Here's an article talking about Shale oil. I've pointed out before that there is more oil in shale then anything else, its just been more expensive to extract it. The interesting thing about the new in-situ methods is that they could pay off at $30/barrel.
That's why development stopped before in the 70's, because at $15/barrel, it didn't make any sense. But I could envision a future where the US is one of the worlds largest suppliers of oil, and only Europe is dependent on Arab oil.
Think about that for a minute.
Comments (2)
A bit off topic, but Slate has a good article on Valero and the spread on profitability, esp. on heavy, sour crude:
http://www.slate.com/id/2125900/
Now back on topic; I have been reading a bit about the low/no water in-situ shale and oil sands extraction methodologies and to me it seems like the EIROI sucks in that even this superior system to the high water methodologies of scrubbing and extraction sees 25-30% of gross energy go directly back into the ground to pull up the rest of the energy so the net position is still pretty poor. Yes, my gas tank will, eventually after all the refining, not be able to tell the difference on whether the gas it is consuming came from low quality hydrocarbons or Saudi medium sweet, nor can the world market (minus transit costs of course), so as long as the swing producers of any petroleum are in OPEC or the Persian Gulf, it barely matters which barrel of oil is shipped where. Your schradenfreude is a bit misplaced in this case.
Posted by fester | September 21, 2005 3:31 PM
Posted on September 21, 2005 15:31
As Japan, Europe must develop Very High Temperature Reactors to produce hydrogen from nuclear energy.
Posted by J Aguilar | September 26, 2005 11:32 AM
Posted on September 26, 2005 11:32