“The Next Saudi Arabia”: An Australia Desert Town of 3,500

In January, officials in Australia announced they had found a shale oil field that contained more “black gold” than what’s found in Iran (137 billion barrels), Iraq (115 billion barrels), Canada (175 billion barrels) or Venezuela (211 billion barrels).

Discovered underneath the small Southern Australian town of Coober Pedy in the Arckaringa Basin in 2008, officials estimated the lone oil field contained about 233 billion barrels of oil — just 30 fewer barrels than what officials report is found in all of Saudi Arabia.

“The Next Saudi Arabia”: An Australia Desert Town of 3,500

Well this sounds like good news but from what ive read australia has closed its refiniries so this will most likely be sold to foreign interests, but then again the world is so globalized anything.
More oil to supply for the world for the next millenium but when will the oil cartels and energy cartels finally cave so we can use the free energy thats been hidden for so long.

This has already been posted about and is many months old news.

There might be a tonne of oil under there, but it's nowhere near the top end of those estimates.
Besides the oil, there is hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions worth mineral wealth not only around Coober Pedy but across the entire Australian outback.

Most people really have no idea just how big the Australian outback is, and how many hundreds of millions of years old this land is, and what is used to be before we existed.

Many millions of years ago the area near Coober Pedy was actually an OCEAN. Not a desert like it is now.
As you are driving through the desert toward Coober Pedy you can see the rises and falls in the landscape that used to be the ocean floor.

reply to post by breadinspector


with such a significant find - it will become economic to set up new refineries

iBallinU
This has already been posted about and is many months old news.

There might be a tonne of oil under there, but it's nowhere near the top end of those estimates.
Besides the oil, there is hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions worth mineral wealth not only around Coober Pedy but across the entire Australian outback.

Most people really have no idea just how big the Australian outback is, and how many hundreds of millions of years old this land is, and what is used to be before we existed.

Many millions of years ago the area near Coober Pedy was actually an OCEAN. Not a desert like it is now.
As you are driving through the desert toward Coober Pedy you can see the rises and falls in the landscape that used to be the ocean floor.

Had no idea it was an ocean before the earth truly is magnificent.

reply to post by breadinspector


I really hope they don't decimate our country : (
Us Aussies pride ourselves with our wide open spaces and barely touched outback!

Please, just leave us alone!

I find it strangely odd that this discovery has been kept rather quiet since it was discovered (Unless I'm just missing the news on it).

I just hope it doesn't get sold off to foreign interests, but it probably will.

reply to post by breadinspector

Well this sounds like good news but from what ive read australia has closed its refiniries so this will most likely be sold to foreign interests, but then again the world is so globalized anything.
More oil to supply for the world for the next millenium but when will the oil cartels and energy cartels finally cave so we can use the free energy thats been hidden for so long.

It's shale deposits. You may has well just found out you are living on a toxic superfund site but there is gold underneath that sludge so they are gonna pump all the toxic crap onto your fields, in your backyard, around your town. Woohoo.



The ironic thing about people who believe oil just easily replenishes itself, or that we have all these hidden free energy techs hidden away from us; well, riddle me this, if true, why in the hell would anyone find some really hard (and higher cost) source of fuel in the ground, when it's not only going to cause them a ton in environmental fees, but they realize it will probably give 10 generations of their own legacy cancer.

Eh Batman?

reply to post by breadinspector


Ignoring the local politics of this massive oil find, it shows 'peak oil' for the revenue raising scam that it is.

As a side note: Saudi Royal family better start making plans to get out of dodge..when the US exploits this find, Oz will become their next best friend, and Saudi?

Just like yesterdays newspaper becomes todays chip wrappers... yesterdays oil rich allies become todays relatively oil poor, undemocratic, abusive, citizen murderers ripe for invasion.

Just saying..

MysterX
reply to post by breadinspector

 

Ignoring the local politics of this massive oil find, it shows 'peak oil' for the revenue raising scam that it is.

As a side note: Saudi Royal family better start making plans to get out of dodge..when the US exploits this find, Oz will become their next best friend, and Saudi?

Just like yesterdays newspaper becomes todays chip wrappers... yesterdays oil rich allies become todays relatively oil poor, undemocratic, abusive, citizen murderers ripe for invasion.

Just saying..

'Cause Saudi oil would be worth nothing all of a sudden?




Besides shale being entirely useless… Oil Shale's Energy Return on Energy Investment

Oil Shale's Energy Return on Energy Investment

Findings show oil shale is, at best, a marginal energy source

…
Figure 1. A comparison of estimates of the energy return on investment (EROI) at the wellhead for conventional crude oil, or for crude product prior to refining for oil shale.


The EROI for oil shale is considerably less than the EROI of conventional crude oil, both at the wellhead and at the refined fuel stages of processing. Even under marginal conditions, such as smaller and deeper well fields, loss of artesian pressure, etc., conventional crude oil still generates a significantly larger energy surplus than oil shale – approximately 20:1. We cannot yet say with certainty that the EROI for oil shale is unequivocally greater than 1.

www.westernresourceadvocates.org...

reply to post by samuel1990


Hmmm.. gina reinhart has a lot of cash. From her dad digging big holes in australia.

You must be a city dweller...

Nuker
I find it strangely odd that this discovery has been kept rather quiet since it was discovered (Unless I'm just missing the news on it).

I just hope it doesn't get sold off to foreign interests, but it probably will.

It hasn't been kept quiet at all. It's all over the Internet in many discussion forums.
Was the first thing on the nightly news on all channels when it was announced as well.


The problem with this discovery is that the Great Artesian Basin is there as well.
Any development will potentially pollute it.
If you think protests against uranium mining in Australia have been big or bad, just wait till the day comes when they move to exploit these oil reserves. The protests by the environmental activists will be massive. And it will be because of the basin.

Anyone who has been to Coober Pedy will know just how fresh and pleasant their tap water is to drink. Yes, I said tap water.

reply to post by boncho

'Cause Saudi oil would be worth nothing all of a sudden?

Put it this way, if you had two prospective allies which were swimming in oil, about 30 Billion barrels worth of the stuff for one, but it had terrible Human rights abuse issues, undemocratic government and regularly murdered it's citizens and the other had estimates of 100's of Billions of barrels worth of the stuff, was democratic, doesn't have significant Human rights abuse issues and doesn't regularly murder it's citizens...who do you think the USA would be most likely to cosy up to and who would be most likely to have their oil stolen from under them?

MysterX
reply to post by breadinspector

 

Ignoring the local politics of this massive oil find, it shows 'peak oil' for the revenue raising scam that it is.

As a side note: Saudi Royal family better start making plans to get out of dodge..when the US exploits this find, Oz will become their next best friend, and Saudi?

Just like yesterdays newspaper becomes todays chip wrappers... yesterdays oil rich allies become todays relatively oil poor, undemocratic, abusive, citizen murderers ripe for invasion.

Just saying..

Australia already is a "best friend" of the USA.
The USA and Australia have huge oil reserves of this kind. The challenge is developing technologies to allow it to be extracted efficiently and at a cheaper cost then presently. Australia also has massive gas reserves. Gas reserves that when exploited will make Australia one of the top exporters, if not the biggest exporter of natural gas in the world.

And like I said, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The amount of other minerals in Australia that are still to be touched will blow peoples minds away.

For example the Olympic Dam expansion which would have doubled it in size. It's already the biggest multi-mineral mine in the world, and would have become even bigger. The open pit would have been like over 1km deep. That expansion is still on the cards, just a matter of when not if.

All that is needed is the right economic conditions to make exploration and extraction feasible and viable.

There will be many more mining booms in Australia to come. As the world economy recovers and grows, Australian mining booms will occur, and as the world economy falters, booms will come to an end. Like has just happened. The state of South Australia is in a prime position for the next boom, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of exploration has occurred already over the past decade.

MysterX
reply to post by boncho

 

'Cause Saudi oil would be worth nothing all of a sudden?

Put it this way, if you had two prospective allies which were swimming in oil, about 30 Billion barrels worth of the stuff for one, but it had terrible Human rights abuse issues, undemocratic government and regularly murdered it's citizens and the other had estimates of 100's of Billions of barrels worth of the stuff, was democratic, doesn't have significant Human rights abuse issues and doesn't regularly murder it's citizens...who do you think the USA would be most likely to cosy up to and who would be most likely to have their oil stolen from under them?

Mate the USA isn't going to ditch the Saudis any time soon just because a region of Australia MIGHT have 233 billion barrels of shale oil.

Many people think the USA relies on Saudi and the Gulf for it's oil supplies. It relies more on Canada and a few others then it does on the Middle East. Sure it still represents a sizeable amount. But US oil imports are not the primary reason the US is involved in the Middle East.

The purpose of US involvement in the Middle East is CONTROL. Geopolitical reasons.
Oil is the life blood of the world economy. If you control the SUPPLY and FLOW of oil, you control the World.


And how are they going to cosy up to Australia, when the two countries have been in alliance since WW1?

America isn't going to swoop in in the middle of the night and steal the oil.
American companies in partnership with Australian companies will extract that oil.
In fact it's an Australian company which discovered it.
The likes of Chevron etc will probably get involved if anything eventuates. Like they are on the north west coast with the gas developments there.

At the end of the day very very few countries possess the technical capabilities to develop oil and gas fields.
The USA is one of the very very few. And I believe it possesses some critical technologies that nobody else does.

reply to post by iBallinU


I hear what you're saying.

And agree with a lot of what you say, but i look at it like this; While the US does use SA both for oil and geopolitical purposes, they tollerate and turn a blind eye to many of the crap that goes down there to keep that relationship and the oil imports flowing. Not necassarily for the oil benefit of the USA, but also for the detriment of other nations who would be snapping up the oil if the USA didn't.

While the USA and Oz have been allies for a long time, that relationship will undoubtably become a lot closer because of the potential Oz has to not only supply oil and gas based energy to the US, but also (and possibly more importantly) who they don't particularly want to get the oil, China being an example.

A guy who wins the lottery jackpot, often finds they had friends where they had none before, and the casual friends they already had, suddenly become their best friends.

I don't think it will be any different between the US and Oz..and SA, will become the casual friend who is really starting to get on their nerves, and might just get a swift punch in the face if it carries on.

Uh Oh !
I wish they didn't find that oil reserve.
Get ready for a US invasion Oz. it'll be justified with some sort of claim of weapons of mass destruction or some such B/S.

OR

The NSA will spy on our politicians, find all the dirt on them, then use that information as extortion to wrangle a political solution to F..k the hard Aussie Worker out of the profits AGAIN!

Thankfully I'm in Iron Ore.

Trubeeleever
Uh Oh !
I wish they didn't find that oil reserve.
Get ready for a US invasion Oz. it'll be justified with some sort of claim of weapons of mass destruction or some such B/S.

OR

The NSA will spy on our politicians, find all the dirt on them, then use that information as extortion to wrangle a political solution to F..k the hard Aussie Worker out of the profits AGAIN!

Thankfully I'm in Iron Ore.

Oh FFS. Please tell me you are trying to take the piss with this comment?

Even if US companies didn't get involved, what makes you think WE, HARD WORKING AUSSIE WORKERS, will ever get a share of the profits?
Do you know how private enterprises work?
Governments will get some royalties, local Aboriginal tribes will get some royalties since it's their land.
The government royalties will benefit the public in general, one way or another, be it paying off debt or building infrastructure.

America isn't going to invade Australia.
The NSA doesn't need to spy no our politicians, because our own intelligence agencies already keep an eye on them.

I bet those aboriginal that is currently living there is going to magical disappear, either from the place or the face of the earth.

reply to post by luciddream


No.

They are making too much money from tourists wishing to see "sacred sites".

eg; Ularu, Kakadu, Stockton Dunes ( not sure on Fraser Island. )

Feel free to add ...

The focus has been skewed.