I know there were several diaries on the Prudhoe Bay oil field shut down, but I didn't see any that discussed something I read in the paper just this morning. I think BP may have had an another motive in shutting this thing down. If this has already been discussed let me know and I'll delete this.
You can find the story
here.
The money quote:
BP's problem of corroding pipes is worsening as the nation's largest oil field ages and more water and less oil is produced during drilling.
"Really, we are a giant water field," said Bill Hedges, BP PLC's corrosion expert, explaining that what comes up from wells is three-quarters water.
Yikes!!!!! So a spokesman for the company is basically saying the company doesn't even think Prudhoe Bay is even an oil field anymore!
Now I can't even say at what point it no longer becomes economically feasible for a company to pump oil out of the ground when the vast majority of it is just water. Even at the current price of oil BP may have decided that fixing the pipes was just going to cost more than any extra oil they were going to get out of the ground.