[Number57]

It is a PDF file, so please check it out.

[Eastbound]

Any mention of the shale reserves in Utah that Crinton gave/sold to China?

[TexasTransplant]

Combined with Nuclear a winning combination!

TT

[adorno]

Shale coal... the future!

I've been hearing the same line for many, many, many years!

So, when will it finally happen?

[Jaysun]

PDF sucks. I'll have to try to get some other version.

[dwntmpo]

Coal Gasification has been tried.. it works, just low grade.. but the oil shale problem is the amount of energy it takes to get it..

that pdf file mentions Shell's idea for converting the shale to oil in the ground.. then just pumping it out..

Thought I'd share this from another site..

http://www.energybulletin.net/11779.html

Although Shell's method avoids the need to mine shale, it requires a mind-boggling amount of electricity. To produce 100,000 barrels per day, the company would need to construct the largest power plant in Colorado history. Costing about $3 billion, it would consume 5 million tons of coal each year, producing 10 million tons of greenhouse gases. (The company's annual electric bill would be about $500 million.) To double production, you'd need two power plants. One million barrels a day would require 10 new power plants, five new coal mines. And 10 million barrels a day, as proposed by some, would necessitate 100 power plants.

How soon will we know whether Shell's technology is economic? The company plans to do more experiments, before making a final decision by 2010. If it pulls the trigger, it would be at least three or four years before the first oil would flow, perhaps at a rate of 10,000 barrels a day. That's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of current U.S. consumption. But if it turns out that Shell needs more energy to produce a barrel of oil than a barrel contains, bets are off. That's the equivalent of burning the furniture to keep the house warm.

[JennysCool]

My friend, and great historian, Howard Hickson has written a short history of an effort by a company to extract oil from shale in our neck of the woods. It's here:

http://www.outbacknevada.us/howh/CatlinShale.htm

We still have acres of the stuff, if its extraction ever becomes economically viable.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

I would pray it be true, but the forces arrayed against it happening are gigantic.

I still remember back in the 80's the Parachute Colorado debacle and the Jeffery City bust in Wyoming. Billions poured in, zippo out.

[zarf]

How much energy does it cost to extract this stuff?

It's probably not cost effective or it would be done.

[Hank Rearden]

How can we possibly go wrong - this is from an "Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense!" I bet we're also paying for a couple thousand Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries, too.

And they say there's no fat to cut in the budget . . . . . .

These goons can't even work up the testosterone to drill ANWR.

[backhoe]

Allow me to drop out of Lurk and Link Mode for a rare bit of commentary- we need to get serious about our dependency on foreign sources of energy, and use our own resources.

Our consumer-based economy is driven by readily-available, reliable energy-- choke that off, and we'll be back to using one rotary dial phone in the dining room and driving one car per family-- probably a Hudson Hornet...

We need to

1) end the nonsensical ban on offshore drilling off California and Florida

2) build a lot of next-generation nuclear power plants, not just for electricity, but for any process requiring heat, power, or steam.

3) end Jimmy Carter's idiotic ban on recycling nuclear waste, and reprocess the stuff rather than fighting over where to bury it. Europe has done it for decades.

4) use the 300-500 years worth of coal we have on our own land, using the new clean-coal technology.

5) and finally, there's nothing wrong with conservation- but you can't conserve your way out of a shortage- we need to get serious about this before we get strangled by a bunch of petty thieves and dictators who don't like us much.

My tongue-in-cheek collection of energy-related links:

Sticker Shock-$3 a gallon gas? Click the picture:

And note, and note well-- the first reply to this post ( when gas was less than $1.50 a gallon ) was derisive... who's laughing now?