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TechnoratiEnergy Expert Calls Oil Shale World's Worst Fossil Fuel
SALT LAKE CITY - Congress has just lifted a moratorium on oil shale development on federal land, but the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is warning of its consequences. The organization is hosting a presentation tonight featuring Energy Analyst Randy Udall, brother of Colorado Congressman Mark Udall. He says it doesn't matter how high the price of oil gets, or how much we improve extraction technology, oil shale will never be an efficient energy resource.
![[To make the point about oil shale, Udall says, "There is three times more energy in a ton of captain crunch than there is in a ton of oil shale. Oil shale has the energy density of baked potatoes." ]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/captain-crunch2.jpg "captain-crunch2.jpg")
"We concluded that oil shale is the world's worst fossil fuel, it's the least prospective fossil fuel on the planet. It is a fossil fuel, but just barely. There is three times more energy in a ton of captain crunch than there is in a ton of oil shale. Oil shale has the energy density of baked potatoes," Udall said.
The advocate says politicians only talk about oil shale when gas prices get too high. He believes the consequences of extracting oil shale would be devastating to federal lands.
"The allure, the dream of oil shale for Colorado and Utah would very quickly turn into a nightmare. We would need to build new cities for ten of thousands of workers, the social impacts would just be staggering. So, many politicians look at oil shale as a panacea, when in reality, when you understand what would be needed to produce it, it is the original nightmare," Udall said.
But Udall says he wants energy companies to try to develop oil shale resources, as he believes it will lead them to discover it simply won't work. The Oil and Tar Sands Road Show will be held at tonight at seven at the Olpin Student Union Theater at the University of Utah.
16 Comments so far
Show AllOil shale is another one of the many disconnected issues, and in fact the systematic disconnection of all issues is part of the elites' grand strategy to confuse the public discussion, resulting in apathetic, passive consent from the people to their enslavement to the machine. The glaring question about oil shale is why do we even need it? What is an objective projection of our future energy consumption? How much is wasted? How much drives net destructive activities? Are we addicted to fossil energy? How much of the hyper-conveniences should we give up to greatly reduce our dependence on fossil energy? We should connect the discussion of oil shale with the more comprehensive energy discussion, and the wider discussions, including the elites' deliberate suppression of public enlightenment. Given availability of low-energy options, and the objective truth about why we need to conserve energy, many people will conclude that all of the oil shale should stay in the ground, probably forever.
The forum software usually doesn't do this but it posted my re-edit as a second comment.
Shhhh! The greedy scum on the right (AKA Rebublinazis) might hear you talking about the potential energy in Cap'n Crunch and those bastards will start charging us $ 150 a barrel for the stuff.
The truth is that fossil fuels- ALL fossil fuels- are the worst choice mankind could have made for energy use. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro- hell even a million hamsters running on a million little wheels would provide a more intelligent energy source than things that pollute our environment (though all that hamster crap could pose a problem) It's all part of the fossilized wool that has been pulled down over our eyes by the profiteering warpigs in control. Why don't we use alternate forms or energy? Simple- those that stand to profit from digging into our wallets for non-renewable energy are the same people (and here I use the term people very loosely) who ru(i)n our government and they would never allow us to use an energy source that doesn't make them more rich day by day, barrel by barrel, gallon by gallon....
the cost of the illegal invasion could have put 26 million. 26,000,000 hybrid cars in driveways and the cost is going up every day by over 340 million bucks each day or could buy 15,000 hybrids a day and give them away.
Shale muesli with ice cold milk.... Mmm
What a novel idea. Having Captain Crunch address America's energy needs.
Carter tried that idea but got into trouble back in the 1970s. And anyone who thinks that there's plenty to gain from offshore drilling is only self-deluding themselves. You're not going to get light sweet crude oil but more sour heavy crude oil which requires major changes in oil refineries and can cause more severe environmental damage due to higher sulfur content and other toxic chemicals that are less in light sweet crude oil. And don't expect the oil prices to come down from offshore drilling especially when the oil there too is dried up. Another thing that never gets mentioned is the "free" trading of our oil to other countries when we could keep that oil and use it for domestic manufacturing. We're still stuck in those "free" trade scams with other nations where the working class folks on both sides lose while the elites win. Most of our day to day products manufactured rely on oil no doubt. Instead of putting that oil to domestic manufacturing, we desperately cry "cheap cheap cheap" and let other countries take our oil and resell it to us for ripoff prices except for countries like Saudi Arabia which inflate the value of their oil via US occupation in Iraq for oil. Along with it, the manufacturing goes to them and the market is RIGGED to stifle production in America as much as possible while excepting poor quality products from slave labor.
All in all, our desperate quest for oil is compromising not only the environment but the economy as well. Destroy the environment and you destroy the economy as well at your own risk.
so...were just about as close to using oil shale as we are to solar, wind, hydroelectric, and hemp power as reasonable replacements for oil and coal? c'mon, we gotta explore, drill, refine to bridge the technology gap. that and nuclear, which is the one proven alternative.
There's a sign that I read about in an article, and no I don't remember the article, but it was near a roadway in western Colorado back circa 1947 and it said, Shale Oil, The fuel of the future. It is still the fuel of the future and will probably remain the fuel of the future even into the future.
There's no amount of domestic drilling that will replace all of the foreign oil we use. The Energy Information Agency says that we have 2% of the world’s oil reserves but we use 25% of all the oil produced in the world. That number is around 7.5 Billion barrels of oil (Bbbs) since much of that oil goes to transportation, about 40% for passenger vehicles, we should start to conserve there. Overall, the EIA reports that 70% of oil goes to transportation. There will have to be conservation in all areas of transportation that use oil.
The amount of oil in the ANWR by the USGS is estimated to be at between 5.9 Bbbs of oil and 13.2 Bbbls of oil with a 90% level of confidence for the former estimate and a 10% level of confidence for the latter. Of that the USGS estimates that between 1.3 Bbbls and 5.6 Bbbls of oil are economically recoverable. This would amount to less then ½ year to little over ½ year's supply assuming you had to rely solely on this one source for all of your oil consumption.
When you look at the outer continental shelf it doesn't get much better. The Minerals Mining Service estimates there are 18 Bbbs of oil of proven in "undiscovered fields". This is a tantamount admission that no one knows where this oil is. The EIA estimates that it would be 10 years before the first production well is drilled and the price would be reduced by 1¢ by 2025.
The bottom line is we will not be able to drill our way out of this one. With respect to "Twilight in the Desert" author Matt Simmons, the best new oil discovery we will make is called conservation.
first off, this whole "we don't have any oil" argument is a little shaky when theres been a 30 year moratorium on exploration/drilling/refining.
do a little research on the oil shale drilling technology advances that have been made sind the late 90's in the Bakken field, and compare the output spikes and estimates to your "2%" talking point.
the other thing is the premise of this whole article. consider the bias evident when the article quotes the "energy expert" and "He says it doesn't matter how high the price of oil gets, or how much we improve extraction technology, oil shale will never be an efficient energy resource." can anyone really agree with this statement?
he's obviously talking about the oil in the topmost layers of shale that are newer oil and not effective for conversion to petroleum. everyone knows this. there's no problem with the millions of barrels of oil we are currently using from deeper shale production techniques. either that, or he's saying the shale rock itself has no value. duh. no one is mining the rock and then squeezing oil from it. it's oil between the shale that we're getting.
that's right. we do it today, but just not yet at highly cost-effective volumes. your prius has probably burned some of it already. talk about a farce of a premise to write an article.
I have done my research. First of all you have to deal with what is real and not what you think the proven reserves are. The US has only 2% of proven world reserves. This is the amount of proven reserves the US has according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. I got that number by getting our proven reserves of 20.97 Billion barrels of oil here http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/petroleumreserves.html. I got the proven global reserves of oil amount of 1,143.355 Billion barrels here http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html. It’s in third column at the bottom. Then I divided 1,143.355 into 20.97 and multiplied by 100 and got roughly 1.8% rounding off gives me 2%. That's where I got if from. I don't just throw numbers in the air.
Second, the Outer Continental Shelf contains 86 Bbbs of oil with only 17.8 Billion bbs of oil in the moratorium areas. The remaining 68.16 Bbbs was and is OK to drill today. http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/PDFs/OilandGasResources0507.pdf Look in the third column bottom row and you'll see 17.84 Bbbs of technically recoverable reserves in the moratorium areas. This is a mean number. These numbers come from the US Minerals Management Service. They are responsible for cataloguing this data. We use 7.5 Bbbs of oil a year. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/crudeoil_faqs.asp#barrels_consume_year. When you look at it based on our consumption rate that's equivalent to less than 2½ years worth of oil.
Third, the Bakken field does not contain shale oil. There is oil beneath its shale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation#cite_note-1. The misnamed shale oil, actually Kerogen an oil precursor resides in Colorado and Utah. You mistakenly claim that when newer technologies are taken into account that our percentage of reserves globally increase. Well the US Geological Survey released a report on April 10th this year and they report that the amount of undiscovered technically recoverable reserves is 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels. Read the rest of the report. It says that technically recoverable reserves are those that are producible with current technology and industry standards. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
You don't even have to do your homework. I've done it for you.
so if we don't explore (remember the 30-year ban on exploration), how can you know how much oil there is?
sometimes my son will conclude "i lost my pocket knife" and i have to ask him if he's actually looked for it.
The reserves number doesn't come from me. It comes from the US Minerals Management Agency. The number is listed there in the third column at the bottom row of the chart. http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/PDFs/OilandGasResources0507.pdf
Oil exploration and drilling isn't a guaranteed venture. It takes lots of hard work and a bit of luck to get a well to produce. Even when it does produce it has to make a profit. I saw wells shut down in east Texas that were producing oil. I measured the amount of oil in the storage tanks with a tape ruler with a plumb bob on the end and recorded the results on a paper chart. They just weren't profitable enough to continue operating.
You could just give up the gas guzzler and conserve. I did it 6 years ago and I'm not as damaged by the rising oil prices. That alone will cut down the need to drill and further ruin the country with nukes. Big Oil and Big Nuclear are oversubsidized by Big Government whereas solar, wind, hydro? aren't and hemp is outlawed due to politicial and religious fundie reasons. In a truly free market, government would have no business subsidizing anyone. Additionally, you "drill drill drill" oil fanatics would not be calling people who are frugal, conserving, put fuel efficiency first, and putting the idea of reusability to work names such as "unpatriotic". Like South Carolina, Oklahoma where I assume you live in is in total shambles due to wacky greed for oil. There's no need to drill or build nukes. Throw away your gas guzzler and Chavez, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, OPEC, and the rest of the rogue oil cartels will be rendered weak and there, no more rogue leaders.
Oil Shale is essentially an oil precursor called kerogen which is a waxy substance that, if given a few tens of millions of years more would actually be oil. To compensate for that heat and pressure would have to be applied to this oil shale to turn it into oil after it was first, blasted, hauled, and crushed. After superheating it with energy derived from a dedicated coal fired electrical generating plant and the use of prodigious amounts of water in a region where water is tightly held by the competing interests of cities, ranchers and farmers the energy return on energy invested is low. And yes it has 1/3rd the energy density of Cap’n Crunch and the same energy density as baked potatoes.
Another Vote DP article at CD! Wow! What a surprise!
'But Udall says he wants energy companies to try to develop oil shale resources, as he believes it will lead them to discover it simply won't work.'
This is typical double speak from a forked tongue Democratic Party politician. Somehow I just don't think that Udall is going to work too hard here on behalf of the environment and against corporate interests. Now no doubt DP voting liberals will write to say how wrong I supposedly am about the good intentions of Udall. Makes one want to weep.