Rick and others who could help:

A few threads down on this forum, Sure M. Worried asks a series of questions about the oil industry which are based on some alarming allegations made on the Yourdon forum. The reason I'm calling this to your attention is that the source of the allegations, although speaking about oil systems primarily, does talk a little about natural gas, which I know you've had some contact with. You sniffed out at least one utility hoax quite rapidly, and I along with many other Yourdon visitors would much appreciate your thoughts on this.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the TB2000 forum and click on Uncategorized, you'll find, at least 4 pages down in that section, a thread called Oil Chat. There are a couple of more recent follow-up threads. The "source" foresees problems in the oil industry that could easily be severe enough to affect electricity. On Worried's post below on this forum, I was glad to see Malcolm's statement that a lot of EU's store up to many years' worth of specialized lubricant for the generation equipment. This lubricant was mentioned as being at risk if enough refineries, wells, etc., have problems.

Thanks for any help you could give us.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Answers

My purpose in posting the series of questions was to get a sense of how accurate "DD" was in her knowledge of the oil industry. I was a participant in that now (in)famous chat room at Lumen food. It really floored us, to say the least. It was giving a percentage drop in oil production which made the discussion real for us. In retrospect, there were other sources which indicated much the same conclusion (middle east, south american sources not ready). What I would really like to find is some historial data showing what the supply and consumption figures were for the US during the past decades. I would like to match up a 70% drop in oil production with an actual year, 1940? 1950? to compare. There is a followup series of questions posed by Gary North to DD on the Lumen food archives for the chat room. Unfortunately, this week's chat was seriously marred by trolls and pollies who tried to shut down the site.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

test, please delete

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Worried, I believe your question is in what year did the country function using 30% of today's oil usage?

I was born at the time of the east Texas oil boom, 1933. I lived in the east Texas oil patch until I went to college at the age of 16, in 1949. My father was a foreman laying and repairing pipeline for Sun Oil Company. I grew up climbing oil derricks. During this period you could see flares burning all over that part of Texas. The flares were burning natural gas, stuff that the oil companies had little use for so you can eliminate the use of, piping and processing of, large amounts of natural gas until later years. Here is a story about natural gas: In those years oil companies built "oil camps" for their workers to live in (I lived in the Sun Oil Camp. They piped natural gas to these camps and other places in the local area, including schools. Now, natural gas, in its original state, has no odor. About 20 miles from where we lived was another oil based community, New London. There was a natural gas leak at the school and the odorless gas gathered underneath the school. The entire school blew up. We went there to see it but I was small at the time. I remember one thing, clothes that someone had been wearing were hanging on a fence post along the side of the road. It was that enormous explosion that brought about an odor being added to natural gas.

Back to your question. In my growing up years, until about 1949, the oil patch was drilling everywhere as fast as they could. Oil was everywhere for the taking. I believe by the very early 50's the flares went away and natural gas was being captured and used for fuel everywhere, even the northern part of the country. Also the early 50's saw my father not laying more pipe but maintaining the pipe that had already been laid. There were no more pipe connections to be made in this enormous east Texas oil field. Refineries had come in to their own. By this time west Texas oil was also at capacity.

I believe the mid-50's would come close to using 30% of the oil we now use since the oil fields were producing with less drilling taking place (drilling had not ceased but the frenzy of drilling had.) I am basing this on the oil years as I knew them.

Now an oil history expert may blow me out of the water on this and that is fine. Your question brought back memories to me of what happened in the early days.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Bill - I could sniff out the earlier electric industry hoax because I spent a long time in the industry, and know the dialect and culture. There were also a couple of other indications that gave it away.

In this particular case, I will defer to those who have some knowledge of the oil industry. I am hoping that one of our oil industry regulars (or semi-regulars) can jump in and let us know if the postings make sense. I do know that one of our regulars (an oil industry analyst with his pulse on API) has some significant misgivings about Y2k readiness of oil companies.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I don't know about DD, but here is a note from a close friend that is working at Chevron. This was received on 1999.10.12:

Just talked to my friend & only other engineer on the project here at Chevron. The company sent him to "charm" school (Management Leadership Training) all last week. The attendees are mid-level guys who are seen to be "up & coming". Part of the week-long exercise was to march through the class about 15 of Chevron's senior level folks and allow the mid-levels access to ask how the top level guys view various challenges that face Chevron... internal & external.

Guess what never even came up? Yep, you guessed it... not once did any of these guys bring up the topic of Y2K. Plenty of talk around how to manage the diversity issue and various impacts of merger mania, but NOTHING about Y2K.

Chevron is either so completely sure that they & their suppliers are compliant... or amazingly myopic....

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

My base knowledge is in COBOL and banking so I can not answer this question directly. My trust level in DD will be based on her posting directly to this forum where the noise level is low and the knowledge level is high by nature.

Thanks for this forum Rick Richard Hurley

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1999

At some point there was a discussion here of just how much help the Strategic Oil Reserve could actually provide. I ran across this today, if it contributes anything. I don't know if it is right.

The national Strategic Petroleum Reserve has about 565 million barrels of oil stored in domes in the Southwest. That reserve can produce 3.9 million barrels a day for 90 days, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The article is interesting - about closing pipelines in NYC over the rollover.

http://www.syracuse.com/newsstories/regional/19991110_cpnoil.html

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999

Er, too bad the US consumes 18 million barrels of oil per day. That'll get you through the 31 days of January and the first 8 hours of February 1st. ;-)

AJ plays FactFinder. :-)

P.S. This report is also worth a scan: "Energy Security: Evaluating U.S. Vulnerability to Oil Supply Disruptions and Options for Mitigating Their Effects (Chapter Report, 12/12/96, GAO/RCED-97-6)"

-- Anonymous, November 18, 1999