Some geological facts about oil shale: it does not include oil, but a preliminary stage of oil, that is called Kerogen in German. This substance is also enriched with massive organic materials. to turn it into oil, you need to exrtact the Kerogen that is chemically bound to the shale, then you need to expose it to immensly high pressure for a longer period of time, and heat it up to tempertaures in excess of 500°C. So, the actual reserves of oil shale does not translate easily into n according ammount of potential oil. The volume of material is reduced by the need to extract the Kerogen, it's volume reduces even further due to the pressuring process, and this alraedy consumes large ammounts of energy. Even more energy you need for the heating process. So, in order to win that hidden Kerogen ressource and making it a usable energy by turning it into actual oil, you also have to invest a massive ammount of energy.

That's what I remember from the books. I did not know that Wyoming seems to have so much of this stuff, but in principle you can find oil shale in most parts of ther world, even germany has some quantities of it. As far as I know - and I do not claim my knoweldge is complete, or up to date - so far no one was able to calculate exactly into what quantities of actual oil the potentially available oil shale is translating, but the refinery process and the massive energy consumption of it reduces it massively.

Not too mention that you are talking about mining operation of a giant scale, which eventually could cause tremendous devastations to nature and the landscape in general. If you want to get a taste of what I mean, visit Bitterfelde in Germany. A whole district that looks like Mars after a meteor's impact. And it is only brown coal they are mining there in opencast mining. For oil shale, if I remember correctly, you have to go much deeper, and it is more difficult to mine it by tunnel mining (thus the preference for opencast mining like they do in Canada - that one I saw on TV some months ago, and the landscape, up to the hoprizon, looked like after nuclear war).

I would recommend some caution before declaring this the miracle solution to our oil problems. But again, it's some time since I red this material, I am not up to date and do not know if something has changed for the better, or worse.

Oil, or no oil at all, that is the question in brief :p

Wikipedia also has some info on oil sand (Canada) and oil shale (US).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

the German wikipedia explicitly mentions the complex extraction process which currnetly let it appear unlikely that in the forseeable future oil shale will be regarded as economically usable. Additionally, the winning and transforming of oil sand is easier, cheaper, and the mining, althoug opencast-mining too, is also less extravagantly.

To be considered as serious and economically valuable alternatives, both methods need world market prices for oil that we currently even do not imagine in our worst nightmares. :lol:

I do have the time but only read for a while. I stopped reading at about the forth to the last paragraph.

I got to thinking. The article starts out talking about the economic of the oil shale being economical around $40 a barrel for oil. Oil today is closer to $70 to $75 a barrel so why has Shell not been doing this on a much larger scale over the past few years?

Sythetic fuels have been talked about since the late 1970s. We almost built several plants that took coal and converted it to oil back in 1979. But those were shut down by the Regan Administration.

The powder river basin area out west has large reserves of coal that can be used to make oil. And that coal is much easier to mine and of low sulfur.

If the area out west that Shell and BP is testing is not populated then why freeze the water under ground. Are they going to freeze that ground for the next 1000 years to prevent water table contamination? Or will all the oil be pumped out to where there is not danger after a the oil is depleted?

It's sure is true that we need the oil. All the past wars that I can remember were fought over natrual resource or religion or both. WWIII is going to be fought over the same reasons IMHO.

I hope that the Geologists can find a few more anaclines with some more oil.

I do hope that we do it sooner rather than later.

I personally am worried about the future of the USA unless we can secure our future energy needs.

The Alberta tar sands were never considered a viable source of oil until prices began to spike close to the record $75/barrel that they hover around now (and will probably never dip much below again); before that it was simply too expensive to extract to be marketable with the prevailing oil prices of $23-$28 barrel in 2000.

Now they are profitable to extract but the extraction process is very energy intensive (it takes about 5x as much energy from other sources, mainly natural gas, to extract and refine x number of pounds of tar sand into 1 barrel of crude oil) and environmentally the process is nasty.

Given the amount of energy required by the process, the environmental cost, and that our thirst for oil has brought us to this point... its just more proof to me that our fossil fuel addiction has passed the point of psychosis.

Its high time industry and government put some serious resources and committment into real energy/transportation alternatives.

Wikipedia's facts are old and show an old method of extraction. Read the article for the new method as figured out by the good old Dutch! :up: They know how to do things once in a while.

-S

Gee, thanks:shifty:

Here's my opinion: Ethanol! :):up:

As long as we can prevent Big Oil from buying out the patents for any technologies that don't depend on fossil fuels, we'll be well on our way to independence from fossil fuels.

THAT will be the main goal: Defeating the Big Oil in their domineering actions on the free-market (If you can call it that with Big Oil involved).

Ethanol fuel is, at best, an intermediate step, and at worst, a poor substitute. The amount of energy used in the conversion process is roughly equal to the amount of petrolium-based fuel replaced in the final blend, so you are still breaking even. This is somewhat variable depending on what source you are using. Currently, the United States' ethanol products are maufactured using corn, which is the among most innefficient ethanol blends. Of course, it is used by the United States because of the abundance of domestic corn.

Our own Neal Stevens is a hydrocarbons analyst, and is thus an expert on the subject. If I have left something out, he will correct me.

http://content.answers.com/main/cont..._loc_color.jpg

Could it be that man has walked such a long way, and yet has not really gone anywhere?

Yep......in some cases we are merely educated barbarians with an un-educated mind (like serial killers and the likes).