Utah sits on huge oil reserve

Springville Herald ^ | April 21, 2005

[beaver fever]

The RD has already been done including horizontal drilling technology for solvent extraction.

Right now the oil sands are more like open pit mining operations. In the future the oil will be extracted without surface disruption.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Very interesting news. What is Congress waiting for? Drill!"

Unfortunately, it takes more than drilling. Extracting oil from oil shale is more like strip mining than drilling, and actually getting the oil "out" of the rock requires a completely different (and as yet un-developed) processing infrastructure than for either coal or oil.

You will know that "peak oil" theory is real when the stock of companies starting up to extract oil shale or Canadian tar sands or focussing on tertiary oil recovery start to to through the roof. Until then, the "high" price of oil is caused by global political factors and NOT a lack of oil.

All that said, I think the Feds (i.e. Department of Energy") should begin R&D funding on ways and means to make it happen.

[elli1]

It's also highly radioactive. (This is the stuff they used to make the now banned "black boards" out of).

Think you are confusing slate (the original blackboard) with transite blackboards. The original Transite was asbestos reinforced cement board and was used in place of slate for a lot of applications such as blackboards, lab countertops, roofing tiles, etc. There were a lot of other applications for Transite (fire-proofing, electrical insulation...) Ended up on the poopy list because of asbestos. (Transite 1000 is a non-asbestos product.)

Transite 1000

[muawiyah]

I'm older than you. They removed the real blackboards from our classrooms circa 1953 and replaced them with "green boards".

They didn't exactly glow green in the dark but they'd set off a geiger counter!

[Huck]

I hope it's nowhere near Arches or Bryce canyon or any of the other nat'l parks.

[jec41]

They didn't exactly glow green in the dark but they'd set off a geiger counter!

So does a brick!!!!

[Alex Marko]

The article fails to mention that technology to extract that sort of oil makes its more expensive than oil from the middle east. Canada's shale oil is normally 10 dollars more expensive than the market value.

[Skooz]

FWIW, I think we should deplete the oil reserves from the Middle East before we tap into our stash.

That is an interesting viewpoint, and one I have not yet considered.

Maybe in 100 years, the Middle East will be buying oil from us, and we will be able to charge them whatever we wish.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"The article fails to mention that technology to extract that sort of oil makes its more expensive than oil from the middle east. Canada's shale oil is normally 10 dollars more expensive than the market value."

Does that include the cost of shipping?

[Edward Watson]

Apples and oranges. The Alberta oil sands costs around $13 to produce a barrel of synthetic crude oil whereas it will probably cost three times as much per barrel if using oil shale as the stock.

A better move would be to exponentially increase investment and development of the Alberta oil sands and just utilize or expand existing transcontinental pipelines into US hub markets.

[untrained skeptic]

"To develop similar resources in the US will probably take ten years with exploration and infrastructure costs factored in if you started today."

If it took Canada ten years to develop the resource, we should be able to do it in considerably less time, simply because we can learn from how they did it.

[untrained skeptic]

You may actually have an extremely good point. As the middle east's reserves start to dwindle, having large remaining reserves in the US may put us at a huge advantage economically in the future.

[bmwcyle]

[Josh in PA]

FWIW, I think we should deplete the oil reserves from the Middle East before we tap into our stash.
======


I agree completely. Tapping the shale oil now will do nothing but drop Saudi sweet crude to back to $30/barrel, making the shale oil/tar sands not economically viable.

If we don't buy the Saudi oil, China will at about a 40% discount, putting us at another economic disadvantage to them.

Not using Mideast oil just prolongs there staying power. The faster we use up their oil, the sooner the leaders in the region (Including the Mullahs in Iran) crumble.


Burn up there oil first.

[maestro]

Wow!

Now that is Private U.S. Citizen wealth......keep the U.N. OUT.

That includes Canadians!

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

This is twenty year old news. Every time oil prices go up, they start talking about shale oil. My advice, don't hold your breath.

The word "shortage" doesn't appear anywhere in the Kingdom dictionary.

[bmwcyle]

They will have little or no oil with chemical and nuke devices.

[varon]

GO FOR IT!! USE THAT OIL! I certainly don't want to be dependant on other countries when we have so much oil to tap in here.....the resource is here, let's use it!

I agree, however, if the cost is going to be the same, I say use up their reserves first.............

[beaver fever]

There has been a lot of development in exploration and production technology but pipeline infrastructure has to be built.

Unless the project is close to existing pipeline infrastructure it is difficult to raise capital for exploration and development.

Oil sands development is similar to mining, where typically, it takes eight to ten years to prove out reserves before going into production.

On the bright side heavy oil is economical at $50 oil given that the technological hurdles have been overcome. But these projects have to be huge to be profitable and have long development cycles.

[untrained skeptic]

Well, if we keep developing other energy sources, 10 years from now will probably be about the time we'll really need another source of oil.

The time to get started is now.