Space: The final frontier.
... For the oil industry?
It appears so, as word leaked yesterday from high-level NASA officials that a multi-billion dollar, 10-year initiative had been launched to begin transporting oil back to Earth from Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
According to scientists, this smoggy moon located on the outer rim of Saturn's rings is said to contain more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all proven oil and gas reserves on Earth.
And with petro supplies declining at an alarming rate around the globe, the oil industry is now seemingly prepared to embark on the first-ever intergalactic oil exploration mission in history.
"This is vital, essential, critical — whatever word you want to use for it — to the survival of big oil," stated an unnamed oil executive.
"You hear it and you just can't believe it's possible. It sounds like a sci-fi movie. But this is where we're at... This is the future of our industry."
Using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, officials have determined that hydrocarbons actually fall from the sky in the form of rain on Titan, and are collected in lakes and dunes. It seems that this moon may be the first known "endless" source of oil ever discovered.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material — it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Cassini has only surveyed 20% of Titan so far and already the lakes and dunes observed there are estimated to hold more fuel than all of Earth's current reserves combined.
"We'll get that oil back here, even if we have to build a pipeline from Saturn to the Earth," says a veteran oil wildcatter. "It may cost more money than the world's ever seen, but it'll cost more for us not to do it."
Unnamed NASA sources have already begun work on a $98 billion exploration and retrieval vessel rumored to be named The Baron.
Once the ship reaches Titan, its 12-man team will siphon approximately 5,000 barrels of fuel into the ship's storage cells. It will then begin the return journey to Earth to determine if its cargo is viable to be used inside our atmosphere.
Total roundtrip time of the vessel is expected to be four years.
If the mission is successful, plans are to have a fleet of oil ships launched within months of The Baron's return.
"Forget solar, wind, ethanol — all the alternative energy stuff. This may be what saves our planet from a true energy crisis," says the oil executive.
How close are we?
Okay, time to 'fess up...
Most of what you just read is a work of fiction.
There's no partnership between NASA and Big Oil... No Baron spaceship or mission to Titan.
What is true, however, is that Titan is estimated to hold more oil and gas than planet Earth. The Cassini spacecraft really did return with this eye-opening news.
And someday — sooner than you think — we could very well be reading articles like this on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
Because as long as our oil addiction rages on while our planet's reserves continue to dwindle... stories like this remain a very real possibility.
And now with offshore drilling at least temporarily (and perhaps permanently) dead in the water, thanks to the BP spill, you can wipe a huge potential supply of oil off the charts.
The fact remains that, for the moment, America's #1 up-and-coming source of petro lies in oil shale — specifically the shale of the Bakken region in North Dakota.
While California, Texas, and Alaska continue to watch production numbers plummet every year, North Dakota only continues to see figures increase.
And it's easy to see that now that President Obama has ordered oil companies out of the water, shale regions like Bakken — which is estimated to hold over 4 billion barrels of oil and counting — are going to see a massive influx of new exploration and production.
I've compiled a brand-new report on this "game-changing" situation occurring right now in the oil industry.
Inside you'll find details about three small American oil firms with heavy ties to the Bakken formation.
These firms are already established and successfully producing crude in the region and their share prices are primed for a major move upward as North Dakota becomes the next domestic oil hot zone.
You can access this report — for free — right here.
In the meantime, remember you heard about Titan here first. One day, it could become a household name.
The tiny moon that saved the oil industry...
Until next time,
Keith Kohl
Editor, Energy and Capital
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is half again the size of Earth's moon, and somewhat larger than the planet Mercury. Lotsa oil.
In other words, if and when this happens, the current, established oil industry will have gone the way of the steam engine and the buggy whip.
Isn't it time to tax carbon in fuels and promote an economy using 21st Century fuels and energy conversion technologies, breaking with the obsolete fuels and technologies of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
It would take a (minimum) HUNDRED THOUSAND times more energy to obtain hydrocarbon fuels from the moon let alone Titan.
Even helium 3 from the moon would be net energy negative.
Hydrocarbon fuels from space? NEVER.
BP knew before how much oil was down there (and gas). Off-shore drilling is now 'established' as a new energy source. Greed and power will drive all nations to utilize this energy reservior.
The biggest problem is that science has given little thought to WHY the oil and gas are in the earth (e.g. contnental stabilization device and earth spin elastic cushion for same).
Above said, AT will be a vast investment for the next 20-40+ years (just to keep the economy and environment going). Somewhere in the 1900s, hunanity passed over to an artifical environment. Bio-balance was thrown out the window. Not one of the world's cities could survive without energy and chemical food (even have to filter our air and water). Each town and city, is energy/bio-negative entity.
Just buy a oil/gas/coal energy ETF and AT ETFs. You as an investor and earth citizen will ride the predetermined 'wave'?
Yes, it will be fascinating to watch the biotic-sourcers looking for traces of ferns and algae in Titan's oil lakes, won't it? LOL
Given the more and more elaborate chemistry which is being detected in interstellar gas clouds and nebulae, it seems to be a no-brainer that wherever there is carbon there is going to be lotsa hydrocarbons. Abiotic, pre-biotic hydrocarbons, not post-biotic!
LOL
But the whole search for hydrocarbons is going to suffer a fatal blow in the next year or five. A firm called LPP is on the very cusp of scientific proof of fusion unity, leading directly to small, aneutronic generators which will produce power at 1/20 current capital and operating costs. And zero waste streams.