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If it comes to anything good luck to them - and I hope they get their cinema!

I expect, though, they'll be needing others to defend their oil for them if they want to keep it. Though I suppose they'll have the money to pay. Discovering oil can be a mixed blessing.

18billion barrels at $20(profit) a barrel is $360b

The Falklands gets 30% of that, so $108b, about £83b

A Eurofighter costs about £70m, same again for ordanace and service life parts.
16 of them could be had for £2.24b.
I cant imagine the RAF would mind supplying the pilots if the Falklands bought the planes off them.
Takes no extra building at Mt Pleasent, and they could sink every Argentine Frigate and down every Plane on a single flight.
3% on defence isnt a bad deal.

By far the most expensive part of a fighter jet is the combat-ready pilot.

RalphW
Have you seen what a fighter pilot earns?
I suppose theres training costs.

Haven't we had a Falkland Island oil report every year for the last couple of decades... with nothing coming of it? I won't hold my breath.

DominicJ wrote:RalphW
Have you seen what a fighter pilot earns?
I suppose theres training costs.

The pilot's salary is one the smallest costs. Fuel for a single Eurofighter training flight (several thousand litres) is probably more than he earns in a month.

£40k an hour rings a bell, although that may have been the tornado.
Fortunes have been spent on the new flight simulators / trainers to make flight time as limited as possible

Of course the pilot earns a pittance.

It costs tens of millions to train a fighter pilot. They start in normal single engine prop trainers, move to twins, trainer jets, then second line and first line fighter jets. Each plane takes dozens of mechanics and engineers to keep airworthy and flying, and large amounts of paperwork. It takes several years to train a rookie up to combat readiness. They then have an active duty of maybe 10 or 15 years (if they don't leave to become commercial pilots or mercenaries at five times the salary).

I have worked with fighter pilots on an MOD airfield.

Getting a bit sidetracked here. There is approximately zero probablility of fighting another war down there. What will count is the oil production cost.

To work on an oil rig in the southern winter, off the Falklands, I'd need a really extreme salary.
I guess the rigs' insurance costs would be similarly extreme.
Then there's the investment in an oil terminal's construction, for loading tankers at the end of the pipeline.

And after that there's the risk of Argentina reverting to military adventures if there's something extant worth having . . . .

And then there's the uncertainty over the coming decade's oil demand . . . .

Good plot for talking up the pound mind.

Regards,

Billhook

Currently, it looks impossible, but in the future, an oil rig in the south atlantic during winter is likely to be unpleasent, compared to today.
If its a choice between that and homelessness and starvation, it doesnt look so bad.
I know they've looked at it a lot for the north atlantic, as far as buying up old frigates and using them to tow away iceburgs.
The article reckons its economic at $20, I would asume that includes port infrastructure.

Personaly, I just dont see how the Argentinians could ever threaten the Falklands again, without a massive rearmament program anyway, their airforce, literaly, consists of what we didnt shoot down last time.
However, my confidence isnt shared by people who should know more than me.
But if the oil price goes up to $150 and we exploit the Falklands, no one would think twice about deploying a full brigade to protect them, probably cheaper than the jets actualy.

I'd guess the price of oil will have to go up considerably to make this find worthwhile - otherwise, why has it not already been started? $20 dollars sounds remarkably cheap for such a hostile environment.

And don't forget, oil finds, prior to actual extraction, are always grossly exaggerated - and during extraction, how big a percentage actually comes out of the ground?

Oils not been over $20 for that long, and its only recently people have started saying it'll be over it for a while.

Operating conditions for a rig in the North Falklands Basin is akin to the N.Sea, certainly not a picnic but not as harsh as you would think.

Initial exploration wells were drilled by Shell in the Falklands winter of 1998 but they all turned out to be dusters. Does go to show that rigs could operate there even in their winter though.

The prospecting areas to the south and east of the islands are deep water and much more wild so will be a bigger technical challenge.

As for the Argentines, I just cannot see them repeating 1982.

Sure they will moan and grumble but I wouldn't be surprised if they got a slice of the pie via something like refinery operations. Besides which, I think they are prospecting their own areas down there.

This is of course assuming that there is any oil down there atall.

However by all accounts the seismic of the NFB is supposed to be very good, both for crude and gas plays.

Where's RGR when you need him? He could tell us all we needed to know about this