We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Because of fracking and horizontal drilling, the one year increase in U.S. oil production in 2012 was the largest increase in our history. The bounties from shale could spread to other countries.
U.S. production increase
The Wall Street Journal reports in their article U.S. Oil Notches Record Growth on data released by BP:
In the latest sign of the shale revolution remaking world energy markets, crude production in the U.S. jumped 14% last year to 8.9 million barrels a day,
Philosiblog expands that idea in a post of the same name.
Using the analogy of riding a river shows we have a major role to play in our future. We can even create our future.
Think of two people in a river. One is just floating on a raft, unable to predict what is coming, because they aren’t looking around and aren’t doing anything to move or steer. The other person is in a kayak, looking for the path they want, and actively steering and moving themselves to that point. Continue reading ““The best way to predict the future is to create it””
Professors at 10 more large university systems can access MOOC courses for use in their classes.
Coursera, which is one of the big providers of what are called Massive Open Online Courses, is expanding its reach.
The Wall Street Journal reports Web Courses Woo Professors.
Continue reading “Coursera makes online classes available to more colleges”
A bill to ban fracking was defeated in the California Assembly week before last at a vote of 37-24 with 18 abstentions. That method of getting oil out of the ground has been used here in California for only 60 years. I missed the news coverage of the vote so had to get caught up through the Wall Street Journal’s editorial, Fracturing in California.
The editorial points out that as you would expect the votes to ban energy development came from the wealthy coastal districts.
The votes to defeat? Continue reading “Outbreak of common sense about fracking in California legislature and what Monterey Shale could mean to the state”
Joke of the week – if my computer or website crashes, can I get a backup copy from NSA?
Lots of publicity this week on extensive federal monitoring of citizens and non citizens. No time to write a full post, so just a quick note to put some dots on the page. Hopefully will have time to connect them later
Four massive stories this week:
Continue reading “Surveillance society – A very bad week for privacy.”
Philosiblog expands on that comment by Johnathan Winters.
How long will you wait for the perfect opportunity to kick in the door and drag you into the future?
Sometimes you have to take a so-so opportunity and make it work. Continue reading ““If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it!””
In terms of Bentek’s forecast from 2011, production is already at 2016 levels. It is so cool they were wrong!
In the distant past of April 2011 (that data is only 24 months old), production was around 500k bopd. Production was forecast to hit around 700k bopd by the end of 2012 and around 900k bopd by December 2016.
That info from RBN Energy’s article Too Wrong for Too Long? How 2011 Bakken Crude Forecasts Compare to Today.
The graph of actual and forecast production now?
How do you talk to a reporter with minimum risk of being found out? What does the answer to that question tell the rest of us who don’t have really juicy stuff to spill to a national reporter?
You leave digital crumbs every time you use the internet or your computer or any device that accesses the ‘net. How then to securely leak info to the media?
Continue reading “How do you securely leak information in a surveillance society?”
That’s the conclusion after reading Eagle Ford Shale’s post Eagle Ford Oil Production Growing Twice As Fast As Thought – Bentek.
RBN Energy reviews their forecast from the distant past, specifically two years ago. They find: Continue reading “May 2013 – In Eagle Ford, it’s already 2016”
Exporting natural gas would have two major advantages, it seems to me.
First, it would stabilize prices in the U.S. and around the world by integrating markets that are not connected.
Second, by creating more demand for U.S. produced gas and stabilizing prices it would encourage more exploration and production here. That is important because exploration has dropped off because of the currently low prices. We should export gas if we want to create the incentives that will result in production of more gas.
700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities
Your choice of video or audio in either iTunes or mp3 format. Tons of courses. Well, advertised at 700, but I didn’t try counting them.
Free.
If you want to learn it will cost your time.
Amazing.
The frontier is wide open in education.
Not much news that I’ve noticed. Things are still happening though. Two articles:
One of the worries about fracking is the humongous huge amount of water it takes to frack a well. Around 4,000,000 gallons for just one well. That’s more than I could drink in a lifetime.
Let’s put that in perspective. I mentioned this before here, but let’s take another look.
The Garrison dam at the end of Lake Sakakawea provides hydroelectric power. You can get some background info here.
Bruce Oksol provides some background at his post Water For Fracking In the Bakken.
His conclusion?
Less than a day’s worth of discharge from the Garrison Dam should be enough water to frack all the wells that will be fracked in the North Dakota Bakken this year.
I’ll backstop his calculations below, which confirm his calculation.
Seems that oil production of a new find or the increase in a field is often compared to what’s going on in the Bakken. Haven’t seen others use Bakken as a unit of measure, but I’m having a kick doing so.
Story I’ve not been following is that horizontal drilling and fracking has increased production quite a bit in states other than North Dakota and Texas.
Check out the Business Insider set of graphs showing how much better things have gotten in the last few decades or the last century.
31 Charts That Will Restore your Faith In Humanity.
A few of my favorites: Continue reading “31 charts showing things are getting better and better”