Let’s see if you feel the same excitement that I initially did…
Just outside of London, a mere 3,000 feet under the surface, Stephen Sanderson, the CEO of UK Oil & Gas Investments (LON: UKOG), is wetting his pants in excitement as his company etches a name for itself into the history books.
Oil. A bonanza. One of the largest finds in the last 30 years!
Geologists on the project are already calling it “a world-class potential resource” and have dubbed it “Britain’s Dallas”.
So what’s the hubbub?
100 billion barrels of oil. That’s what. And it’s under British soil!
… according to UK Oil & Gas analysts.
That puts this one deposit, nicknamed Horse Hill-1 on par with the entire oil reserves of Kuwait!
Holy Mary Mother of God! That’s fantastic!
Pretty exciting, eh?
There’s just one problem…
And that’s the small inconvenience that unlike in the UK, Kuwait can actually produce the oil under the sand.
Diving deeper, you’ll find that England’s discovery is just the newest addition in an ever-growing list of shale deposits.
Deposits that in many parts of the world, like the U.S. has proven, you could get tons of oil from, if the conditions are right.
But that’s where the excitement dies.
Truth be told, England’s oil might as well be a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
According to a petroleum geoscience professor who is quite familiar with the deposit and the rocks around it, accessing this shale is next to impossible, citing the rocks above the formation as “impermeable”… never mind all of London would get smogged up again like the good old days of Jack the Ripper.
Now, while I love fracking technology and see a huge future in the industry (with lots of U.S. rigs still churning profits) I have my doubts that this “find” will linger any more than an elevator fart.
If only they could have sat on the news until… I don’t know… oil prices weren’t at bargain basement prices, maybe investors and the public would give a damn. You know, like in 2008, when oil prices had everyone in an all-out panic.
$100 oil, this find gains traction, companies flood the area, buy drilling rights, and investors pocket rapid gains again and again like we saw (and profited from) in the Bakken.
$50 oil, meh.
