Production Costs. Oil shale has not been exploited in the United States because the energy industry, after some halting efforts, decided that developing oil shale was economically unviable. Over the past two decades, very little research and development effort has been directed at reducing the costs of surface retorting. For thermally conductive in-situ retorting, costs might be competitive with crude oil priced at less than $30 per barrel, but the technical viability of in-situ retorting will not be fully established for at least six years.

the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

anyone know if the exploration that has been happening near indian creek is oil shale? i know there is a ton of that stuff in the desert. be interesting to see how long the knuckledraggers on this site stay that way once more climbing areas are ripped up.

Sounds promising for most of the US, but I guess it would suck if you lived in the areas on top of these deposits.

I saw a guy from Rand talking about this on CNBC... probably the report author. He said the direct cost for converting shale to crude was around $40 per barrel. Crude is currently $64.00 per barrel, well off it's historic highs from last week of $70.80.

Back in '99 I was long crude at $11.50. I took a loss at $10.50. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Hey blondgecko,

What do you know about producing diesel fuel from coal ? Apparently the Germans were doing it on a fairly large scale during WWII.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.sum.pdf

Something to think about.... objectively, of course, without any preconcieved notions or political agendas.

During my undergrad chem eng degree, there was a compulsory environmental impact assessment course. As an assignment in this, we were asked to critically evaluate the environmental impact assessment for a real-life pilot-scale shale oil plant that was looking to expand to full-scale.

:shock:

That was some nasty s---. In a class of fifty chem, mining and environmental engineering students, nobody suggested that the plant should go forward. Sure enough, it was shut down the following year.

Shale oil is a dirty, dirty business. That 800 billion barrels of oil would generate something on the order of 2400 billion barrels of acidified, heavy metal-contaminated water (I can't remember the figures exactly). And, as pointed out, it is horribly inefficient. If we're reduced to that, then stop the planet. I want off.

anyone know if the exploration that has been happening near indian creek is oil shale? i know there is a ton of that stuff in the desert. be interesting to see how long the knuckledraggers on this site stay that way once more climbing areas are ripped up.