I saw two videos today from creators who did not know much. Both claimed that America's energy problems were solved permanently. One was a new advert for Exxon's coke proppant, which increases the recoverable reserves of a well by 20%. Except it said 'up to 20%' which is not the same as averaging 20% increase. Exxon had drilled 100 wells and shown an improvement of 7-20%. The creator announced that only 10% of the OOIP is recovered, so this will recover, at best 12%. Then he said that Exxon planned on doubling its Permian output to 2.5 million b/d, which to me means they are going to drill twice as many wells before the pressure is completely depleted, but the announcer seemed to think the coke would do that all by itself. Exxon is still advertising this stuff as a miracle cure for aging wells. Are they trying to sell it to other companies?

Then Chevron appeared. They have been doing very deep drilling into the Paleogene layer in the Gulf of A. I looked it up; it is hideously expensive to drill there, the cost for the oil is +$100/b and there doesn't appear to be much oil there (billions, not 10s of billions). Yes, Chevron gets 75k/day from its wells, but they cost $5.7 billion. Yikes!

This appears to be the best the oil companies can do. If this really is the best they can do, we're screwed.