DISQUS

coloradobob · 1 year ago

" Oil Shale .... the fuel of the future ! ..... and it always has been."

voicewr · 1 year ago

I haven't read a more uninformed or biased piece on oil shale this year. This article on CNN:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazines/fortu...

spells out the current oil shale situation reasonably accurately. As many as four companies, with Shell on the forefront, have oil shale recovery technology that work in situ, or underground, recovering light sweet crude for as little as $30 a barrel and Shell is recovering thousands of barrels of shale oil today, utilizing this technology.

Kosena says the technology is simple, decades old and uneconomical, but his information is literally, decades out of date. Modern in-situ recovery uses in-ground heating elements that cause the kerogen to metamorphose into an oily amber hydrogen-rich synthetic crude from which gas, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products can be produced.

Kosena says Shell's process requires large amounts of fresh water. Not true; saline water from deep wells works fine, and is recycled as well. The perimeter around the wells is frozen to keep the liberated kerogen from migrating into groundwater, protecting that vital and scarce western resource.

Kosena says the oil is thick, low quality, requiring lots of energy-intensive refining. Not true. The synthetic oil is light, sweet and yields lots of mid and upper distillates; gas and diesel. The oil quality is similar to what is being found in the 200 billion barrel Bakken formation in Montana, Wyoming and Saskatchewan and doesn't require additional energy to refine; less energy is required. It should be noted that all oil requires energy to refine, the crucial fact is the ratio of energy to final product.

Kosena is merely tapping the tired, refuted arguments used by environmental extremists to keep us dependent on our enemies and the pricing whims of the world oil market, to mask a deeper agenda: making fuel so expensive, people give up their personal freedom for their utopian, public-transit and bicycle-driven vision.

The larger question nobody is asking: Why did we willingly turn over our rights as citizens and voters to a self-appointed cadre of uninformed environmental activists, giving them the power to dictate what we drive, where can camp, what we eat, where we live, how we travel, the kind of society we must live in, even the paint we use and if economic chaos gets them what they want, the end justifies the means.

America needs the 1 - 2 trillion shale barrels in Colorado and Utah, the 200 billion conventional barrels in Montana and Wyoming, the 20 to 100 billion barrels in Alaska, the 80 billion barrels in Texas, the 20-40 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, the 8 billion barrels in and off-California, the 10 - 20 billion barrels in Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Eastern New York, Utah, Eastern Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico of domestic oil energy. We need to develop all of it to keep us economically strong and give us the time to develop the clean wind, solar, algae and cellulosic biofuel, tidal and Hydrogen energy that will sustain us into the distant future.

bmenezes · 1 year ago

I haven't read a more biased and factually misleading comment on oil shale this year. Where does one even begin to address these oil and gas industry talking points?

1. The anonymous commenter claims "Shell is recovering thousands of barrels of oil today using this technology." What he/she doesn't say is that the linked Fortune magazine story makes it clear that Shell recovered 1,700 barrels IN FIELD TESTS, not true field production. Now, why wouldn't this commenter make that clear to the reader? From the Fortune article:

"Best of all, Shell was able to replicate the lab results in several field tests; the most recent one, in 2005, yielded 1,700 barrels of light oil."

2. The commenter says it's "not true" that Shell's in situ process will "require large amounts of fresh water." Again, read the actual story, which says only that "some" of the required water will come from saline water; what the hell do you think the water that is not the "some" covered by deep-aquifer saline is going to be, fairy water? From the Fortune article:

"Water is another worry. ICP uses a lot of water, mainly to refine the oil and purify the natural gas. (Shell plans on building a refinery onsite, which is news in itself: It would be the first new refinery built in the U.S. in 30 years.) Shell appears to be on solid legal footing with its water plans, as it owns senior rights for local river water.

And SOME of the water it intends to utilize will be salinated water pumped from deep aquifers that are not part of the conventional water supply. Nevertheless, the potential for political backlash remains high, given that this is a part of the country where water is scarce and fights over water rights get nasty. "It will certainly be an issue," says former Rifle mayor David Ling. "There's an old expression around here: We talk over whiskey and fight over water." " (EMPHASIS added)

3. The commenter also omits the important part of the equation, that it will be years and years and years for oil shale to result in any significant oil production, and he/she offers no solution for what we do in the meantime to address current energy needs and costs. Instead, this person claims oil shale will "give us time" to develop alternative energy. So, we have to WAIT a decade or more for shale oil to start flowing before we address the energy issues we have NOW? From the Fortune article:

"It could be decades before Shell hits the really big numbers, if it happens at all. The logistics are daunting. It has taken the tar sands industry of Canada almost 30 years to reach its current production of about a million barrels a day (although it could be double that by 2010)."

The larger question nobody is asking: Why did we willingly turn over our rights as citizens and voters to the profit-motivated (not that there's anything wrong with that) energy industry in past years and let it determine how we should protect ourselves against the environmental dangers that accompany the necessary and important process of providing ourselves with energy? And when will the public start realizing that energy industry voices are concerned only with energy production and development, given that many of them will move on to other regions once Colorado has been pumped dry?

Please, save the oil and gas industry talking points for another forum where people aren't as interested in checking to see if you're providing a reasoned argument or just misinformation.