Oil Shale...What a Joke!

[DouginUtah]

"Oil shale: the fuel of the future...and it always will be.

"After decades of fully authorized, commercial, even subsidized attempts to develop oil shale into a usable liquid fuel, no one has ever been able to make it economically feasible. Even if oil shale extraction does become economically viable some day, it's unlikely to ever produce more than a modest flow (though perhaps a very long-lived one) of extremely expensive synthetic oil.

Peak Oil Media Guide


Any time some politician says oil shale is going to help us become energy independent you should realize that he is indulging in a fantasy of delusional thinking. (Sadly, at least three of Utah's congressmen are in this position.)

I'm making this post because I have come up with an apt analogy for the oil shade believers.

There is talk of drought in the southeast and southwest. We shouldn't worry about it because the ocean is full of millions of acre-feet of water. All we have to do is desalinate it and pump it to the areas which need it.

Oil shale is just like ocean water. It can be recovered but at what cost? There is not enough water to process it, and there is not enough energy to recover it. It would take a nuclear power plant just for the energy needed. The kerogen has to be heated for about four years to get to ~700° and it has to be surrounded by a barrier of frozen rock.

Follow the money. (Research grants.)

[Tom]

I think everybody is wasting their time worrying about oil as fuel.  It's already been beat to death that there is no more, it's too expensive, etc.

What we need to do is start worrying about water.  The new sought after procedures of using water for fuel will deplete the earth's water supply and we can't do without water.  There is still time for us to worry about it though.  To exacerbate the problem, the creation of all of the hydrogen and Oxygen gasses will make the world a highly explosive place. Too much Oxygen will cause us to be brain dead and too much hydrogen will put us in danger of blowing ourselves up. Especially with all of that Oxygen available.  The icing on the cake will be that the explosions(s) will oxidate all of that hydrogen and those who survive will drown.

Oh woe!. :-\

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

Tom,

To offer a little encouragement, it turns out that the Earth is being "watered"
to the tune of about 30 million tons per day. 

It hits the outermost layers of the atmosphere daily in the form of ice meteors. 
Satellite researchers noticed large areas, tens of miles across, in which ultraviolet
spectrum was being blocked from view by said satellites.  Turns out that water
vapor was the culprit. 

The source of that vapor? the impacts of ice.

[Tom]

You mean that we are being bombarded by ice?  OH, woe!!
:-\ :P

[Don_Papenburg]

A new ice age is apon us.

[Sprucegum]

Yep. I hit ice Dang near ecery winter    :D

Some oil shale junkies are talking about spending 10 Billion Dollars in Southern Saskatchewan/Northern Montana - or that other State just down there  ???

[pappy19]

Say what you want about oil shale, but it's time is upon us. Take a look at the amount of crude oil coming from Canadian tar sands into the US. My cousin is working on a new 42" crude oil pipeline going into the refineries in southern Illinois. This new pipeline will increase the amount of crude into thoese refineries by 250%. The same technology being used in retreiving oil from tar sands is being used in oil shale. If you look at the Baaken find in Montana and North Dakota and the new finds in Utah and northern Colorado, you will see that the US has the potential to not only take care of our own petroleum needs, but export the excess. All we need is for a Democrat Congress to allow it to happen.

[Dodgy Loner]

We already have a democratic congress :P

[Tom]

But they aren't allowing it to happen. ???

[sawdust]

It takes an unbelievable amount of water and natural gas to get the oil out of the sand. Oil shale is a similar thing I suspect.

[Dodgy Loner]

Yep, I don't think there's any right-wing (or left-wing) conspiracy behind this one.

[Larry]

Newt Gingrich says "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less".

www.americansolutions.com

It is an interesting website...no I haven't signed the petition yet.  Still checking em out before I commit...but I do believe in lifting the restrictions on drilling.

[DanG]

I don't have to read the link to know that I favor drilling here and now.  It's the "pay less" part that has me worried.  I've asked this question a couple of times on these energy threads and haven't gotten an answer: Who is going to get the money from the oil we produce from the offshore wells?  To my way of thinking, if the Gov't has to license the drilling, they must be assumed to own the oil.  If they(we) own the oil, they(we) should be paid for it at the same cottonpickin' rate we are paying the Arabs.  There is no reason whatever for the oil to go onto the futures market just to have the price inflated by those carpetbaggers that want to take profit for no effort.  Either the oil companies should drill and pump to their own refineries, and charge us an appropriately lower price for their goods, or they should pay the Gov't the "market" price for it and the Gov't could build us all new houses and cut out all taxes, like the Arab countries have done for their people!

[cheyenne]

Dang; You bring up a great point. The people of alaska share in the oil revenue, there part of the us, were part of the us, where's our share. How about all the oil that's exported, where's our share. We all know the answer.Hooray for us and %#&* the american people. Cheyenne

[SwampDonkey]

I want my share to.  ;D

[DouginUtah]

Fred Upton (R-Michigan) on Oil Shale

* On oil shale: "The reserves in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming exceed a trillion barrels of what's expected down there. And, that's more than what Saudi Arabia has."
*
The Facts: The trillion barrels number that Upton cites comes from estimates of the total resource. But for economic and technical reasons only a fraction of the total resource could ever be exploited. The U. S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) believes that the amount of liquid fuel available from oil shale in the United States is closer 400 billion barrels. What Upton doesn't know or doesn't say is that oil shale, in fact, contains no oil. It is rock impregnated with kerogen, a waxy substance that is better characterized as immature oil. If the rock had been buried sufficiently far underground, higher temperatures and pressures might have cooked it until it had become oil or natural gas.

What this means is that the "cooking" has to be done by us humans. That requires huge amounts of energy which have to come from somewhere. One of the big problems with oil shale is that it may end up taking more energy to get it out of the ground and transform it than it yields, even with new technologies. So, the question is, why not use the energy that would be used to process oil shale in our vehicles, homes and industries directly instead? We'd actually save energy by doing so as long as it takes more energy to extract and process kerogen from shale.

Finally, the statement that there is more oil in America's oil shale than under Saudi Arabia is misleading. The absolute size of the total resource may be larger, but oil from oil shale must be manufactured using unproven, energy-intensive processes. In fact, there are no commercial oil shale processing plants in operation. Saudi oil, which is some of the very highest quality in the world, is simply pumped out of the ground at the rate of 10 million barrels a day ready to be refined into the products we want. In fact, because of the difficulties related to processing oil shale, the EIA is projecting that even in the best case scenario, oil shale in the United States will yield only about 140,000 barrels of oil products a day by 2030. That represents just 0.6 percent of the total expected consumption of liquid fuels in that year of 22.8 million barrels per day for the entire United States.

Perhaps an analogy will help illustrate the problem. If you were to receive an inheritance of $1 million with the stipulation that you could only draw out $100 a week, you might be a millionaire, but you would never be able to live like one. It is doubtful that the huge inheritance of oil shale the United States contains will ever produce oil at a rate that will allow Americans to live like Saudi princes or even produce it at more than a tiny fraction of the rate that the average Saudi or American citizen currently requires.

From energybulletin.net
-----
As for the drill, drill, drill mantra it needs to be emphasized that crude oil is fungible. That means that what comes out of ANWR or from the OCS does not necessarily get to be used by the US. It could be sold to China or whoever is willing to pay the highest price. The oil is owned by Big Oil and they will do with it whatever is in their best interests.

[SPIKER]

I have been looking into a company for a while http://www.rentechinc.com/ they have a process that takes pretty much ANY carbon bearing material and turns it into a synthetic fuel (think diesel fuel not gas) used for Jets Trucks ect. I'm wondering if that oil shale stuff would / could be used to make this clear fuel???

they are making it in small quantities now using Nat Gas and Coal as source carbon but also say that bio-Mass from garbage can be used as well!?!?   humm fuel from garbage now that is something we have a lot of! lol.   
they use a Iron Catalyst to break it down somehow?  end up with a grease/wax that is then made into a bunch of other stuff including the clear fuel.  (looked more seems they can use even asphalt so why not the oil sands and shale??)  At least that is how I THINK they are doing it now 100% sure as it is cloudy for their own protection I'm sure...

anyhow it is worth a look interesting site.   This is similar to the synthetic fuels that was made during WWI/WWII..   It is a process different enough that they got it patented already...

They have the test plant up & running (very recently) and have already sold rites to one company (coal company I think) with 5 or 6 others interested.  seems putting one of these fuel production plants at point of carbon source is what they are after.   (stick a plant up on top of the oil sands or coal mine shaft and start making clean fuel out the door for greater savings on transportation costs....   seems to be a very good idea but you know how far that can go sometimes...
Mark

[DanG]

Fuel from garbage is already a reality, but on an all too limited basis.  In the latest Annual Report from our Co-op, they reported that 4% of the power they buy is generated from landfill methane.  I can't find any downside to that, except for the way it is being handled.  The City of Tallahassee is trucking all of its garbage to one of these landfills 90 miles away.  I just gotta wonder how much power they could generate if they parked all those trucks and used the engines to run generators? ??? :  The transfer station where all those trucks are loaded is less than a mile from one of TallyTown's own generating stations, and there is plenty of room around it to put the landfill.

[stonebroke]

I think the name for the process is called thermal polymerization. he local ag and tech is putting one in.

Stonebroke

[cheyenne]

Fuel from garbage;Just run a sip stick form the Capital to every gas station in the country. Cheyenne

[Meadows Miller]

Gday Fellas

Bugger using  shale oil i love to see goverments pith farting around with options that use a HIGH amount of Imputs  : ??? there is another Option which is nearly carbon nertral But is Political nightmare because its Forest based >:( 
Hears how it works Take 10 tons of Biomass put it through a Gasafier then through a scrubber systm then through a ficsher-tropschich systm and You have 1200 L or 317 gal of high grade biodeisel youcan even make Avgas with it Let alone the benifit of the abilty to generate power with the heat generated in the gasafieing process .There is allredy a plants running in germany 10 and 20 ton per hour imput 3600L or 951 gal per hour 30,240,000 liters pa or 8,000,000 gal pa 252000 ton of wood waste these plants are made to be operated near the supply area

It beats Me that why people Keep barking up the wrong tree  Manly GREENYS  not wanting to loose the gains/setbacks that they have brought Human kind in the past 40yrs Just wait for the next ASSALT on Our The Only Truly Renewable Industry while wood waste that could be put to good use Rots having the same effect on the enviroment BEGINS they will be Ohh I mean the are allready telling US that we should lock it all up NOW.

Sorry for havn a bit of a whinge It just ticks me of that the majority rule but the majority are f#%KN Idiots.
I like when People tell Me that what I do for a living is WRONG and I politly inform them that the Quikest way to stuff the planet is to keep digging holes trying to replace TIMBER and go on to quote energy imputs and carbon out puts steel or plastic vs Timber THAT SHUTS THEM UP QUICK SMART . ;D

Reguards Chris McMahon

remember the only tru wilderness is between a greenys ears  ;) :D

[OneWithWood]

You have a very valid point, there Chris.