Ireland finds oil!

Next month:

America says "New terrorist group Al-Potato-eda have weapons of mass destruction and their leader, Osama Bin Potato, is thought to be hiding in Ireland. Therefore we will have to invade Ireland to take him down (THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OIL, HONEST!)"
 
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Someone say oil?
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
Do we get all that much from it? I thought there was some horrible deal made years ago that basically surrendered a large amount of the value (maybe I'm thinking of something else).
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Firstly, genuine LOL at majority of the posts here! :D

I'm no expert but I believe that was the situation with the Corrib Gas field. The government very kindly donated it to Shell. Heaven knows Shell could never expect to pay for it :mad:

What's happened with this is basically the government gives it to a company to extract and then take x% of the value in tax. Basically they get something like 20% for just sitting on their ****.
 
Duff-Man said:
Water is pumped in at high-pressure to displace the oil. Once the oil is extracted, water occupies the space. Don't think of oil as a "giant underground reservoir" though - it's all contained within a porous medium (kind of like a sponge soaked in oil)



It's interesting though: Oil and water are immiscible (...don't mix), and have different densities and viscosities. Therefore the oil is not displaced in a simple fashion (like a smooth plume). Instead the injected water forms viscous fingers which travel through the oil. The fingers may branch and bifucate, but they do not break. The injected water forms a continuous but highly complex pathway through the oil.

It is important that these fingers are not allowed to reach the extraction well. If / when this happens, the extraction well will remove only water - no oil. The water will form a direct pathway from the injection point to the extraction point, and the oil well is pretty much useless. Estimating the propagation of the fingers can be a fairly complex task.
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That's really interesting and I never knew that, thanks.
 
mushroomsoup said:
Historically it all seemed to be going well until what with the Government of Ireland Act 1914
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No, Historically it was not going well! Maybe they tought us the proper history of Ireland :D

Back on topic,

Global consumption may only be 3-4 days worth, but it would be nice seeing the oil used within the UK and Ireland, using sales to boost the Irish economy, but again thats wishful thinking, anyway the odds of this actually being extracted being quiet low, but depending on who will jump onboard may change this.

This may come at a good time, as I remember a story of Gas found Fermanagh that could provide a supply to N.Ireland for a decade or so, ill need to find the report.

EDIT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16823664
 
What's the water depth in the Irish sea? Guess that will have quite a big impact on the feasibility as well as where they can process the oil and gas.
 
scorza said:
Will make a fair bit of difference to Irish finances though.

Was hearing on the radio about yesterday about the astounding performance of Norway's sovereign pension fund i.e. North Sea oil money that they didn't ***** up the wall needlessly cutting the deficit like we did in the '80s and '90s.
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maybe they can pay us the billions back we loaned them to bail them out!

surely if they just supply the UK & ireland it would be enough to keep us going a fair while?
 
mushroomsoup said:
Well, we could always take a leaf out of Argentina's book and try to reclaim Ireland as an offshore island of ours in order to get at the oil. Oh no wait, that would be ridiculous.
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how many native Argentinians do you think live in Argentina. as opposed to conquistadors who invaded hundreds of years ago and wiped out the indigenous population?
 
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