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Hawkcreek wrote:

"TAPS can transport a little over 2 mbpd, and carried about 740,000 bpd last year. Therefore, if we brought ANWR online today, it could at maximum deliver about 1.25 mbpd. But in reality, it would take 8-10 years after approval to begin producing the first of that oil. Furthermore, preliminary estimates by the USGS indicated that ANWR would likely only produce around 750,000 barrels per day at peak."-ASPO

TAPS can only transport 1.14 mbpd right now, since they have reconfigured the pumping schemes. It would take a lot of time an money to even push that up to 1.4 mbpd (provisions were made for adding pumps) -- and going back up to 2mpbd would take a major engineering and construction effort.

Hawkcreek wrote:
Quote:
"TAPS can transport a little over 2 mbpd, and carried about 740,000 bpd last year. Therefore, if we brought ANWR online today, it could at maximum deliver about 1.25 mbpd. But in reality, it would take 8-10 years after approval to begin producing the first of that oil. Furthermore, preliminary estimates by the USGS indicated that ANWR would likely only produce around 750,000 barrels per day at peak."-ASPO


TAPS can only transport 1.14 mbpd right now, since they have reconfigured the pumping schemes. It would take a lot of time an money to even push that up to 1.4 mbpd (provisions were made for adding pumps) -- and going back up to 2mpbd would take a major engineering and construction effort.


Which would occur should ANWR oil be available.

Hawkcreek wrote:

Hawkcreek wrote:
Quote:
"TAPS can transport a little over 2 mbpd, and carried about 740,000 bpd last year. Therefore, if we brought ANWR online today, it could at maximum deliver about 1.25 mbpd. But in reality, it would take 8-10 years after approval to begin producing the first of that oil. Furthermore, preliminary estimates by the USGS indicated that ANWR would likely only produce around 750,000 barrels per day at peak."-ASPO


TAPS can only transport 1.14 mbpd right now, since they have reconfigured the pumping schemes. It would take a lot of time an money to even push that up to 1.4 mbpd (provisions were made for adding pumps) -- and going back up to 2mpbd would take a major engineering and construction effort.


Which would occur should ANWR oil be available.

By the time ANWR oil is available, the probable throughput will be down to around 400kbpd. By the time ANWR oil is up to 1mpbd, it will be even lower.
So I doubt more transport ability will ever be necessary.
I could be wrong, but the decline rates and possible throughput requirements were studied very closely before the decision was made to lower the capacity of the line.
Tiime will tell.

And since Nancy Pelosi won't allow ANWR to be explored as long as she is speaker of the house, and since she is likely to be speaker (with an expanded majority) for something like a decade or so, ANWR oil is unlikely to be developed and flow to the pipeline in less then, say, 20 years.

MD wrote:It won't be long before it will be political suicide to oppose exploiting that resource.

seahorse2 wrote: These stupid wars and entitlement programs we can't afford virtually assure us 3rd world status. We are selling all our toll roads and other infrastructure to the Arabs, why not sell all our oil to the Asians?

5 Oil Companies High Bidders for Leases in Alaska Reserve
by Kathy Shwiff Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday, December 17, 2008

ALASKA (Dow Jones Newswires), Dec. 17, 2008

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., ConocoPhillips, Petro-Canada, FEX LP and Petro-Hunt LLC have won 10-year leases to drill in in northern areas of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The companies submitted high bids of almost $31 million for 150 tracts in the Northwest and Northeast portions of the reserve.

The Bureau of Land Management accepted all high bids in the Sept. 24 oil and gas lease sale and has mailed lease offers to the high bidders. If the companies accept the lease offers and pay the balance of the bonus bid, the annual rental and lease processing fee, the federal agency will issue the leases.

When it announced plans for the lease sale this summer, the bureau estimated the leases could result in the development of as much as 8.4 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas for shipment to North American markets through gas pipelines currently in the planning stages. The U.S. consumes almost 7.5 billion barrels of oil each year.

[...]

OilFinder2 wrote:Some more goodies in the National Petroleum Reserve have just been auctioned off. This was the auction I posted on July 17.

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5 Oil Companies High Bidders for Leases in Alaska Reserve
by Kathy Shwiff Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday, December 17, 2008

ALASKA (Dow Jones Newswires), Dec. 17, 2008

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., ConocoPhillips, Petro-Canada, FEX LP and Petro-Hunt LLC have won 10-year leases to drill in in northern areas of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The companies submitted high bids of almost $31 million for 150 tracts in the Northwest and Northeast portions of the reserve.

The Bureau of Land Management accepted all high bids in the Sept. 24 oil and gas lease sale and has mailed lease offers to the high bidders. If the companies accept the lease offers and pay the balance of the bonus bid, the annual rental and lease processing fee, the federal agency will issue the leases.

When it announced plans for the lease sale this summer, the bureau estimated the leases could result in the development of as much as 8.4 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas for shipment to North American markets through gas pipelines currently in the planning stages. The U.S. consumes almost 7.5 billion barrels of oil each year.

[...]

NEW ORLEANS -- Standing in front of a brightly colored, 3-D image of the geology far below the floor of the Chukchi Sea, Steve Phelps pointed to the "giant opportunity" that has prompted Shell Oil to pour billions of dollars into the Alaska Arctic. "Burger -- that's the name you are going to get to know," Phelps recently told reporters gathered here to learn about the huge oil company's plans and promises for Alaska.

Phelps is Shell's Alaska exploration manager, a geologist whose job it is to find big oil. The Burger field, part of a Shell naming theme that revolved around junk food, has been eyed by various oil companies for years. But it's more than 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea -- between Siberia and the northwest coast of Alaska -- and until recently was thought to be too expensive to develop. Now Shell -- for the second time -- holds the leases.

Armed with promising new seismic science, a sort of undersea sonogram of the earth's belly, the Dutch company says Burger is a signature find. It's the spark for ramping up controversial efforts to drill off the northernmost coast of the U.S. in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth. "This is the stuff that most of the world was finding in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1960s, in places like Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Nigeria," Phelps said. "This one potential resource far outweighs any single field we've got in the Americas' portfolio."

More than in the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling rigs checker the ocean and Shell led the way into deep-water zones that produce more oil than anyone predicted.

More than in Brazil, where Shell is the second biggest oil producer after the state energy company.

More than in Canada, where Shell is investing billions to extract thick, sticky crude from tar sands.

[...]

It is the Chukchi Sea that has really caught Shell’s attention, though.

“The Burger prospect, our initial target there, has the potential for being a world-class, multi-billion barrel discovery. We see it as a basin-opener, and a game-changer for not only the North Slope and TAPS but also the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska because a pipeline across NPR-A to TAPS will open up a lot of small fields in the reserve,” Slaiby said.

...

Shell believes the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas can ultimately contribute 700,000 barrels per day of new throughput to TAPS.

The federal oil-lease sale promoted as the largest ever in Alaska’s Arctic Reserve sold only seven tracts, or 0.8% of the 900 tracts offered, undercutting Republican arguments that they can help pay for their proposed $1.5 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy by selling oil leases in the Alaskan wilderness. ConocoPhillips Alaska and Anadarco E&P Onshore LLC jointly submitted bids totaling $1.2 million, leasing 79,998 acres of the 10.3 million acres offered. “The Arctic Refuge isn’t a bank,” said David Yarnold, the president and CEO of the National Audubon Society. “Drilling there won’t pay for the tax cuts the Senate just passed.” The highest bid amount per acre in Wednesday’s lease sale was $14.99, about $35 less than an average bid for drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve since 1999. Oil companies would have to bid an average of $2,400 per acre for each of the 1.5 million acres on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to