Thanks for the thread split, Anderson.
Sorry, but while you may have investigated this thoroughly, the people with the money and the expertise are building something to last for decades.
Which is why they're going to lose their shirts when it starts declining irreversibly in 20 years. Self-delusion is a powerful thing, and nobody wants to believe that "their industry" is in serious trouble.
My neighbor, who has been in this business for over 30 years and is quite involved in this region, stated that the price of WTC would need to go below $50/bbl (highly unlikely) before exploration would slow down appreciably in that region.
I have no doubt about that -- hope springs eternal, and people will always throw money down ratholes.
There's a distinction between exploration and *profitable* exploration, unfortunately for them. Shale drilling outside the sweet spots in the field has really terrible returns.
General situation of the oil industry: The majors have been dumping stockholders' money into exploration massively in recent years -- and *they've lost money doing so*. It's just not panning out any more. The Bakken is a lucky exception, but it's mature enough that it's understood now. If you follow the decline curves, you've got maybe 20 years to peak, and it's downhill from there.
And the drilling in eastern MT is just beginning. He said a couple hundred thousand bbl a day could be flowing from that area within 5 years.
If they find another sweet spot, they might get a 5-year extension on the decline predictions. If they don't... well, there will be a lot of unprofitable wells. Like I said, 20 years to peak is an optimistic but reasonable prediction. 25 would be a grossly optimistic but possible prediction. "Over 50 years" is a delusional fantasyland prediction.
Time will tell who is correct on this. But I would never bet against American ingenuity and resourcefulness!!
In fact, American ingenuity and resourcefulness is doing something else: it's making alternatives to oil cheaper. This is making the substitution price -- the oil price at which people & companies switch to alternatives to oil -- lower. Which makes it harder and harder to do profitable drilling. There's already been a massive amount of demand destruction; it appears to be permanent; and there will be more. The smart money knows that oil is getting rare and expensive, and is moving to end dependence on it.
Mike and Nathanael, thank you for your comments. Your discussion demonstrates to me that passenger rail will always be a second-class citizen as long as it has to depend on the Class Is.....
So what's the solution? A publicly-owned rail network akin to the Interstate Highway System?
Like pretty much every other country in the entire world has? Well, yes.
That was obvious to me 30 years ago, and it was obvious to John Maynard Keynes in the *1920s*. (And he *knew* his economics.)
Building or buying a network like that seems to be unlikely in the current political and economic environment,
Does it? Does it really?
Let's consider.
- Every urban rail system owns its lines
- The majority of commuter rail systems own most of their lines:
-- Coaster (San Diego) owns its line
-- Metrolink (LA) owns most of its lines and is building extra tracks on a key remaining section
-- Caltrain (SF) owns most of its line
-- GO Transit (Toronto) owns most of its lines and is buying the rest or building its own tracks
-- MBTA, Metro-North, LIRR, and SEPTA own all of their lines, except bits owned by Amtrak or the states
-- NJT owns nearly all its lines apart from the Amtrak-owned bits (there's one historical aberration)
-- Metra (Chicago) owns slightly more than half of its lines
-- TriRail (Miami) and SunRail (Orlando) own their lines
-- Denver RTD owns all its lines
-- FrontRunner (Salt Lake) owns almost all of its line
-- Even Music City Star (Memphis) owns its line
- Amtrak owns or leases the NEC, the Keystone Line, the Springfield branch, most of the Michigan line, the Empire Line past Schenectady, the Post Road Branch, and the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge and surrounding line
- Massachusetts is buying the Connecticut River Line in its state (as well as various other lines)
- North Carolina owns nearly the entire Piedmont Line
Michigan & Illinois are now collaborating on the latest version of the South of the Lake study. The goal? A government-owned line.
New York's "High Speed Rail" study is mostly about getting dedicated passenger tracks... owned by the state.
California HSR will of course be a dedicated passenger line.
It seems to me like we're already building a network of government-owned lines, operated primarily for passenger benefit. Piecemeal. (The pro-rail states which don't seem to have wised up to this are Illinois and Virginia. Illinois has far more passenger trains over private-railroad-owned tracks than anywhere else in the US.)
This is in the context of federal hostility. (In Canada also, federal hostility.) But the states (& provinces) seem to have gotten tired of this, and have started building out government-owned networks, owned by state & local governments.
Now, what does this portend for Amtrak in particular? Well, in Denver and Salt Lake City, Amtrak is stuck running on UP and BNSF, even while spiffy government-owned lines run adjacent. Similarly, Amtrak goes along Norfolk Southern right next door to the government-owned South Shore Line in northwestern Indiana. So that could happen. On the other hand, in North Carolina, the government-owned lines are operated primarily for the benefit of Amtrak services. So that could happen. In New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, Amtrak and commuter lines share tracks and benefit jointly from government ownership.... so that could happen, and is probably preferable.
Is this process going to build a dedicated passenger line for the Empire Builder across North Dakota? No.
From New York to Chicago, however? It could. (If the politics changes in Ohio, which it could.)
Remember the highways: the New York to Chicago Toll Road System was completed decades before the Interstate system was conceived of. Perhaps if we manage to restore passenger dedicated railway lines on a few key routes, 20 years later people will start thinking in terms of a national rail system. It would be a similar process.
