America's oil shale reserves are enormous, totaling at least 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. That's five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia! by Russell W. Dickson
(libertarian)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Why are we importing so much oil when we have more than enough to sustain us here in the U.S.? Dunner99.blogspot.com points out that, The United States imports approximately 3.67 billion barrels of oil every year from 42 different countries. We are the top consumer of crude oil in the world. An AP article on news.yahoo.com states that, a new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.
Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.
This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent, or a million barrels per day, over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.
Even before this latest revelation we had vast reserves in the form of oil shale, According to globalpetroleumclub.com, America's oil shale reserves are enormous, totaling at least 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. That's five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia! And yet, no one is producing commercial quantities of oil from these vast deposits. All that oil is still sitting right where God left it, buried under the vast landscapes of Colorado and Wyoming. Obviously, there are some very real obstacles to oil production from shale. After all, if it was such a good thing, we'd be doing it already, right? "Oil shale is the fuel of the future, and always will be," goes a popular saying in Western Colorado.
But what if we could safely and economically get our hands on all that oil? Imagine how the world might change. The U.S. would instantly have the world's largest oil reserves. Imaginehaving so much oil we'd never have to worry about Saudi Arabia again, or Hugo Chavez, or the mullahs in Tehran. And instead of ships lined up in L.A.'s port to unload cheap Chinese goods, we might see oil tankers lined up waiting to export America's tremendous oil bounty to the rest of the world. The entire geopolitical and economic map of the world would change and the companies in the vanguard of oil shale development might make hundreds of billions of dollars as they convert America's untapped shale reserves into a brand new energy revolution. A new study says drilling on Alaska's Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) could make Alaska the eighth largest oil resource province in the world ahead of Nigeria, Libya, Russia and Norway.
The report by the consulting firm Northern Economics and the University of Alaska-Anchorage's Institute of Social and Economic Research says that developing Alaska's OCS could produce almost 10 billion barrels of oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, create around 55,000 new jobs and produce $145 billion in new payroll nationally, generating a total of $193 billion in government revenue through the year 2057. After reading all this anyone that feels we need to continue importing oil is out of their mind. Energy independence is in our reach all we need to do is cut through all the red tape.
For more articles by Rusell W. Dickson go to Newsblaze.com
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: March 9, 2011 10:30:31 AM
1. First of all, thank you for the information. For some reason, Mark Vogel decided that sharing the actual report was beneath him.
Secondly, as admitted by the Shell scientists themselves, they are still a long way from developing a commercially applicable technology to extract the shale oil from this reserve that does not harm the environment. The current process is so energy intensive and harmful to the environment that commercial production of the reserve ended years ago.
Third, I am a bit concerned about the process itself. The practice of heating up rock containing a combustible material to 600-700 degrees for 3-4 years in order to extract the oil sounds dangerous. Should any oxygen contaminate the operation and you might be looking at an oil fire like the ones we saw in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
Lastly, if we assume that the process is commercially and environmentally feasible, we're talking about pumping billions of tons of more carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, further contributing to Global Warming!
First of all, I read and enjoy your columns a lot. Mark Vogel’s columns can be entertaining as well. As a journalist, I appreciate your meticulous citation of sources. I read your discussion with Mark Vogel and felt you made a valid point. If a person makes claims they need to back them up, otherwise they lack credibility. As for the potential environmental destruction that might ensure any efforts to extract oil from the vast deposits of shale in our Midwest, you make a valid point. Unfortunately, we no longer live in a time when we can simply not explore our vast energy deposits because of potential damage to the environment. The United States has become a very hungry machine that feeds voraciously on oil; therefore it has become a catch-22. If we continue to import oil we will be supporting rogue nations, and terrorist groups with atrocious human rights records in the middle-east, and South America. If we explore further within our own boarders we risks damaging the environment. In a post “Gulf Spill,” era, the idea makes me shaky. We do not have many viable options; most regular people cannot afford to purchase new battery powered or hybrid vehicles to replace their guzzling clunkers, so the need for oil will continue for some years to come. As I pointed out the method cited on globalpetroleumclub.com seems promising, and warrants further research. “A new technology has emerged that may begin to tap the oil shale’s potential. Royal Dutch Shell, in fact, has recently completed a demonstration project (The Mahogany Ridge project) in which it produced 1,400 barrels of oil from shale in the ground, without mining the shale at all.
Instead, Shell utilized a process called "in situ" mining, which heats the shale while it’s still in the ground, to the point where the oil leaches from the rock. Shell’s Terry O’Connor described the breakthrough”
So far mankind has not progressed enough to support ourselves in a way that does not damage the environment, but in the meantime, until we do, we need to feed the hungry machine, therefore exploiting the vast shale, and deep oil deposits has become a necessary evil.
Posted By: Logical Premise
Date: March 9, 2011 08:22:11 PM
I honestly don't think it has a single thing to do with environmental protection, or technical limits. I think the plan is to exhaust all other possible reserves before we even touch our own seriously.
