Mexico announced this week the discovery of a huge oil find, the Noxal field in the Gulf of Mexico off Veracruz. Estimated to contain as much as 10 billion barrels of oil, the find could well be larger than Cantarell Mexico's biggest oil field, also in the Gulf, near Yukatan.
This find marks yet another huge discovery of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, BP holds a 75% interest with ExxonMobil to develop the Thunder Horse field in the Gulf, our largest Gulf oil find, located out some 125 miles southeast of New Orleans.
The Noxil field is under 930 meters (0.6 miles) of water and a further 4,000 meters (2.5 miles) underground. Thunder Hourse North was drilled in February 2001, finding oil under 1 mile of water and 5 miles below the seabed.
These offshore findings support the abiotic, deep earth theories that abundant oil can be found even below the bedrock. The Yucatan seabed is believed to have been deeply cracked by the impact of the giant comet that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic Era. Scientists advocating the abiotic theory, that oil is produced inorganically by the Earth, not as a result of once living organisms transforming into oil, believe that hydrocarbons formed in the mantle of the earth seep up through cracks in the bedrock to pool in relatively porous sedimentary layers near the surface. All of these Gulf of Mexico oil finds are at deeper levels than traditional-thinking "fossil fuel" geologists typically looked.
From a policy point of view, we have to ask why President Bush continues to believe we must prepare for a world running out of oil. Even before the new Mexican discovery, the Energy Information Agency's own figures estimate proven world oil reserves at 1.28 billion, more than ever in human history, despite world consumption nearly doubling since the 1970s. Right now, world markets are so awash in oil that even voting Iran's secret nuclear weapons program to the Security Council has not caused oil prices to spike extraordinarily. Oil prices fell this week on U.S. Energy Department supply reports that said U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 4.8 billion barrels last week, to 339.9 million barrels, approximately 10% above levels a year ago. None of this sounds like we are running out of oil any time soon.
Maybe President Bush's agenda is to keep America dependent upon foreign oil. The administration continues to argue that America's "oil addiction" will only be solved if we resolve to turn more wood chips into biofuel. Perhaps Bush should consult with Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) to inquire how the windmill project off Cape Cod is doing these days.
Or maybe the United States is the only country that cannot find enough oil in the Gulf to become oil sufficient. Today, we already import some 1.75 million barrels a day from Mexico, a figure that is likely to increase. We wonder if continued access to Mexican oil is the real reason why President Bush sees no problem accepting 4 million to 5 million illegal immigrants a year invading America across our wide open southern border.
We wonder how warmly Southern California environmentalists are going to take to the 12,000 Mexican diesel trucks that daily are about to head north now that the Supreme Court has thrown out the last NAFTA challenge. Our Mexican trucker friends are about to about to pour another 50 tons of smog into California, driving their old rigs, a quarter of which were built in the 1980s. With illegal immigrants and Mexican diesel smog pouring into southern California unchecked, even the residents of Laguna Beach are likely to wake up one day and find out that Victor David Hanson is right - they are living in "Mexifornia," whether they realize it or not.
Maybe the answer to why President Bush has gone "green" is that he is taking his advice on energy policy from White House counsel Harriet Miers. Otherwise, why has the administration stopped talking about drilling in the ANWR? Perhaps Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska ) would like to ask that question as well, especially now that Bush has turned a deaf ear to his decades long fight to open the ANWR to drilling.
Globalists like Bush evidently do not worry about these issues - Mexico or the United States, what's the difference. Oil is fungible, and once it’s out of the ground, who can tell where it came from?
