Oil Shale Potential - 800 Billion Barrels of Oil!

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

I'd just like to point out tchocky has raised one of my pet hates, that is people saying 'were running out of water".

Doesnt happen.

Water changes form, from solid to liquid to gas, but it is always able to change back again.

It doesnt just vanish. There is just as much water now as there was 5000 years ago...

the only thing that changes is its form

Amen.

[Airmail]

I've studied Geology a lot and have various friends in the Oil industry including a Rig manager in Haliburton. I'm sorry to say this guys but shale oil isn't going to make the price of petrol cheaper. My advice would be to start looking at higher MPG cars, it's not going to be an easy ride with easy answers. I'm personally very worried by the economies dependance on oil, very very worried. Unless the seemingly impossible turns out to be true (which I highly doubt) and some of our deep sea reserves are actually topping themselves up we need to make a gradual change to new technology. Invest heavily. Otherwise your going to see fatal economic consequences when it comes to crunch time. The West also needs to start to openly discuss what It should do to make sure that it has Oil Security, governments need to come clean with the public.

[Wolfehunter]

Digging new holes in the ground will not lower gaz prices. Pls these guys are racking the cash and making excuses to raise the prices till they rob you dry.

Why not research on a renewable power supply that could save money and be enviromently clean?


Because it would put these guys out of business.

[Platapus]

People who make their living selling oil are not the people to be involved in alternative power research.

Every time I see one of those propaganda commercials from an oil company proclaiming that they are investing cubic millions in research, I can only think to myself, NO! they are the last people I want involved in alternative fuel research. Do the oil companies really think we are that gullible?

That is like the beef industry researching the health benefits of Vegan diets.

[Airmail]

Originally Posted by Platapus

People who make their living selling oil are not the people to be involved in alternative power research.

Every time I see one of those propaganda commercials from an oil company proclaiming that they are investing cubic millions in research, I can only think to myself, NO! they are the last people I want involved in alternative fuel research. Do the oil companies really think we are that gullible?

That is like the beef industry researching the health benefits of Vegan diets.

For the moment it's to get what they see as "Greenies" off their backs and reduce taxation on the company. However some are investing a little more heavily but on a long term timescale because they want to stay top dogs.

Not all that brilliant

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

I'd just like to point out tchocky has raised one of my pet hates, that is people saying 'were running out of water".

Doesnt happen.

Water changes form, from solid to liquid to gas, but it is always able to change back again.

It doesnt just vanish. There is just as much water now as there was 5000 years ago...

the only thing that changes is its form

He didn't say "We're running out of water". He said there was an impending crisis in areas where the oil shale is, and he's right. Utah is a desert, and we are always right on the edge when it comes to having enough water. If it really takes that much, we will need to get it from somewhere else, and that's going to add to the cost.

[Zachstar]

Too bad about that problem with extraction with water supplies.. "Short"

More 100 year claims Subman?

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by Airmail

I've studied Geology a lot and have various friends in the Oil industry including a Rig manager in Haliburton. I'm sorry to say this guys but shale oil isn't going to make the price of petrol cheaper. My advice would be to start looking at higher MPG cars, it's not going to be an easy ride with easy answers. I'm personally very worried by the economies dependance on oil, very very worried. Unless the seemingly impossible turns out to be true (which I highly doubt) and some of our deep sea reserves are actually topping themselves up we need to make a gradual change to new technology. Invest heavily. Otherwise your going to see fatal economic consequences when it comes to crunch time. The West also needs to start to openly discuss what It should do to make sure that it has Oil Security, governments need to come clean with the public.

Things like EEstor and a host of other battery technology will help make this transition. And guess what? We get to power them by burning our OWN coal! (That one is for you SubMan)

The economy will be fine as long as these technologies come out come to market within the next decade. With ones such as EEstor talking about next year or 2010..

We fix the storage problem. We break the back of oil...

[baggygreen]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

He didn't say "We're running out of water". He said there was an impending crisis in areas where the oil shale is, and he's right. Utah is a desert, and we are always right on the edge when it comes to having enough water. If it really takes that much, we will need to get it from somewhere else, and that's going to add to the cost.

true - i was toying with the idea of putting in a disclaimer saying that i know Tchocky didnt say it himself..

Living down under, where about 70% of the bloody place is desert, i know exactly what you mean. its another, hidden cost, one of those that never seems to be recognised but is always sitting there in the shadows.

[mrbeast]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

I'd just like to point out tchocky has raised one of my pet hates, that is people saying 'were running out of water".

Doesnt happen.

Water changes form, from solid to liquid to gas, but it is always able to change back again.

It doesnt just vanish. There is just as much water now as there was 5000 years ago...

the only thing that changes is its form

........or location?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

He didn't say "We're running out of water". He said there was an impending crisis in areas where the oil shale is, and he's right. Utah is a desert, and we are always right on the edge when it comes to having enough water. If it really takes that much, we will need to get it from somewhere else, and that's going to add to the cost.

true - i was toying with the idea of putting in a disclaimer saying that i know Tchocky didnt say it himself..

Living down under, where about 70% of the bloody place is desert, i know exactly what you mean. its another, hidden cost, one of those that never seems to be recognised but is always sitting there in the shadows.[/quote]

We have more snowpack this year than any year on record thanks to Global Warming (pun intended), so water pumped to Utah is not a problem. We made a city rise from the desert without water - Phoenix. The colorado flows through this area as well. Water is not a problem.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Actually, the Dutch seem to be beyond BP at this point! Good old Dutchies! Woo hoo!

-S

Oil shale enthusiasm resurfaces in the West

By Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY


Workers check the size on pipes at the Freeze Wall test site at Shell Oil Company's Mahogany Oil Shale Research Project near Meeker, Colo.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — The headline on the newspaper that state Rep. Bernie Buescher keeps in a box at home captures the allure of the vast petroleum riches under the rolling hills and arid mesas north of this western Colorado city.


"Oil Shale Development Imminent," the paper reads. That edition of the defunct Grand Junction News, Buescher notes, was published at the dawn of the 20th century.


More than a hundred years later, instability is roiling world oil markets, and Americans are paying $3 a gallon for gas. And oil shale fever is again rising in the geologic region known as the Piceance Basin, part of the Green River Formation that stretches across the rugged plains of northwestern Colorado and parts of Wyoming and Utah.


There is no dispute that a thousand feet below the isolated ranch country here on Colorado's western slope lie almost unimaginable oil riches. It's locked in sedimentary rock — essentially immature oil that given a few million years under heat and pressure would produce pools of oil easy to extract.


The Energy Department and private industry estimate that a trillion barrels are here in Colorado — about the same amount as the entire world's known reserves of conventional oil. The entire Green River Formation might hold as much as 2 trillion barrels.


Pushed by the Bush administration and legislation from Congress last year, and spurred by oil prices above $70 a barrel, the energy industry is mobilizing to unlock the secret of oil shale. As it has before, oil shale holds out the hope of a USA no longer dependent on foreign oil.


Testing a new approach

In a remote area of Rio Blanco County, nestled between dusty ridges covered with sagebrush and pinyon and juniper trees, Shell Oil is engaged in a multiyear test of a new technology for extracting the oil. Previous efforts that were uneconomical and environmentally destructive entailed mining the rock, crushing it and heating it above ground to release the oil.


Shell's new process involves sinking heaters deep underground, cooking the rock at 700 degrees and recovering the oil and natural gas with conventional drilling.


For a decade, Shell has been ramping up its research on private property here. It is also one of a handful of companies vying for research and development leases on larger tracts of federal land nearby. That could lead to full-scale development across 1,200 square miles of western Colorado.
Early results are promising, says Terry O'Connor, a vice president in the oil giant's unconventional resource division. But, he admits, "no one has been able to develop oil shale on a commercially sustainable basis." Shell has four more years of research here before it will know if it has the answer.


U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was less cautious at a tour of Shell's test site Wednesday: "This is not pie in the sky. It's real this time."


Such talk has swept this region before, most memorably in the wake of the energy crisis of the 1970s. Longtime residents remember how it ended on May 2, 1982 — "Black Sunday" — when Exxon abruptly canceled its $5 billion Colony Shale Oil Project, laid off more than 2,000 workers and left a trail of home foreclosures and economic distress.


Now, said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who accompanied Domenici on the tour, "we have a tourism-based economy on the western slope, and we will not do anything ... that will endanger that sustainability." Though oil shale has "great potential," Salazar said, "there's also great risk."


A RAND Corp. study last year for the Energy Department said that "the prospects for oil shale development are uncertain," though new technology could make it competitive with conventional oil. Producing 3 million barrels a day — about 15% of U.S. consumption — "is probably more than 30 years into the future," the study said.


Among the possible negative effects cited by RAND were large scale land disruption, air pollution, a large population influx in a rural area, and a huge demand for water in a region where it's scarce and, as Salazar said, "as precious as oil."


Randy Udall, of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency that promotes energy conservation in Carbondale, Colo., pointed out another drawback: the huge demand for electricity to cook the shale. "To do 100,000 barrels a day ... we would need to build the largest power plant in Colorado history."


'We ... need to get it right'

This region's bitter experience with the boom-and-bust of oil shale was on display Thursday as Domenici and Salazar held a hearing before an overflow crowd at the city auditorium here.


Outside, critics hawked T-shirts urging "Go Slow on Oil Shale." Inside, state and county officials said they welcome energy development but worry about the costs of providing roads, housing and other needs if a new boom arrives.


"Most of us agree it's time for the development of oil shale," said Russell George of Colorado's Department of Natural Resources. "But we really do need to get it right."


A letter from 17 county and city officials noted, "When oil shale is mentioned on the Western Slope of Colorado it is discussed as an industry that brought our economy and communities to their knees."


And Buescher, the Democratic state legislator, thought of that ancient newspaper headline. "They may be able to make it work," he said, "but I'm skeptical."

[SUBMAN1]

Anyone else notice that they claim this oil shale may hold more oil than the entire world reserves? Wow!

-S

[STEED]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Anyone else notice that they claim this oil shale may hold more oil than the entire world reserves? Wow!

-S

Yea sure and I am the King of Mars.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by STEED

Yea sure and I am the King of Mars.

You mean you're not?

-S