Friday, October 18, 2013

US soon to overtake Russia as top oil producer thanks to expensive shale oil:






A pumpjack brings oil to the surface in the Monterey Shale, California, April 29, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson


I was a bit surprised to find out the following on Shale oil! 

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 $3.48 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 mobilizing to unlock the secret of oil shale. As it has before, oil shale holds out the hope of a USA no longer dependent on foreign oil. Shell Oil is engaged in a multiyear 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 had 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.

Back in 2008: 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!


Gas prices have been going up whether something bad or good happens or fore nothing at all and we have been stymied as to why. Worse, they will never go down where they use to be again.


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! Shale oil and oil sand. The future does not look good to me.

James Joiner
Gardner Ma

http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com

1 comment:

Ranch Chimp said...

Mornin Jim, I dont blame the oil company on price's as much as I do those who speculate the market's as a business on Wall St, being the largest investment bankers internationally especially who are basically ALL in the oil business these dayz. As far as production here in America ... much of our production including the tar sands cheap crud after piped down to the Gulf Coast is being sent to the Asian marketplace and the price's jacked up screwing the Asian's {: ), oil production period across the board is at an all time record high in America and especially under the current Obama Administration, can you imagine what it would be at under a Romney/ Ryan Administration, eh? {: ) I remember Gingrich and Palin both saying that under them we could get gas for $2.00/ $2.50 a gallon (which of course is more stupid campaign bullshit that American's lick the plate for) ... the reality right now is that I just filled up the other day here in Dallas for $2.80+ per gallon, which mean's by political right wing bullshit, that the price at the pump ACTUALLY went down under the Obama Administration ... heh, heh, heh, heh, heh ... you wont hear them say that, eh? of course not {: ) But all caca aside ... the bottom line is this, n o matter gow much we drill, frack and every other method, as long as these essential basic energies are controlled by those entities that I mention above, we will continue to get screwed on pricing, this is where government's of the world need to get some grip on what is happening when it come's to these type's of public need's, Washington or no one else hardly is trying to deal with any of this, except maybe some odd few small inde type countries like Nordic countries or whatever ... Enough from me though Jim ... Thanx Guy ....