U.S shale oil reserves 3 times the size of Middle East oil reserves.

[ronc0011]

I’m hearing lately that the oil companies are saying that the shale oil reserves in this country cover something like three states and estimate that the recoverable oil is more than 3 times that of the entire Middle East. It also seems the oil companies have pretty much got the recovery process worked out.

Today was the first I had heard anything about oil bearing shale in a very long time. My Dad mentioned it today while discussing a completely different subject. He’s an engineer for a company that designs downhole tools for the oil industry. Apparently the oil companies have worked out how to extract the oil from the shale while it’s all still in the ground. I know a method that has been used for quite a while is to set off charges down in the formations that fractures the formation and allows the oil to separate from the substrate thus allowing it to be pumped out. But from what I gather this requires a different approach. Bottom line is, there isn’t any danger of running out of oil in the near future. Simply a danger of choosing not to get it out of the ground.


I’m guessing that this country will have been reduced to a third world status by the time the Democrats and the Greenies have run out of obstacles to prevent us from getting it out of the ground.

 

[nate45]

I'm all for alternative energy, but the state of technology, the world oil market and our economy demand that we drill or die. We must start to drill in ANWR, off the coasts of CA and FL, in CO and elsewhere for shale oil and build new refineries or we are sunk.

 

[JohnKSa]

There's also coal liquefaction. The U.S. has tremendous coal reserves and it is my understanding that coal liquefaction (yielding diesel & gasoline) becomes financially viable when oil prices reach about $40 a barrel. No, that's not a typo--$40 a barrel. Old technology--Germany used it in WWII.

 

[Creature]

But I thought that the world oil supplies are just about depleted and global warming is real...

 

[Double Naught Spy]

There's also coal liquefaction. The U.S. has tremendous coal reserves and it is my understanding that coal liquefaction (yielding diesel & gasoline) becomes financially viable when oil prices reach about $40 a barrel. No, that's not a typo--$40 a barrel. Old technology--Germany used it in WWII.

...and so you would think that there would be several upstart companies having been making liquid fuel from coal for years now, but they aren't. You have to wonder why.

 

[GoSlash27]

They have discovered how to extract a very small proportion of oil from the shale still in the ground.
They do this by running a specially-designed bit laterally to crack the shale along it's fissures.
To get a sizeable percentage requires digging up the shale and baking it, which raises all sorts of economic and environmental problems.
The shale oil is down there (they've known this since the '50s), but until it can be economically extracted it may as well be on the moon. And while the total reserve may rival the Saudis, as a practical matter it's miniscule compared to the North Shore field.
And since we're already extracting and using it, don't expect this field to reduce our dependance on Saudi oil any.

Incidentally, the Democrats and greenies aren't interfering in the process. The hurdles are all technical.

 

[Master Blaster]

and so you would think that there would be several upstart companies having been making liquid fuel from coal for years now, but they aren't. You have to wonder why.

Two Words:

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS.

Oil shale is economically viable at $80 per barrel, but it takes a huge investment, and time to get up and running.

Then there are ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS.

 

[45Marlin carbine]

the US imports most of it's oil from Canada. we used to get a good bit from Venezuela also. where does the oil from Alaska go - lots of it to Japan. it has really become a national security issue now to drill in 'environmentally sensitive' areas and develop oil shale (and sand) deposits IMO. much of the strength of the US depends on a sound economy which means a steady supply of petroleum.

 

[ken grant]

What good would it do us to drill and get more oil. We don't have enough places to refine it. That is why the oil from Alaska goes overseas.

 

[1-UP]

Good Morning America had a blurb on this today (One of our leading scientific think tanks, I know). The impression I got was the shale oil required a substantial energy input to get out (Digging up and then heating it to get the oil out). Shell I think is experimenting with heating it up in the ground and just pumping the oil out, but it sounded like prototype stuff and not large scale to me.

 

[J.Smith]

Just because we can doesn't mean we should. At some point the human race will kill itself off. Not because we ran out of oil or coal or food, but because we paved the entire world. What next we need more lumber so we start clear cutting the rainforest? Should we put a Walmart in Yosemite? We can but it doesn't mean we should. I don't know about ya'll but where I live the air is clear, and Dominion Power just got cleared to put another coal power plant reroute two rivers and pollute the air here. Needless to say I'll have to move by 2010 because my severe asthma will kill me living 20 miles from a coal burner. Just because we can or have the technology to do things does not mean we should or have the right to do it. The question you should be asking is why oil companies have listed a 3 year streak profit gain of over 20% each year. Oil is no more expensive than it was 30 years ago, the only change is greed.

 

[Pilot]

What good would it do us to drill and get more oil. We don't have enough places to refine it. That is why the oil from Alaska goes overseas.

It would increase the supply of oil on the world market and therefore would reduce the price of oil.

 

[ronc0011]

I really love the “environmental” reasoning behind not recovering available oil. It’s like these people live in some kind of fantasy make believe world.

Oil is to civilization what plankton is to the food chain. If it goes so does everything else. It is the cornerstone of everything we know. Without oil everything else goes. Average human lifespan reverts back to something like 40 years.

Of course that wouldn’t really happen because one of the first things that would happen would be wars and shifts in world power and eventually other governments would be drilling for that oil. After all the only people stupid enough to put “environmental” concerns before survival are the greenies who live in the U.S. I guarantee you that China or Russia or the Middle East governments, or South American governments won’t be bothered by environmental concerns. They are not going to have any trouble at all connecting the dots between survival and oil.

Anybody want to take a stab at what will become of the greenies. What usually becomes of those sorts of people under those kinds of regimes?

 

[sasquatch]

The politics of oil shale

.....a domestic oil resource so vast - 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone - it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Last month, the U.S. Senate's Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located).

http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/89-62573.aspx

The last paragraph is very telling about the politics involved:

Sen. Allard: It is something new. The issue with the Democrats now is they want to cut off any source of carbon. And there are those in the Senate who believe the more expensive you make gasoline, the less driving people do and you force conservation by making driving so expensive people can't afford it.

 

[Pilot]

Sen. Allard: It is something new. The issue with the Democrats now is they want to cut off any source of carbon. And there are those in the Senate who believe the more expensive you make gasoline, the less driving people do and you force conservation by making driving so expensive people can't afford it.

And that's exactly what Obama said in a recent interview. Essentially he didn't mind that the price of oil and gasoline have risen so high. He just didn't like that it went up so fast. So it was the rate of the price rice, not the amount.

Economies need to grow and growth means more energy use. Without VIABLE alternatives, oil is the only way to do that. The Dems and Greenies want a slowing economy so we use less oil. That means more unemployment, economic depression, poverty and potentially war and riots. Much more of a threat than Global Climate Change.

 

[USAFNoDak]

I'm guessing that many liberals are excited about the price of gasoline, but some are worried, as Obama is, that the price went up too fast. This is causing a stir among "the people". 60% of the people now think we should start drilling for our own oil to increase supplies. This would also cause the speculators to reverse their bidding up of oil futures which would bring the cost of oil down in the markets. Saudi Arabia pledged to release another 500K barrels of oil per day to the market. This after pledging 400K barrels a day a few weeks ago. They understand that the high price of oil will do two things which work against them.

1. The acceleration of alternative fuel development across the globe.

2. Increasing the risk that other countries will start drilling for more oil across the globe, including the US and China. China is already doing this, but we are experiencing political infighting at this time. Still, with 60% of "the people" looking for answers, how long can the democrats hold true to their environmental buddies?

To keep this gun related, the liberals have long believed that if you make something too painful, people will stop doing it, or at least will drastically cut back. This is how they planned to reduce the amount of firearms in civilian hands. Not necessarily through outright bans, which would be hard to sell, but through painful processes and hurdles to get over for the law abiding to purchase and possess firearms.

Obama gives us insight into his character when he says that the price went up too fast. This is analogous to a ban on firearms. That's moving the political process too fast, and will get a reaction from the people that will push back against the goals which liberals are attempting to achieve. He learned that lesson about bans, and now claims he was never for a ban on handguns. He is also on record as being for bans on all semiautomatic firearms, though you don't hear him professing this on the campaign trail anymore. That would be making the politics of reducing the number of guns in law abiding civilians hands move too quickly. Just like the cost of gas rising so rapidly is not politically favorable to the libs because it's happening too fast for their political agendas to not be affected in a negative way.

Now, we still have some issues with our refining costs and capacity to turn oil into affordable gasoline, but that's for another discussion.

 

[mvpel]

As I understand it, there's a pilot project going on now involving in-situ heating of the oil shale, so that instead of digging it up and baking it, you bake it in the ground then suck out the oil. Shell's operating it, looks like. To prevent the heated oil from migrating, you chill the perimeter of the area you're heating. Oil is so energy-dense you can still extract enough to way more than offset the energy you used to get it out of the ground.

http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/341283.pdf

A 1918 National Geographic article (Mitchell, 1918) proclaimed that shale oil was just about to replace crude oil due to dwindling crude supply, but new discoveries soon eliminated the need for oil shale.

There's the trouble with banking on unconventional oil supplies. All that has to happen is a technological shift or a new discovery, and all the money you've staked blows away like dust.

However, OPEC could not retain control of supply and prices for long, and the sharp decline in oil prices after 1980 completely destroyed the national oil shale effort.

 

[zxcvbob]

Doncha think we ought to leave some of the oil and coal in the ground for our kids and grandkids to burn someday? Think of it as long-term strategic reserves.

We do need to start drilling, and build another refinery or two, but it needs to be part of a comprehensive energy policy (the most important parts of which are conservation and alternative energy sources), otherwise it just makes the situation worse rather than better.

Imagine how the world political system would be different if the USA was a net exporter of energy! For one thing, we could say "F.U." to the Middle East and let them disappear back into the dark ages.

 

[TwoXForr]

I know of a vast untapped source of "oil" that we gave up on years ago, and it would not damage ground water sources, mar the landscape or need great pipelines to bring in to market.

Whale Oil, who is with me, bring back whale hunting. I firgure with some work we could maybe start whale farms and just grow the suckers in captivity.

Just kidding.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

and so you would think that there would be several upstart companies having been making liquid fuel from coal for years now, but they aren't. You have to wonder why.

Two Words:

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS.

Oil shale is economically viable at $80 per barrel, but it takes a huge investment, and time to get up and running.

Then there are ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS.

Yes, I was responding to JohnKSa about the use of coal to make liquid fuel, as you quoted. It is viable at $40 a barrel. So is this an environmental issue as well...explaining why this isn't being done?