If the Europeans and North Americans are going to kick the Arab Oil Habit, they need to work together to find it closer to home. Then extract it, keep it for ourselves to use while looking for alternative fuel sources. Then we can thumb our noses at the Arabs.

Please read the following.

Oil Under The Ice

Everybody talks about the vast reserves of oil and gas hiding under the Arctic Ocean. But nobody really knows how much fuel there might be. The US Geological Survey, though, is spending this year and next coming up with an educated guess.

Just how much oil might be hiding in the Arctic?
The Russian flag planted on the floor of the Arctic Ocean (more...) in early August may have gotten all the headlines. But while countries surrounding the Arctic get geared up for what promises to be a drawn-out diplomatic tiff over who owns what beneath the polar ice cap, the US Geological Survey is busy trying to figure out whether that territory is even worth owning.

For the next several months -- until the presentation of its final report in the summer of 2008 -- the USGS will be conducting an assessment of just how much oil and gas might be hiding under the ice. By analyzing rock types and formations and by looking at geologic history, the team hopes to provide accurate guesses as to where deposits are to be found and whether they contain natural gas, crude oil -- or nothing.

"This is the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the undiscovered petroleum resources in the Circum-Arctic in the public domain," USGS Director Mark Myers said in a press release at the very end of August. "Knowing the potential resources of the Arctic … is critical to our understanding of future energy supplies to the United States and the world."

Last week, the project -- called the Circum-Arctic Oil and Gas Resource Appraisal -- released its first results, for an area of some 500,000 square kilometers off the east coast of Greenland. According to the USGS's best guess, the so-called East Greenland Rift Basins could hold some 31.4 billion barrels of oil or natural gas. If proven, the area would rank northeastern Greenland 19th on the list of proven oil and gas reserves.

The USGS analyzed an area just off the east coast of Greenland.
When and whether those "resources" will ever be proven, however, remains unclear. The estimate took rock formations into account and looked at eastern Greenland's similarity to the geological make-up of oil- and gas-rich areas of Norway. Furthermore, as the report points out, even if the fossil riches were proven, there is at present no profitable way to extract reserves buried under a thick armor of floating ice.

Still, that isn't stopping Canada, Denmark, Russia and the United States from stepping up efforts to formalize Arctic claims. After all, should the ice eventually disappear as a result of climate change, the Arctic promises to become the target of a geo-political gold rush. By next summer, the USGS study may provide the competitors with a good idea of just what they are rushing for.

Nice post OldGuy... thx

I'm all for Alternative Fuel Sources, I just don't think it should be ethanol produced from corn or other food sources. First the cost of wheat is going to double at the end of April amid "weather pattern changes and the high cost of fuel". So there goes one grain and now they want to limit the public consumption of another grain so we can fuel our cars. Renewable resource, my ass. I give it 2 years, 3 at the most before ethanol is at a shortage with the population increase and the growers inability to meet demands. Whatever happened to solar power research and where does hydrogen stand these days. I'm as concerned about the peak oil and we need to sever our dependencies on it. Now, I'm not a drum pounding environmentalist, I realize that for certain things in life in order to get the good, you have to accept the bad. Next time you see a guy protesting the environment, ask him if he walks or rides a horse everywhere he goes. I'll bet you won't find very many. I think we are wasting our time looking for more oil and fighting over it, we ought to be looking to more abundant resources, and yes, while there will always be a need for petroleum and petroleum by-products we need to shrug of the extreme dependencies that we have found ourselves slaves of.

I too am having issues with the use of Ethanol. There is already starvation in the US, let's make it worse by driving food prices beyond what the mere mortal can afford.

The hydrogen cell is really promising, except if you live in a climate where freezing is an issue. It expels water vapor which sounds like a nifty by product right? Imagine that on a frosty morning.. slip sliding away.

I watched a proggie on electric cars the other day, there is a spiffy one that only takes 5,000 laptop batteries.. 5k.. imagine trying to replace that battery pack?

Hopefully they will invent new and improved batteries that will run a vehicle as well as the 5k lith ion do. So that it's just one thing to replace rather than a huge number.

I personally, am looking at Vespa ..75 mpg, not too much in the way of emissions, sure, it's single passenger and you might get a bit wet some days.. but for general running... it's worth it.

I'm sure my vacation that is coming up when I start doing some driving down south will really feel that gas price. Right now the avg up here is 3.55 and will probably only go up by June/July. People can only take these prices for so long I am already starting to see a increase in my food bill because of gas prices.

What is so hard to know that a country of our size needs to be independant in the area of fuels. If there was a world war what would we do when those countries say 'screw off' you are not getting any oil at all? We need to be self-sufficient. Build nuke plants and refineries it's not a hard concept and drill for damn oil while we work on alternate means of fuel.

A small minority of peoples views are ruining our country. Just ask people would you mind the USA drilling for oil within our borders or having the oil companies build refineries. We had this discussion at work and all 15 people agreed to doing both. The majority of the populous wants to do this it is just a small portion of people hurting us all.

If I remember correctly a lot of these excuses were used in the 70's gas crunch. I do believe the oil companies want to get our fuel prices up to around $6 dollars a gallon. This is what the rest of the world is paying!

D1 take your vacation around Texas/Oklahoma. You will see a lot of refineries/ oil rigs sitting dormant. We also have a lot running.

I think I've said it before... but if we as a buying public could ever get together... We wouldn't have this problem. Were like cows being led of to slaughter..... Really sad... We bitch about it then go and buy it.

I'm all for ethanol. They just set up a plant close to us, not very big and plenty of corn to go in it. I guess these plants could supply the fuel for a "region" of folks. I hear there is a bunch of these plants going in. This could be why big oil companies are getting there prices up? It seems that there is a bunch of alternate fuel producing products. They were showing on the Weather Channel that all types of Algae will produce ethanol. So its not just grain products.

OK.... who's next?

Couldn't over time we will just kill the soil because of all the corn crops we would actually need to really meet the demand of this fuel if we went too it. We would have to grow a shitload of corn to keep up. Maybe I am just un-knowledgeable about ethanol production but is it really feasible to do?

The government can do many things they stop airlines, bus drivers and truckers from stopping why can't they just tell the oil companies to lower the price by this date or some large fines will be assessed against them. The big reason why they don't do it is because the government makes money too because we pay taxes on all this fuel so it's not a dem/rep thing.

What to do ???

I've helped a friend on his farm here locally. Corn is a easy crop on soil. He rotates some of it with cotton and soy beans, it usually depends on the market price of the crop. We have thousands and thousands of acres of corn around here. We also have Thousands and thousands of acres of rice here.... which brings up another price gouging subject!!!!.....


Yes, the Government does have the ability to stop it........ But it comes back to us!!! Who do we elect??? Why when they lie do we let them get away with it? We need a way to imprison politicians who don't do what they say they are going to do. We need a STRICT voters bill of rights... if they say it they better do it.

It all comes down to the dreaded dollar and greed!!!!!

I think they would be more honest if there health benefits and retirement plan were pulled if they were caught in purgery. I remember when it cost like $8-10 to fill your avg car. I know there is inflation but shit the price of gas has gone up over 1000% since the 80's.

This is a good reason why they need to start working on transporter technology

damn they need to do something.

Been hearing stuff about supplementing your gasoline with water subjected to electrolsis to create an additional hydrogen molecule, changeing the water from H2O to HH2O there it burns. There are several websites on the subject.

I know the "Mythbusters" tested it on one of their shows and it didn't work, the next day the website/forum was blasted with people saying the Mythbusters didn't do it right and that they have the system installed on their own vehicles and were seeing results of 40 to 50% increases in gas mileage.

If this is a hoax or a scam, people are putting a unprecedented amount of effort into it. I wonder if there is something to it, especially since I can't find a single website that is discrediting it.

Just do a search for "water supplement for fuel" or anything along those lines and you'll find it.

What do you think?