% of new issues that were insured during the same quarter in 2007 (source: Thomson Reuters, Wall Street Journal).
6. INFORMED INVESTOR - The US government is now seeking comments on a proposal issued last Tuesday designed to provide the nation's 65 million 401(k) participants with a clear and complete disclosure of the fees and expenses associated with their retirement plans. The proposed changes would go into effect for plan years beginning after 1/01/09 (source: Department of Labor).
7. PREPARED - 61% of Americans (both workers and retirees) have an emergency fund set aside that would carry them financially for no more than 6 months (source: Principal Financial).
8. MORE THAN MOST - To rank in the top 1% of all US taxpayers, an individual would have to earn $388,806 of adjusted gross income (source: IRS, Tax Foundation).
9. RECESSION PREDICTION - An online trading exchange is currently priced to reflect a 20% chance that the US economy will fall into a recession during the remainder of calendar year 2008 (source: Intrade).

Why is everyone talking about more drilling and killing for oil while no one is talking about, dare I say, conservation?

I have not seen anything written by any thoughtful politician anywhere that didn't include conservation as one aspect of energy management. Some folks like talking about algal biofuels, some folks like nukes, some folks like sitting in the sun catching rays.

It's all good and worthy of discussion. Rather difficult to do it all at once. I'm willing to give it a shot if you will.

Where do you want to start -- conservation?

What? Conservation!! Why are you excluding solar power? Let's start with solar power. What ???!!... Etc.

B

That's weird considering how much more drilling has been opened in the decades after '49. I wonder if, gasp, opening for drilling doesn't necessarily increase supply. BTW, is this stat level of production minus what's produced for the strategic reserve?

1st hit on google

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/blanchard/

Dang, google. Whodduh thunk?

The strategic reserve to puny

"This equates to 33 days of oil at current daily US consumption levels of 21 million barrels a day."

Also, I believe American use closer to 65% of thier consumption in their SUV`s. This would be about 12.7 million barrels per day, or about 13% of total world consumption.

The deepest well in the US was the Bertha Rogers#1 in Oklahoma, drilled in 1974 to around 33,000+ feet. Drilling had to stop due to liquid sulphur flowing into the well. The Russians spudded a well in 1970 and as of 1982 it was at 37,000 feet, I don't know what happened to it after that.

ALso, oil does not exist at those depths, you can't lift it anyway, so these deep wells are all gas wells.

85% of a barrel pf crude is refined into transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, aviation etc)

We might be at the same production rate as 1949 but you need to look what happened to the rates in between.

Fred

That's really amazing is that a hunch?

I'll save you some googling.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasoline/index.html

I looked at the link, not sure if it proves my point. It is something I read a while ago. May not be accurate. The point that 5% of the worlds population is using 25% of the oil.

Not a problem thought, there is plenty to go around

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf124/sf124p10.htm

Oil fields refilling