Thursday, March 14, 2013

Japan to build LNG terminal for US shale gas imports-media




A headline on an old newspaper reads: Oil Shale Development Imminent,". That edition of the defunct Grand Junction News, was published at the dawn of the 20th century.

More than a hundred years later, instability is roiling world oil markets, and Americans are paying $3.50 a gallon for gas. And oil shale fever is again rising in the geologic region known as the Piceance Basin, part of the Green River Formation that stretches across the rugged plains of northwestern Colorado and parts of Wyoming and Utah.

There is no dispute that a thousand feet below the isolated ranch country here on Colorado's western slope lie almost unimaginable oil riches. It's locked in sedimentary rock -- essentially immature oil that given a few million years under heat and pressure would produce pools of oil easy to extract.

The Energy Department and private industry estimate that a trillion barrels are here in Colorado -- about the same amount as the entire world's known reserves of conventional oil. The entire Green River Formation might hold as much as 2 trillion barrels.

supposedly secretly Pushed by the Bush administration and legislation from Congress , and spurred by oil prices above $70 a barrel, the energy industry is mobilized to unlock the secret of oil shale. Now Obama has made retrieving shale oil a priority. 
As it has before, shale oil holds out the hope of a USA no longer dependent on foreign oil. Shell Oil is engaged in a multi year test of a new technology for extracting the oil. Previous efforts that were uneconomical and environmentally destructive entailed mining the rock, crushing it and heating it above ground to release the oil.

Shell's new process involves sinking heaters deep underground, cooking the rock at 700 degrees and recovering the oil and natural gas with conventional drilling.

For a decade, Shell has been ramping up its research on private property here. It is also one of a handful of companies vying for research and development leases on larger tracts of federal land nearby. That could lead to full-scale development across 1,200 square miles of western Colorado.

Early results are promising, says Terry O'Connor, a vice president in the oil giant's unconventional resource division. But, he admits, "no one has been able to develop oil shale on a commercially sustainable basis.

That is $3.50 to $4 fuel that is here now, then I hear this a while back and more started making sense!

Legendary oilman T Boone Pickens says he doesn't believe that the oil sands are an effective substitute for our fuel needs. Pickens said that huge development costs and a tight labor supply will prevent the Alberta oil sands and other unconventional means of production from covering the shortfall in supply. That said, Pickens holds a big stake in both the Canadian Oil Sands Trust [TSX:COS.UN] and Suncor Energy.

When Pickens was in the Alberta oil sand fields in the 60's somebody said this isn't going to work, it isn't possible. It'll all have to be subsidized to a level, said, before they'd make money you'd have to have $5 oil," Pickens says laughing. "We never thought it would happen."
Six years ago I did a story on shale oil and oil sand but it did not go over well because people felt it would never happen. Knowing all the research and development that has been put into these alternatives!

Knowing that T Boone Pickens had invested multiple millions in this! Knowing that between us and Canada we have the more reserves than the entire world combined!
 
Knowing that he said refining it would not be profitable until fuel hit $5 per gallon, you have to believe that $5 gas will be here before you know it and equitable way has been discovered to capture it and bring it to the pump. It is already $5 per gallon in parts of California.

My question is have the oil companies purposely been driving up the prices in order to justify retrieving this huge reserves at our expense? Also at the expense of the environment and alternative fuel sources!

James Joiner
Gardner Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com

1 comment:

Ranch Chimp said...

This is something that I touched on various time's awhile back because all the horseshit we were being fed Jim about "USA becoming energy independent ... and less dependent on so called FOREIGN oil" talk. The politician's are especially the worse of the worse of this and come with these buzz phrases to sell these idea's ... knowing when people are in desperation over the price at the pump, people will feel a phoney and temporary sigh of relief ... and of course secure their faith in these compulsive political liar's. As I said ... the price at the piump's CANNOT go down at ALL because of how the world energies market's are set up. Back at least 5 year's ago or so, I done some posting's and told several folk's locally that they will jack up the price's to $5 bux or so a gallon, then they will drop them seasonally here and there like during heavy travel season's to boost sales ... then sudden spiked drop's, to where after awhile ... you will feel like $3.50 a gallon is a normal and great price. To understand these folk's and their plan's is very simply Jim ... first of all you know their compulsive liar's, so look for the "hustle" as in any street game or whatever ... look at the mark, follow the profit's, etc ... and you have them all figured out. NO COUNTRY in this system and time can become "energy independent", and whatever we produce will be up on the auction/ sales block for the most profit, period.

Thanx for the read Jim ....