[razved]

Price is an abstraction in an economic system loaded with subsidies, tax credits, etc.

We probably have enough coal to last 3-4 centuries if we assume that it doesn't have to replace some of the energy of petroleum, NG, and LPG. We depend on coal to produce electrical energy. Zero-sum game time again. Eventually, decisions will have to be made about what must be sacrificed.

Exploitation of shale oil (btw, neither oil nor shale) requires large quantities of energy and water. The area in which our largest deposits of kerogen exist, i.e., the Green River Basin, is arid. What will be the source of input energy over the long-term.

The show-stopper is ERORI, or energy return on energy investment. That killed the embryonic shale oil industry
in the early 80s. If the ERORI is negative, no amount of financial sleight-of-hand can change the fact that we would be consuming more energy than could be produced.

Consider a variation on the theme. The Canadians are producing heavy grades of oil from tar sands in Alberta. They are limited by the rate at which they can "mine" the material and by a long-term source of input energy. They have been using natural gas. But when NG supplies begin to decline, what then? The U.S. would have to face that problem , too. U.S. per well NG production has been declining for several years.

Economics are a function of resources. Ultimately, resource availability is the controlling factor.

[thackney]

The show-stopper is ERORI, or energy return on energy investment. That killed the embryonic shale oil industry in the early 80s. If the ERORI is negative, no amount of financial sleight-of-hand can change the fact that we would be consuming more energy than could be produced.

Seebach: Shell's ingenious approach to oil shale is pretty slick

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

[theBuckwheat]

>>
The show-stopper is ERORI, or energy return on energy investment. That killed the embryonic shale oil industry
<<

While I am sympathetic to this point, in economic terms, it is meaningless. Here is why. What counts is not the valuing the fuel in terms of BTUs or pure energy, but as measured in monetary terms. We are taking energy in worthless forms and converting it into valuable forms.

This is the very reason that the dollar value per BTU or Calorie is often so far different for natural gas, coal and gasoline. Indeed, the coal being scooped out by the dragline has a monetary value that is but a fraction of the monetary value of the diesel fuel the dragline uses.

Sewage sludge is very rich in hydrocarbons, but it has a negative value because there are no real commercial conversion facilities to turn it into biodiesel. Municipalities must pay to haul it off or otherwise safely dispose of it.

We are throwing quite a few Quads (1 Quad = 1 quadrillion BTU) worth of hydrocarbons away every year in the form of sludge, animal processing waste, sawdust, cattle manure, etc, yet we don't fret about that. We fret about our imported oil even as we drive past the sewage plant.

So what if it takes 1000 BTUs worth of sewage sludge to convert down to 100 BTUs of biodiesel? If the capital and operating costs of a conversion facility are not too high, it will be economically efficient to convert sludge (or coal, or shale, or even turkey offal) no matter how wasteful it is from a pure energy basis.