There were ads on tv showing a guy lighting a piece of oil shale.
When Carter's oil shortage subsided, Exxon shut down development.
Posted on 05/13/2008 1:42:35 PM PDT by Entrepreneur
In its quest to remove oil from western Colorado's shale, Royal Dutch Shell has been buying land and water rights in anticipation of what is likely to be a thirsty new industry.
Some officials worry that the demands of the oil-shale industry could drain every drop of the region's remaining water.
"On the upper end, we're looking at potentially several hundred thousand acre-feet of water — more than people think is commonly available to develop in the Colorado River," said Dan Birch, deputy general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
Shell and other energy companies have amassed tens of thousands of acres of cropland, ranches and open space — including a state wildlife area — to acquire water that would be needed to process the oil shale.
"We've been acquiring land and associated water rights for a long time," said Shell spokesman Tracy Boyd. "We're just situating ourselves so that when the time comes, we'll have the resources we need."
Private property
In the last year, Shell has:
• Bought a property near Mack that included rights for water in the Colorado River and a 30,000-acre-foot reservoir.
• Bought a ranch from Houston oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt that holds water rights from the 1800s.
• Completed a land swap with the Colorado Division of Wildlife for water in the heart of the shale formation.
Boyd declined to detail how much water and land the company has acquired, and state and local government officials say they don't maintain complete ownership records.
Water rights in Colorado are considered private property and can be sold separately from land.
The federal Bureau of Land Management estimates the shale formation in western Colorado could yield as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of oil.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
“1.8 TRILLION barrels of oil”
At current consumption rates, that’s about 250 years’ worth of supply for the United States. Give or take a decade or so.
Yeah, but you can’t drink oil.
Water rights are the true gold, not the oil shale.
As long as our energy resources are controlled by a foreign company, it should be environmentally sound.
The RATS will never let them get it. They want us all sitting in the dark and freezing in our homes.
Try saying that 5 times fast!
We had some ethanol developers look elsewhere to build their plants once it was found out that the copious amounts of water needed to brew the stuff would rapidly deplete the local water table. We're all on well water here. Not a good idea to have something like that down the road. But-that being said, I really think oil shale should be developed. But, I wanted us to drill in ANWR 20 years ago, too. We have a lot of catching up to do.
Farmers growing low-value crops such as alfalfa use 80 percent of Colorado’s water. They pay laughably low rates for it. It will not be easy to change this, as water law in the West is as hidebound as the House of Lords, and markedly favors claims of prior use. They will probably have to be paid big bucks to quit farming and move to Florida, but it must be done.
There were ads on tv showing a guy lighting a piece of oil shale.
When Carter's oil shortage subsided, Exxon shut down development.
I saw coverage of the ethanol issue (near West Plains, I think.) The amount of water the plant was to use was astounding.
Yea, I recall reading somewhere that crude would have to be 60 - 70 brl for it to be feasable to produce from the shale. About the same for the tar sand in Canada as well.
Soooo... It looks like water is gonna be the excuse now.
I don’t think there’s much the RATS (and McCain) can do about it.
Where they can control oil exploration is offshore and on public (government owned) lands (to the best of my knowledge).
This may be an ignorant question but here goes.
Why do they need fresh water?
If you drill deep enough, there is brackish water under most of the US. Not good for drinking but could be good enough for industrial use.
It should be good for steam cracking, cooling ect. It may require more expensive materials to resist corrosion but are there any experts here that can answer the question?
The bad news is that there's SO much kerogen that can be produced out of the CO and UT shales that we're almost certainly going to have to slap a compensating tariff on foreign crude and product imports as the price of crude falls.
Royal Dutch are some of the sharpest operators in the world; no way they'd be going heavily into this project unless they very clearly see crude not falling past $50 in 10-20 years' time.
Their process involves lining the shale areas that they want to produce with, of all things, ice, lots and lots of ice. Very slick engineering, read up on it.
The Democrats (and Sen. McCain) have blocked drilling in ANWR and offshore, right? How long before they bar ANY drilling in Colorado, the Dakotas, or any other part of the U.S.?
Any good links?
Chevron have a very clever-sounding microwave process for shale. I'm trying to find out if it's field-proven yet (Shell's is, btw).
Next article that turns up (as long as it's written by someone who understands the industry...which excludes the lamebrains in the lame-stream media), I'll try to remember to post it. Shouldn't be more than a week or two in any case.
FReegards to you!
I’ve read about the microwave technology but it was a few years ago.
I read an article about a year ago about putting a fuel cell directly into the oil shale. You would have direct electricity production for the site and the heat generated would drive the oil out of the surrounding shale to be pumped out.
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