Simply Politics & News

[back2basics]

The story about the Golan oil discovery is interesting, but I detect a trace of BS.


"--but conceded that until the oil is actually extracted, they won’t be sure of the actual amounts and quality of the oil that has been discovered."

The story claims a production formation thickness of 1100+'. Cores and cutting analysis of the discovery well would have given them the porosity of the formation. As soon as a significant well is drilled, drill stem tests are run. They would get the quality of he oil from that and a good idea of the reservoir reserves.

When I read about the size of a field I always put it in terms that I can visualize. ""Nearly 98,000 sq acres" sounds huge. But it is just 157 sq miles. That is equal to an 8 mile wide by 20 mile long strip. Not a huge field.

It says Israel uses 270K bbls/day. That's 96 million bbls /year. And that it would "supply Israel with oil for centuries." By my calcs, one century's production would be about 10 billion bbls .

The Bakken formation covers 200,000 sq miles and holds an estimated 400 billion bbls. It is 1270 times bigger than the Golan find but Bakken has just 40 time more oil. Not impossible but a huge stretch.

A rule of thumb in evaluating news about new discoveries is that the more detail about the find, the more reliable the news is. When little detail is given--beware.

This report dos not sy how deep the wells are. the quality of the oil. Initial flow rates. That info would be available as son as the well was completed.

Looks like I'm not the only one that has reservations about the story.

----the announcement might have as much to do with the share price of the exploration company as the actual certainty that oil will be produced at the site

For Israel's sake I hope it is as good as it sounds.

B2B