Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 165 posts

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#71

Post by scurvy »

mastratton3 wrote: post #32
Frost1x wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop. While I realize you're referring to a functioning deep-water well, working as designed, I can't help but remember the complete mess from Deepwater Horizon. If it's difficult to stop a correctly functioning deep-water well, I have even more respect for that mess of a situation (and a bit more disdain for the practice in general): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwat…

That occurred during drilling not production so all the standard well head facilities were not in place.

There were still mechanical failures all over in safety devices. We're drilling much deeper than under higher pressures now than Deepwater Horizon.

To imply that deepwater oil production is safe, is crazy. Storms happen. Mudslides (underwater) happen. Pandemics happen. This is why majors contract out to the offshore drillers. They want nothing to do with it.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#72

Post by scurvy »

foota wrote: post #20
scurvy wrote: post #10

Considering that the front-month oil contracts went negative today (paid to buy a barrel of oil), I think more (well funded and adept) players will try to hastily arrange more storage facilities. There's just no place to put the stuff right now. It's quite difficult to turn-off an active well. Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop.

So like... why doesn't someone just fill a reservoir or something?

That's what the strategic petroleum reserve in Louisiana is. They filled massive salt domes with crude oil. The salt keeps away bacteria that can foul the oil.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#73

Post by kryogen1c »

jedberg wrote: post #40
dang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it's not clear how to get it right.

If you auto merged the comments from the last time, in theory they would quickly fall to the bottom because their time based value would be so much lower than the new stuff. Maybe also disable replies to old comments and make them a different color? To be fair, we could never figure out how to get this right on reddit either, but HN has a better comment sorting algorithm than reddit so it might actually work here.

what about automerging all comments +1 layer deeper with the bot comment (in the same form dang does it now) as the universal parent? it prevents the feature creep\bloat of adding a notification system, and maybe be backwards compatible with the web and mobile versions, and if people dont want it they can collapse the whole thread (or maybe it starts collapsed anyway)

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#74

Post by saagarjha »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #63
LeoPanthera wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitting the Reader View button, at least in Safari, also allows you to read the full article.

Curiously, it's a different article using reader view in Firefox.

Try reloading. I got a different article once the page loaded in Safari, too.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#75

Post by saagarjha »

jedberg wrote: post #62
jefftk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to discourage replies to old comments?

Because the people who made the comments won't know that someone replied since HN doesn't have a notification system.

Not a Hacker News feature, and probably not new to many here, but some might find it useful: http://www.hnreplies.com

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#76

Post by bhl »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #15
scurvy wrote: post #10

Considering that the front-month oil contracts went negative today (paid to buy a barrel of oil), I think more (well funded and adept) players will try to hastily arrange more storage facilities. There's just no place to put the stuff right now. It's quite difficult to turn-off an active well. Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop.

Does it happen often that future contract falls into negative territory?

The technical term for this is contango [1]. Last time this happened to crude oil was after the GFC, as mentioned in the article.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contango#Description

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#77

Post by mastratton3 »

scurvy wrote: post #71
mastratton3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That occurred during drilling not production so all the standard well head facilities were not in place.

There were still mechanical failures all over in safety devices. We're drilling much deeper than under higher pressures now than Deepwater Horizon. To imply that deepwater oil production is safe, is crazy. Storms happen. Mudslides (underwater) happen. Pandemics happen. This is why majors contract out to the offshore drillers. They want nothing to do with it.

That's not exactly accurate. Transocean was the contract driller on deepwater horizon but BP still took the brunt of the liability and PR backlash. The contract structure actually hasn't changed much in the past 20 years.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#78

Post by foota »

scurvy wrote: post #72
foota wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like... why doesn't someone just fill a reservoir or something?

That's what the strategic petroleum reserve in Louisiana is. They filled massive salt domes with crude oil. The salt keeps away bacteria that can foul the oil.

Well, that's a little more involved than a reservoir, in fairness. Makes me wonder though if we might see something like this pop up in the private sector in case this happens again. Even a tens of millions of dollar investment in storage would look reasonable alongside the potential profit having millions of barrels of storage would bring right now.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#79

Post by jedberg »

saagarjha wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the people who made the comments won't know that someone replied since HN doesn't have a notification system.

Not a Hacker News feature, and probably not new to many here, but some might find it useful: http://www.hnreplies.com

That was new to me, thanks!

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#80

Post by postingawayonhn »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #63
LeoPanthera wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitting the Reader View button, at least in Safari, also allows you to read the full article.

Curiously, it's a different article using reader view in Firefox.

Bloomberg seems to always republish their articles on sites like MSN and Yahoo. If you search the headline you can usually find a non-paywalled article.
Post reply on HN