hotrodtodd74

This is a good and informative read:

http://www.heritage.org/research/ene...ent/hl1015.cfm

Here are some quotes from this article:

"How large is this resource? In the Piceance Basin, an area of 1,100 square miles, the oil shale is over 1 million barrels per acre, or roughly 750 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If you extend outward to Wyoming and to Utah, it is 1.3 trillion. This is why you hear shale next to trillions, not billions or millions,
of barrels. The Air Force in the 1970s looked at shale, tested it, and found that it was a superior liquid for jet fuel. Roughly 65 percent of the oil
shale is liquid, which could go into jet fuel. The J-8 engine can take shale oil as premium jet fuel."

"How long can oil shale last? There is enough shale to sustain United States consumption of crude oil easily through 2120."

"The national security argument, or the energy security argument, centers on foreign oil import dependency. If shale is commercialized by 2012, we can, under production from Colorado alone, eliminate dependency on Middle East oil by 2020. The President wants to lower it by 20 percent by 2017."

dream '94 Z28

Canada has been refining sand oil for years, but....

-what does it cost to mine and refine vs. underground petro?

-how do retrieve it? I by-no-stretch-of-the-imagination would support any large scale open pit mining.

hotrodtodd74

Read the article. There is a process that does not require mining of shale to process out the oil. The oil from this shale can be recovered with minimum surface impact since the "processing" is done in-ground.

Aaron91RS

They have been trying to get shale oil refined efficiently for decades.
So far they haven't come up with a really efficient way of doing it.

Z28Wilson

The problem isn't even with the amount of oil that is being produced. We actually have a glut of crude oil right now.

The real bottleneck is in the refining process. Our refineries have gotten older, some have closed down because big oil (like any other business) looked for ways to get more efficient and more profitable.

But yeah, it's too bad we can't refine some of this stuff that we have buried right in our backyards. People talk a good game about reducing our dependence on Middle East oil, but in the next breath say "no way" to actually using our own untapped fossil sources.

Z284ever

Unless oil can stabilize at say 80-90 dollars per barrel for an extended period of time (say afew years), no one will commit the financial resources on shale oil at it's current cost of extraction.

Too bad, because the reserves we have are truly massive, and it probably has a much better business case (in a non-subsidized free market), than corn based ETOH.

cmutt

The information is coming from the Heritage Foundation; a biased source. It aligns itself with Republicans, who have aligned themselves with the oil industry for decades upon decades. The oil industry would love for you and me and everybody else to believe that we have an unlimited amoung of oil, to continue to buy 12mpg Hummers. It's in their best interest. Take a look at the Tobacco industry, who twisted, hid, or manipulated tobacco/health studies & information for decades -- all in the sake of business and profits.

Facts are like a person being tortured. If you 'play' with them enough, they'll tell you anything you want to hear.

If you check out oil shale on Wikipedia (hardly a bastian of reliability), you'll see that the Rand Corporation had a study that reported that oil shale doesn't even become profitable until oil prices are between $70 and $95/barrel. The problem with oil shale is that it's got to be mined, transported, retorted (the process of which oil is extracted), and disposed of -- an estimated 40% of the energy value of oil shale is consumed during production.

Believe what you want, I'm not going to argue for or against, but I am willing to point out the source, and what point of view they are coming from. Make your own decisions from there. Hey, I own a Suburban myself -- I'm not against you owning whatever the heck you please, I just think it's wise to consider the source, educate yourself completely, and NOT let yourself be manipulated.

HAZ-Matt

According to the guy in the link the RAND report is based off of 1970s-80s extraction methods and newer technologies should allow it to be competitive at lower cost than that (apparently Shell thinks they may be able to make it worthwhile at only $25/barrel). And the newer methods by Shell and Chevron seem to not require mining or using an excessive amount of water.

I'm not a big fan of corn-ethanol myself, but perhaps it will lead to less high-fructose corn syrup in foods and less obesity in the US.

Z284ever

Actually, that is the only good thing about corn based ETOH that I can think of.

But getting back to shale - if in fact Shell and Chevron are able to deliver $25 per barrel oil out of it with minimal environmntal impact - then the world of energy as we know it, will be different forever.

dream '94 Z28

Different forever?....or will it only delay the inevitable? It too will run out one day and and more immedeate, if you make it cheap we'll use it like it's there's no tomorrow and we'll be right back where we are today.

Z284ever

I mostly meant "different forever" with regards to oil as a foreign political weapon.

Good Ph.D

I think we're beggining to hit the top of sprawl... Even if gas were under a dollar no one wants to sit in traffic for an hour several times a day, and that's exactly where most major cities will be if the rush to build out continues.

2K1SunsetSS

I have actually read most of our oil DOESN'T come from the middle east.

dream '94 Z28

I would hope so. It would mean common sense might be making a revival and....that was the main argument behind my graduate design thesis ( )

number77

Besides this there is also some that believe the methane of the ocean is the next big thing. Some also are considering a different type of fuel from plants.