I just watched the documentary "The End of Suburbia", about the coming world oil shortage, and the reprecussions from that on our society. There is a growing voice in the oil industry (Including, much to my surprise, people on Cheney's Energy Task Force) that we are fast approaching a point were world oil production is going to go into steady decline. The main thrust of the film is that a major chunk of the nuts and bolts of our civilization is based on the availibility of cheap oil (agriculture, shipping, commerce, transportation, planning of the suburbs, etc etc) and once that dries up, we are going to be in for an economic downturn similar to or worse than the great depression. Its supposed to start with a series of recessions that take longer and longer to reverse, and never really correct themselves.

Many people in the documentary speculated that the US is going to go through a long period of denial about this, and proceed to elect "maniacs" who will promise us cheap oil, and turn us into a colonial police state. Some anticipated an eventual, return to 1930's level of tech or lower, with the suburbs becoming the new slums.

This may be part of the denial mentioned in the documentary, but I came away from watching this wondering if there are similiarities between this and the Y2K scare. That being, that there is indeed a problem, and a lot of smart people are very concerned about it, but they are underestimating our ability to deal with the issue.

I was also wondering how much of an impact thermal depolymerization(once scaled up) will have on this. In theory,(and according to the company, so take that with as much salt as you wish) this technology should be able to replace all oil we import, assuming we divert most (all?) of our waste to it.

Thought I'd see what everyone's two cents was on this topic.

Maybe re-post the above to this thread, started a few days ago, on the same subject LINK - it can mesh in with the ongoing discussion there.

Aw crap. Should have read further down the list.

The 'Oil Peak' is the point where the world’s oil supplies are exactly half used up. Apparently, after all these decades of industries and cars, we’ve still got half of all our oil supplies. Put precisely: we started out with an estimated total of about 2 trillion barrels. And in 2003, some 900 billion of it had been used.


When an oil well is half empty, you’ll have to go through an increasing amount of trouble to pump the last bit up. Think of it like eating yogurt out of a carton. At first, you’ll have no trouble to bring out spoonfuls of yogurt at all. But after a while, you’ll carefully have to maneuver your spoon around along the sides and corners of the carton to bring the last bit out. In oil wells, it goes the same way. So when half of all oil in the world is up, the price per barrel will begin to rise. The prices will steadily go up with about 1,5 to 3 percent a year. But meanwhile, world demand for oil is on the rise, too. Currently, the entire world consumes about 75 million barrels a day -- or 25 billion barrels per year. But in ten years time, demand is expected to rise by more than two thirds, to 135 million barrels a day.


The real problem, of course, is that our society is addicted to cheap, abundant oil. Our cars, airplanes and ships run on oil. Our electricity is generated in oil-fueled power plants. The stuff you buy in the stores is brought there by trucks that run on oil. In the end, literally everything is to some degree ‘made’ of oil!

So when oil gets expensive, so does our world. Even seemingly innocent things like socks, drinking water and bread will become very expensive. Factories and businesses will go bankrupt. Unemployment will explode, pushing up the state deficit and deepening the crisis even more. Banks will shut down, thereby killing the savings of their clients. In the end, the Oil Peak will send massive shockwaves through the world’s economies.

If you’re an American, the problems are even worse. The US economy is particularly vulnerable to oil problems, not just because the US consumes so much oil, but also because the oil trade worldwide goes in dollars. Consequently, when the oil trade hampers, the US economy takes the punches.

But you don’t want to live in one of the developing countries, either. South-America and Africa are particularly vulnerable to an oil crisis too, because their economies are weak as they are already. The Peak Oil will trigger an instant and sharp crisis in the Third World, causing even more wars, famines and deaths.

So if it’s all that bad, we’d just turn to some other kind of energy, right? We’ll have wind mills, and solar cells, and everything will be cool again, you say. Well -- actually, that won’t work. The problem is that at the moment, there just are no real alternatives!

Take wind energy. Wind is obviously stuff that doesn’t contain a lot of energy -- just compare slamming your head into a bit of wind with slamming it into a concrete wall. And what’s more: to build wind mills, you’ll have to weld steel, drive all kinds of stuff and engineers around in trucks and cars, build factories and make thousands of components. In the end, it costs more energy (oil) to actually build a windmill, than a windmill will ever generate during its entire lifetime!

The same goes for other so-called ‘alternatives’, like solar cells, hydrogen energy, biomass energy and what-have-you. They all cost more energy (oil) than they produce! The only realistic alternatives are gas and nuclear power. But gas runs out too, and it doesn’t help that we are closing down many of our nuclear power stations.


Nuclear fusion, perhaps? Indeed, that would be a clean, good alternative to oil. But the problem here is, the technology just isn’t ready yet. We need to do more research. After all, you don’t want to risk blowing up part of the planet in an all-too-hastily done fusion experiment. "You wanted energy? Here, have some!"

And of course, even when it comes to alternatives, we’ve still got this world here that is hooked on oil. Our cars run on gasoline, not on electricity. So we need to replace all of our cars and rebuild and rewire most of our society first, before we can use nuclear fusion or nuclear power. And that takes a lot of, uhm... the black stuff.


But hold it now, you say: we’ve faced oil crises before, haven’t we? Indeed, in 1973 and 1979, the flow of oil hampered too, plunging the world economy into crisis instantaneously. But back then, it was all easy. Venezuela just pushed up their oil production a bit -- and presto, cheap oil was back again. This time, it is all different. Once we’ve passed the Oil Peak, there will be no cavalry to help us out. Every oil producing country faces the same problem. We’ll have to go cold turkey on our oil addiction. That's just the way it is.

By now, you probably see how immensely complicated and big the problem really is. And we have only given you the broader picture. We haven’t detailed the wars and turmoil the Oil Peak will inevitably unleash. We haven’t elaborated on the fact that all the experts agree we won’t find any new oil fields.

The question is not if, but rather WHEN the crisis will strike. The ever-optimistic oil industry says it will last until approximately 2020 -- giving us some head start, to test those nuclear fusion stations and replace our cars. But most economists think we will reach the Oil Peak sometime over the next few years -- before 2010. The leading Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) calculates 2008 will be the year.

But in fact, there are some disturbing signs the crisis has begun already. Obviously, the oil price is in trouble -- just read the newspapers. As we write this, the oil production of Iraq and Russia is down because of political problems (which is of course an understatement). This causes the oil price to rise. Will it ever go down again?

Oh, but surely, there has to be SOME way out? A comforting punch-line, or a soothing concluding remark? Actually, even I am at a loss. Looks like we have to brace ourselves and face the Big One this time. We’ll see death and destruction, and see our world change forever. Can’t say we’re looking forward to it, either.

And even then, we’d have to have some luck. There’s a particularly nasty glitch in the theories even the economists don’t know about. For in fact, the biggest risk we’re facing is not even the Oil Crisis itself -- but rather, the invention of some kind of new energy source

Say we all stop using oil tomorrow. That would mean that suddenly, we will stop putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Now, this is probably not a good idea. Over the years, we’ve got huge amounts of green plants and especially carbon dioxide-breathing plankton and algae on our planet, courtesy to the greenhouse effect. If we suddenly stop producing greenhouse gases, these plants and algae will suck up all carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

This will kickstart an instant, all-out Ice Age, as our planet is robbed from its protective carbon dioxide ‘coat’. The Earth would freeze over. It would turn into a huge snowball.

Now, who wants to have an Ice Age without any heating to keep us warm?

Well shit...Fuck it, it comes it comes...At least we won't have enough oil to fight wars like we use to, we'll just stab each other all day long.

brooklyn juice, that article completely ignores the effect of technology, alternative resources, and just about every other variable in an economic model. Completely unrealistic. People don't use oil as a cheap commodity when it no longer is a cheap commodity... doesn't that make sense? For example, when gasoline is $1.50 a gallon, there is a demand X for 6 mpg SUVs. When gasoline is $2.50, X is obviously going to be greatly reduced, and people will buy cars with better MPG standards. This fact alone makes the entire

Another point: there is a lot more oil than this article gives credit to. There is a certain amount of oil that can be profitably extracted now, but as the price of oil rises, more areas become profitable to excavate. Peak oilers, being ever-deceptive, are using "proven reserves" rather than "probable reserves" as estimates of the remaining oil. Proven reserves only include oil which can be profitably extracted.



This is false; it does NOT take oil to build windmills. It doesnt take oil to change cars from gas-burning to electricity using. It takes energy. Build a windmill to supply energy, and they say it can't be done because only oil can supply that energy? Or, to run cars on something other than an oil based-fuel cannot be done because it would require oil to create the new cars. How does that make sense? If oil is now the cheapest source of energy, you could QUITE EASILY use it to construct windmills, solar panels, hydro plants, etc, which would in the future provide energy which was cheaper than oil. It's a little thing called investment. Also, keep in mind, as inefficient as solar and wind panels are, there is no reason to think that the technology running either or both of them won't be dramatically improved in the next few decades. They previously havent been because there was no reason for them to even exist, given cheap oil.


Also, on another point, I see this quite differently. The wealth of oil companies will trickle down either through multiplier effects on the US economy or socialist pressures on government to tax them and give to the rest of us. Controlling directly or indirectly more than half of the world's oil as it rises in price and having it trading in your currency is definetely NOT a disadvantage; rather, it should generate a lot of revenue for oil companies, many of which are american. This obviously doens't translate to well-being for the rest of us, unless we put aforementined socialist pressures on our government, which I'm sure would happen. This viewpoint, however, makes it much worse for third world nations without oil supplies. They are basically screwed.

So, in summary: Additional oil sources, natural gas, coal, wind, solar, hydro-electric, advances in oil-efficiency technologies, market forces favoring more efficient solutions, efficiency improvements in alternative sources, etc, were all not accounted for in what you posted, and so it must be disregarded as inherantly flawed and inaccurate.

I've been following the topic of the coming oil crises for a few years now, and after reading a lot on it from both sides, I think the crisis is completely overhyped. Based on the data for oil production & oil reserves, I am willing to bet that we have (assuming current rate of use and current accelaration of this rate) a minimum of two centuries left. There are a few things though that I think are very important. The first is that the crises that develop will be politically devised crises based on fear. The second is that the amount of oil estimated to be in natural reserves has usually been typically underestimated, often by factors of 100-500 percent. This has happened time and time again, and is the primary reason why I think most of the arguments indicating an oil shortage are flawed from the start. Third, the usual prescription is to create more efficient energy utilization. However, the trend has always been that as our energy effeciency increases, so does our energy consumption.

Also, I think the oil as an energy source will reach its true peak long before oil becomes scarce. Electricity is a far more dense energy source without as much energy waste. Through advances in semiconductors and other technological breakthroughs, I see it as inevitable that oil will soon be used primarily as a starting point for energy (like coal is for electricity).

And so it is true. In fact, despite all of our use, we have larger 'proven reserves' today than we did in 1970.

I heard someone on the news the other day saying "the best solution for high oil prices is, high oil prices" to wit, if we let the market do its thing, supply and demand will level things out.

And so it is true. In fact, despite all of our use, we have larger 'proven reserves' today than we did in 1970.

I heard someone on the news the other day saying "the best solution for high oil prices is, high oil prices" to wit, if we let the market do its thing, supply and demand will level things out.

I've had this thought as well. If we were forced into a short to medium term oil crisis that drove the price up to the point that spending really sunk I think things could get interesting

That's what happened during the oil crisis of the 70's.. All kind of interesting tech and govt programs were cropping up. Then things got better, and Reagan dissolved all the programs that were helping us get off the Saudi Sludge.

Considering how important this stuff is to our economy, you'd think that we'd be better off in creating an energy infrastructure that eliminates a lot of the sources of fluctuation in energy cost. Perhaps Benson has a response to this that would explain it, something that I'm not seeing, but this looks to me like one of the weaknesses of trusting the market too much. It ends to behave in an almost Darwinian method. You don't get the best, per se, you get just what works enough to not get eliminated. At least as far as I know, the market doesnt really drive much long term planning, or at least it drives short term profit over long term, and we frequently find ourselves reaping the harvest of that type of system. It looks like to get a truly comprehensive program that would make us oil independent (or at least less dependent) we would need to have a sustained period of very high oil/gasoline prices. Like $6/gal for a decade or three. Otherwise we'll be following the ups and downs and scrambling to catch up whenever theres a dip. I would think that if it's considered sound policy to take military action to protect our economic oil interests, then it should be sound policy to spend tax money to rebuild our infrastructure and eliminate a lot of the reasons for being involved in that region in the first place..

The future :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU

good report on oil supply: http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/...ort_10-2007.pdf

Unfettered, the market ensures efficiency. When oil is cheap, we burn oil, when it gets pricey, we look for alternatives and figure out how to burn less.

So yes, work on freeing us from oil dependence ebbs and flows with the apparent scarcity of oil itself but we don't forget what learned though. Advances in efficiency and alternative technology get integrated into the system. The reason this oil shock is not nearly as disruptive as the 1970s is that we are much less dependent on oil than we were and we use oil much more efficiently than we did.

If you really wanted to get out from under it, you would need to determine that it was a national security issue and then use government spending and taxation to warp the market in the direction you wanted. The Brazillians did this with ethanol and for a while, everyone laughed and said it was foolish but the shoe is on the other foot now that they are petroleum self-sufficient and that was before they found 8B barrels of oil off their coast.

market efficiency, pretty shitty but better than anything else anyone has come up with. maybe our coming robot slaves will improve upon it.

we need to go to nuclear power. I was reading that there have only been 27 deaths. maybe less in the history of the world do to a nuclear power plant. and thousands do to coal, oil and co2. also the French have come up with a great way of using it as well as disposing of the wastes of it. they turn the wastes into glass. and believe it or not you can walk through there nuclear waste dump site and be around less radiation then you would be if you flew on a 747. As far as wind and solar energy there is no way it will work.. there is way to high of a demand. plus big oil is one of the biggest supports of solar and wind alternatives. why? because they wont work. nuclear and natural gas are our best bet. I was reading another article in USA today last year, on how there is billions and billions of tons of frozen methane gas in the ocean. however they need to be able to extract it with out it getting in the atmosphere, or else it will destroy our ozone and kill us all.

A new USGS survey indicates recoverable oil in the Bakken formation is 25x more than the amount estimated in 1995. Total recoverable reserves estimated at 3-4 bbls of oil by the USGS and others have estimated that the total reserves available in this formation may be 10-100x this number...

Unmitigated BS

This only forestalls the inevitable.

Unless there is a sustainable alternative source, we are screwed long term.

virtualcyber is correct. We are rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic thinking that all is well. Oil being in the ground and being economicaly recoverable are two different things. There are lots of oil sands and oil shales that cost much more to extract from than a mere $110 a barrel. Unless fusion comes on line, energy shortages will be our downfall. If civilization does crash, as was speculated in another thread, it will be because of energy shortages mainly.

Even without the Bakken Deposit, which looks to be huge, oil shale is economically recoverable at $40-70/barrel. The US is sitting on an estimated 1.5 Tbbls of shale oil reserves...so even if only 1 in 10 of those barrels can be recovered you are still looking at a resource larger than the proven reserves of Russia. Canadian reserves are estimated at 180 Bbbls.

The US consumes oil at a rate of about 7.5 Bbbls of oil per year so you can see that while your statement may be technically true, even if we only count the oil we can tap via pipeline and completely discount the Middle East or Venezuela's huge reserves, we have enough proven oil reserves to last for many generations at even double today's consumption rate.

This also doesn't account for any direct coal to oil conversion which could yield another 750 Bbbls of oil from the proven US coal reserves alone.

An actual shortage of oil will be a problem for your grandchildren's children, maybe.

"oil shale is economically recoverable at $40-70/barrel"

You got anything to back that up? I didn't think so. It costs a lot more, look it up.

Use common sense, people. If oil shale was easy to recover oil from, don't you think oil companies would be scrambling to do it? Are they all stupid? I don't think so. Even if there was a world wide cartel which agreed not to tap those easily recoverable barrels, some investor would jump in and do it.

It all comes down to economics.

Benson's figure may be right. The surge in oil prices from 40 upwards has been relatively recent. If you consider the fact that it takes years and years to get a system in place, we may already have begun to extract oil from shale.

we have these, as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands

I find it mildly amusing that you are so incredibly ill-informed on this and other related subjects, the extent of your understanding appears to be limited to what you might see on television or read in USA Today...and yet this does not in any way inhibit you from spouting off...

If its not economically viable to produce oil from shale, why do you think Royal Dutch Shell is spending several billion dollars on the Mahogany Research Project and Exxon-Mobil has dusted off its Colony Project and Chevron and some of the other big players are developing their own projects.

According the a 2005 RAND Corporation report "Oil Shale Development in the United States Prospects and Policy Issues,"
the first Bbbl from Green River oil shale deposits will likely cost $70-90/bbl which reflects the initial capital investment and then will fall to $35-50/bbl after that. The Israelis think they can do even better in the Negev Desert, producing oil at less than $20/bbl. Similar efforts are underway in China, Estonia and Australia.

But the question was never how much will the oil cost, it was about the "inevitable" end of oil and actually experiencing a shortage of the resource. Given the currently available reserves on the North American continent alone, this seems unlikely for many generations to come.

I wonder if tapping into shale oil bring down the price of oil.

Two thoughts here.

(1) If the cost of producing oil from shale is $50 per barrel, this is still far more expensive than what one can produce by just pumping from a reservoir, right? So, it seems tapping into shale is not going to help with pulling down oil price.

(2) Given that there is a finite supply of fuel on this planet, why would oil companies be in a hurry to tap into shale oil reserves? I think the rational strategy would be, from the oil companies perspective, to delay this process, so that high oil price can be maintained. Then when we begin to run out of oil, they begin to sell shale oil, still at high price. That would make more sense to me.

On the oil-alternative fuels debate: the Stone Age didn't end b/c we ran out of stones.

----------------------

At least in the US, refinery capacity is a limiting factor. This needs to be addressed if domestic output is ever to increase, regardless of the source of crude oil.

A major stumbling block to use of oil shale/sands is environmental degradation on a massive scale.

All it takes is one company (new or old) to make such a collusion fall apart. The good thing about capitalism...someone else can come in and start pushing this stuff on the open market at the $50 a barrel mark (or even at $80 a barrel) and make a fortune before the others have a chance to do anything about it.

True that. We need to build several new refineries in distant parts of the country.



Some of the new in-situ retorting techniques like the one Shell is playing with promise to mitigate the environmental impacts to a significant degree.

Benson, I find it amusing that you constantly make statements with nothing to back them up. So the oil companies are researching oil shale. This has been going on for decades. Some oil shale deposits may be economically recoverable even today with today's technology. I never said none were, just that the great majority are not. Just as in the early days of oil exploration, the easy to tap deposits of oil were the first to be exploited. Anything below 100 feet was considered unrecoverable. Then, anything below a mile or anything under the sea was off limits. Now, very few liquid oil deposits are unrecoverable. So it is with oil shale. The shale with high amounts of petroleum easy to get to, are now being tapped. What I object to is your claim or assumption that all or most oil shale falls in this category.

If it was the case that the majority of oil shale could be recovered at a cost of $90, let alone $40, investors would be jumping in by the busload.

D Sade is the most rational one in this debate. Obviously if it was that easy to extract oil then someone would be doing it no matter what the oil companies want to do. It's like the story of the 100 mpg carburator which has been going around for decades at least. If it existed, it would be on the market. Economic forces cause these things to happen. No one oil company could keep it suppressed. The profits from such a carburator would be more than 10 times what they are making on oil so they would market it themselves. One of my high school instructors claimed to have invented such a carburator years ago. Yeah, right.

I'm sorry Max, I didn't realize the 2005 RAND Corporation report and the information provided in Shell's Mahogany Research Project report I referenced above to support my claims were too technical for you to understand. That must be why you ignored both of them when you claimed I had nothing to back up my statements.

Here is a Fortune Magazine article from October 2007. They use smaller words so that should help.

Of course there is also this: "Strategic Significance of America’s Oil Shale Resource. Volume II Oil Shale Resources, Technology and Economics" Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Petroleum Reserves; Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves; U.S. Department of Energy 2004.

From the Conclusion:

"The oil shale resources of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming exceed 1 trillion barrels, in-place. Rich,
high quality zones yielding greater than 30 gallon per ton are found throughout the region. Past
failures to commercialize this vast resource can be attributed to price uncertainty and immature
technology, not an inherent deficiency in the resource.

Worldwide, there have been significant advances in technology in the past two decades. Mining
and retorting technologies are being practiced in Estonia, Brazil, China and Australia. In the past
several years a new, more environmentally sensitive, in-situ technology has been studied that
promises production of high quality oil and gas from thick, deep beds where the majority of the
resource lies.

Environmental technologies and regulations have matured to a point where regulatory uncer-
tainty is diminished. Oil shale is highly concentrated, and contrary to popular perception pro-
vides the greatest yields of oil per acre disturbed of any of the Nation’s energy resources.

The rapidly expanding and highly profitable development of Athabasca tar sand resources of Al-
berta, Canada serves as a model for the initiation and growth of an oil shale industry in the
United States. As the tar sand industry has matured production efficiency has improved to over
80 percent and costs have declined, reflecting the learning process.

There are direct parallels between tar sand and oil shale with respect to resource size, resource
quality, mining, recovery and upgrading technologies, and production certainty. In nearly all re-
spects oil shale compares favorably to tar sand.

Getting the industry started is the hardest step. This is because of the high capital costs, invest-
ment risk, and customary uncertainties surrounding a first-generation facility. Once started, a
maturing of an oil shale industry, similar to the tar sand industry, can be expected. "

I can't see to find where you posted anything other than your learned opinion on the subject to refute any of this...perhaps you could point it out for me...

I fail to see anything in what you posted that says oil shale can be recovered at a cost of $50 per barrel. Just a lot of happy chamber of commerce type talk.

Yes, there is a huge amount of oil in oil sands and shales. No doubt about it. As usual when we argue, it's all about economics. You want to trumpet the fact that there is a lot of oil shale. I want to point out that at this point in time, it is mostly economically unfeasible to recover it. Let oil get to $500 a barrel and all that will change. However, we will be screwed if that happens.

There is no conspiracy to keep oil sands or shales from being produced. It comes down to cost. When the technology matures, then we will have a very nice resource to recover. Until then, it's like the fact that the sun shines over 100 times as much energy on the usa every day as we need for our use. We see it but can't tap into it and make money doing it. Not yet.

There are different oil shales - different technologies needed to extract them depending on depth - they are very energy intensive to extract and the most CO2 emitting.

Steam is the only extraction method for greater depths, beneath a certain depth strip mining is preferred in some locations.


If you can get the extraction and processing energy from solar power then it is a fair opportunity, however nearly all reserves are in Canada.

Methane hydrates look attractive but the density is generally low, and is still far from commercial development.

Coal to liquids is also OK, the CO2 made in production of hydrogen for liquid fuels can be sequestered but this depends on location and only very small scale projects currently operate. But in theory, when combined with CO2 sequestration, coal to liquids could be as green as gas-to-liquid or any petroleum product from fossil fuels.

In the longer run, the most promising technologies are electric, and need not be dependent on peakable oil, and algea is underestimated, whose growth productivity may be already maintainable at close to 10% photosynthetic efficiency, assuming temperature stability and nutrient supply, with the level going up to 30% theoretically with genetic engineering programs well under way and already yielding more efficient strains. Corn at peak growth can temporarily achieve 5% photosynthetic efficiency but its year round efficiency is much less, below 1%, so algea can greatly improve on even the whole mass product of the best plants. A lot of work remains to find effective extraction of algae and its energy. A solar powered conversion of algae biomass into hydrocarbons is feasible with a high conversion, and oil yielding strains could yield 30-50% of their energy as oil, leaving carbohydrates and proteins which could be efficiently converted by rubidium catalysts used in syngas generation, for example. These can completely convert wood into syngas with no residual carbonation, although some energy is lost as CO2 this can be used as a growth fertiliser.

One of the most promising areas is thermo-chemical production of hydrogen, that can operate efficiently below 1000 C. These cycles can be 50% efficient and allied to thorium bred to uranium in much more efficient cycles (in terms of nuclear by-product waste) supply energy independence and deliver the energy for liquid fuels or hydrogen on the scales needed.

Are you just too lazy to read or do you have some sort of comprehension problem?

"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. In that test, carefully engineered heating rods were inserted several hundred feet into the ground in order to gradually raise the temperature of the oil shale to 650 degrees Fahrenheit. Now Shell had a proven technology that it believed could produce a barrel of oil for $30."

"Several earlier RAND studies have examined cost improvement expectations for oil shale mining and surface retorting (Merrow, 1989; Hess, 1985). This work indicates that after 500 million barrels have been produced with this technology, production costs could drop to about 50 percent of the costs for initial commercial plants. For initial production costs between $70 and $95 per barrel, experienced-based learning could drop those costs to between $35 and $48 per barrel within 12 years of the start of commercial oil shale operations"

"Shell anticipates that the petroleum products produced by its in-situ method are competitive, given crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel (Fletcher, 2005)."

If you have data that refute these numbers, by all means post it.

"Now Shell had a proven technology that it believed could produce a barrel of oil for $30"

"For initial production costs between $70 and $95 per barrel, experienced-based learning could drop those costs to between $35 and $48 per barrel within 12 years of the start of commercial oil shale operations"

Notice any iffyness in those statements? It's nice that oil can be recovered in lab type settings. It's also nice that the tec is gradually improving. Maybe someday your dream will be economically feasible. Someday, just not today with the majority of it.

Hey, there are megatons, nay gigatons, of hydrogen on Jupiter. Our energy problems are solved! Right?

Your opinion doesn't count as data.

Put up something from some reliable source that demonstrates that these pricing predictions are likely to inaccurate, if you can...

Then we will have something to discuss.

"Your opinion doesn't count as data"

Oh really? You seem to think that your own opinion is gold.

"Put up something from some reliable source that demonstrates that these pricing predictions are likely to inaccurate"

Predictions are just predictions, not facts. You should look up the difference.

I'll take that as an admission that you are unable to produce any data to refute my numbers.

Looking back over this thread, you have yet to post any third party data to support your position at all...

max, the reason shale oil hasn't been mined yet is that oil was too cheap to make it worthwhile. that is no longer the case, nor does it appear that it will go down. the same was said of oil sands before. but the demand is there now, and even the chinese have been trying to secure rights to Canada's sand reserves.

i don't really understand what the argument is. before, the extraction was not economically viable, and now it is.

I think they will develop it, and I think that spending a lot of money trying to lower CO2 in already efficient operations is not really economically or ethically demanded. Until the alternatives are available, CO21 is just going to rise and rise.

We'd better be thinking of mitigation, if there is any problems caused by this.

In terms of supply problems and destabilising the economy, I think fuel prices will clearly go up, but there wont be a catastrophic loss of supply because of lack of sources. The problem for the world economy is the precarious interdependence of everything, natural climate change or unnatural, and the rising cost and instability of supplies of basic commodities apart from energy, like food production and growing world population, religious wars and epidemics, and other unforeseen uncommon events, and then a background of energy costs and debt.

It will be done and is being done on certain deposits, those that are easy to get to and easy to extract from. My point was that most oil shales as well as sands and tars are not at this point in time economically feasible to extract from. Whereas in the past none of it may have been worthwhile to extract from, now some is. I'm simply saying that much or most is not and it will be some time before they can profitably be tapped. Therefore, saying that we have x amount of oil reserves based on shale, sands, etc is misleading at best. As I pointed out, Jupiter has gigatons of hydrogen but that doesn't help our energy needs at all because it would cost far more to bring it here than it's worth.

Benson, I don't have to refute your figures because they are just pie in the sky "predictions" of what costs may be in the future. You probably believe everything Bush tells us too. There is no recession, the war in Iraq is being won and the tooth fairy is real.

The fact that little to no extraction of oil shale etc is going on at the present time despite oil being at a high level tells us a lot more than someone's theory or prediction. As I asked before, if it can be done profitably now, why isn't there a rush to do so? Research and exploration is not the same thing. Why isn't Warren Buffet pouring billions into oil shale extraction if there is so much money to be made? Answer those questions if you can.

Someday it will be doable and will be done. Having those reserves is a good thing just as the deuterium in the ocean is a good thing. There is enough deuterium there to supply all our energy needs but it's costly to extract and use. We can't economically use either of those resources right now but some day we probably will.

Ummm...last year roughly half the oil Canada produced, some 1.2 Mbbl/day, came from the Athabasca tar sands...a good percentage of the gasoline now in your car's tank came from oil sand deposits.



I have no love of GWB, I think the invasion of Iraq was a colossal foreign policy boondogle and we are likely in for a lulu of a recession but all of that is completely unrelated to the discussion at hand. You don't refute my numbers because you cannot. You cannot find any evidence that the analysis of oil shale production potential provided by Shell Oil, RAND and the Department of the Navy are even questionable.



I come back to the fact that you are either too lazy to read or you have difficulty with comprehension.

I'm not sure about the Oracle of Omaha but Petrobras, Exxon-Mobil, RDShell, BP, some of the largest companies in the world are putting BILLIONS of dollars into oil shale extraction technology here and abroad. Even the Saudis, who are sitting on billions of barrels of liquid LSC, are getting in on the game. In order to avoid strip mining all of Colorado to get the stuff out of the ground, whole new processes are being developed. Shell has already produced several thousand barrels of oil with its in-situ process.

You may recall that in 1999, the Economist famously predicted that the price of oil, then $10/barrel was going to tank and go to $5. Are you surprised nobody was paying much attention to alternative oil sources as recently as five or six years ago. Is shale oil going to be a major market force next year? No. But if oil remains above $50/bbl shale production will grow and will eventually be a major player in world oil markets.

"You don't refute my numbers because you cannot"

As always, you make big statements and back them up with nothing. I do not have to refute anything because you never gave any evidence to establish any facts in the first place. You make bold statements and ask me to prove you wrong. That's not how it works. It's up to the one making claims to establish the claims. You haven't done that.

I'll try to make this simple for you.

I have made statements and provided expert analysis from three different sources (the RAND Corporation, the DON/DOE and Shell Oil) on the economics of shale oil extraction now and in the future that support those statements.

You have provided in response: your opinion that these experts are wrong.

So now all you have to do Max is either back up your implied claim that you know more about shale-oil extraction economics that those three organizations or provide some data from some other expert resource that shows that the analysis provided is faulty or even likely inaccurate.

"You have provided in response: your opinion that these experts are wrong."

You have provided predictions of what it may cost to extract oil from shale in the future. You obviously still do not understand the difference between predictions and facts or between predictions and reality. 30 years ago, it was predicted that we would have colonies on the moon and on mars by now. Has it happened? 20 years ago it was predicted we would have low cost fusion by now. So on and so on. If your experts were so good, let them try their hand at the stock market or commodities market.

The questions you and others have dodged away from are if it's so cheap to extract from shale, tar and sands, why aren't we getting a sizeable percentage of our oil from those sources? And why aren't investors lining up to finance such ventures? Are any of those "experts" you talked about putting their money where their mouth is and investing in that? I wonder why not?

Which I will take to mean that you still are unable to produce a single piece of expert analysis that would cast any doubt on the predictions of the industry experts at RAND, DOE and Shell.



Are you really this dense? Canada produced over 350 MILLION barrels from the Athabasca tar sands last year...half of their national production more or less and about the same amount of oil that Kuwait pumped last year. The Israelis have produced 21 Mbbl/year from their shale deposits since 2006 and the Australians have produced almost 2 Mbbl of oil at their Stuart Shale Project for less than $15/bbl.

Some of the largest companies in the world are putting BILLIONS of dollars into oil shale and tar sand extraction. The aren't pumping a lot of oil yet from shale because the technology to extract the oil without strip mining Colorado and Utah is less than five years old. But it is now proven to work and work at price points that are very attractive, especially in the fact of $115.bbl oil. Which is the point of this discussion. The issue isn't why don't we have a lot of shale oil at the moment but whether the vast proven reserves in the Green River Formation and the Bakken Formation are economically viable sources of oil in the future and ALL of the available evidence says that they are.

You got any proof to back up those statements? No, you do not so why should anyone believe them? And you still do not understand the concept that predictions do not have to be "disproven" because they never have been proven in the first place. But that seems too difficult for you to grasp so maybe we should drop it.

"Canada produced over 350 MILLION barrels from the Athabasca tar sands last year"

Interesting if true but that isn't shale, is it? An oil tar is more promising than an oil shale or oil sand. And you haven't proven even that much, just your statement.

"The aren't pumping a lot of oil yet from shale because the technology to extract the oil without strip mining Colorado and Utah is less than five years old."

It sounds like this is your way of admitting what I've said all along. The technology is not yet up to par though there is promise for the future. It's not a fact that at a certain date we will profitably extract from shale but there is a possibility. Look up "fact" and "possibility" and see if you find any difference between the two concepts.

You cannot even keep track of your own arguments. I think we are done here.

no one has dodged it, you just don't understand it. the incredibly high price of a barrel of oil is a recent phenomenon. and the high price has stability, too. once the price is high and stable, you can justify making an investment that may take several years to return a profit. and even after you make that decision to commit, it takes a few years to procure the resources to conduct the mining and extraction.