I see that after 12 years since another company's efforts BP is to drill in the Great Australian Bight
http://www.bpgabproject.com.au/go/doc/5771/2243598/
The water depth is 1-2.5 km and a long way from any cleanup crews if there is an oil spoil. However my hunch is that BP will do their dough.

Even if there was some oil would $50 a barrel be enough? I think we may be in fool's paradise with the current low oil price. Before 2020 you'd have to think there will be a major correction.

Oil exploration is one thing and extraction is another, it’s a matter of finding oil before someone else does.

By identifying the where about’s of oil they have a reserve on it’s location.

There is no shortage of oil, with 50 years of proven reserves, and another 50 years of unproven reserves, oil exploration will continue as a reservation of it’s existence.

Oil usage is in decline, so a higher price may not be of longer term benefit to the ones with oil to sell. Oil refineries are being built in Arabia, so we may even get cheaper fuel, when Singapore does not have so much say in what we pay for fuel.

1. While the US is benefitting immensely from low price shale oil extracted in the US - those poor Russian are reliant on expensive to extract Siberian-Arctic ocean oil.

Poor Putin can't afford his military aggression.

2. Too bad about "the massive Gorgon LNG, led by Chevron, which saw costs balloon to more than $54 billion" as that is an Aus project.

I'm afraid I have to mostly agree with Doog,and note that the smart money should be aimed at safer bet alternatives! Which although may have a long lead time before they start to produce, like oil from algae, with some types up to 6o% oil!

Child's play to extract from some of the sun dried and crushed filtrate as ready to use diesel or jet fuel products. Estimated to cost as little as 44 cents a litre, even with a fuel excise included?

Able to be grown in endlessly available sea water, if that's all there is!

Simply put, once the capital costs are returned and the seed material is built up to necessary production levels; the rest is just endless profit as far out as the eye can see, at least until some of the aging infrastructure needs to be repaired, rebuilt or replaced?

And given much of it can be long life plastics and or concrete, costs can be minimised, even as the cost of rigs and platforms become increasingly prohibitive for the blokes with very deep pockets and an appetite to waste money!

Algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in carbon, and given optimised conditions double that bodyweight and oil production capacity every 24 hours, and will happily bloom the best as a mop crop cleaning up effluent, which can then be safely reused for other agricultural pursuits.

The ex crush material can be use as a source of arable land and food free of (petrol replacing) ethanol made by fermentation?

Moreover, algae only require 1-2% of the water needed for conventional irrigation and would therefore lend themselves to myriad small projects on family farms, which could a they extracted and sold fuel, expand significantly, given algae huge growth performance curve.
Rhrosty.

Plantagenet said:
1. While the US is benefitting immensely from low price shale oil extracted in the US -

Shale oil is anything but cheap oil. Break even price is $US70 to US$ 90 a barrel.

The number of operating shale drilling rigs is continuing to fall.
Down some 60% since October last year.
I think there will be a rise in the price, but when ---?
These big swings in price were predicted back in the 1990s to occur
after peak oil, which happened in 2006.
They said there would be a few cycles like this before it settled.

me bad Bazz

I meant shale GAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas

"Shale gas is natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations.

Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States since [2000], and interest has spread to potential gas shales in the rest of the world.

In 2000 shale gas provided only 1% of U.S. natural gas production; by 2010 it was over 20% and the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration predicts that by 2035, 46% of the United States' natural gas supply will come from shale gas."

Planta

OK Plantagenet, understood.
Yes NG from shale has been a good saviour for the US.
The price is very low at present but the US expects it to rise.
It is affecting the price our CNG sells for from Gladstone.
They have only just started shipping it so they want to get some of
their capex back asap.

It may just go on like it all is at the moment.
There is some opinion I have seen where they do not expect a price
change till 2020. I do not see it myself, but I could be wrong.
I think the Wall St financiers are too twitchy about shale not to
pull the plug before 2020.