Posted on 09/02/2005 5:44:37 AM PDT by Herosmith
WASHINGTON — The United States has an oil reserve at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in oil-shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released yesterday.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
one can only hope. lets hope we can get to it before the environmentalists hamstring us with over-regulation.
The main problem with oil shale is finding an inexpensive way to recover it. Oil prices rising is one of the unfortunate ways of making it cost-effective.
IIRC there was an attempt to exploit this resource in the 80's or 90's but it was abandoned because of cost and environmental concerns. The first objection has certainly been answered.
This is really interesting in the fact that my dad was talking about this 25+ years ago. I can't repeat what he said in regards to the oil companies ignoring this!!
Canada has really developed oil extraction technology from oil shale.
It has to be cost effective now.
Shale oil is still relatively expensive to process and get to, compaired to oil fields currently used.
Last I ready shale oil costs about $20 a barrel to get out of the ground compaired to $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia.... Of course with oil trading at $60 a barrel, that is a nice spread to find a profit margin in there...
THe problem though is OIL is basically overpriced right now due to market manipulation, NOT by a supply limit. And will, once the bubble pops return to $30-$40 a barrel range prices.. which will make shale oil extraction impractical. Spend all the money and time to start getting it out, only to see the price drop to where its unprofitable to pump it out.
When the price to get a barrel of shale gets to $5 or $10 a barrel, that's when it'll get tapped.
THey aren't ignoring it.. see post 8.
Mike
I have heard about massive reserves of shale oil since the days of Jimmy Carter...
Wish it were so, but did you notice the part about "under federal land"? Once again the Feds do more for OPEC than OPEC does...
which is our catch 22, costs to much to do it, so we don't, but if we don't it'll take that much longer to figure out how to do it cheaper.
Oil shale rock needs to be heated. That requires at least 40% of the oil released from the rock not counting any other energy and equipment costs. It won't produce oil at X dollars a barrel, but it may provide some oil for when we run out of other sources.
This is old news. Have we developed a reliable down well steam generator?
Well, daggone it, here's a possible solution to our dependence on foreign oil...The Department of Energy needs to get to work with the Bureau of Land Management and immediately open those fields for oil recovery, and also beat back the environmental regulatory tangle that has made it impossible to build refineries here in the U.S. for the past 20 years.
While prices are high, we need to pressure our congresscritters to open exploration up in as many places as possible.
I fear it's too late already on that score.
Believe me, oil companies and others are still actively doing research to figure out ways to get shale oil produced cheaper... its not being ignored.
Shale is no panacea either, there are other issues, but until you deal with the fiscal issue, the others are moot.
Yep, the time has come that when the friendly local neighborhood environmentalist whacko starts spouting off that it will contribute to "global warming", tell him to shove it up his butt and if he/she don't like let em move to New Orleans....
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