Apparently Capitalism, Shale Oil are the Solution to the Oil Crisis

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

In Oil Request, U.S. Says Rock On

By John J. Fialka
Uintah County, Utah

Rising oil prices have sparked new government and corporate interest in developing oil shale, a tantalizingly plentiful but difficult-to-access resource largely abandoned after oil prices crashed in the early 1980s.

The Pentagon is working on plans to direct, within four years, a portion of its $5.5 billion fuel-purchasing budget for high-quality oil, extracted from sedimentary-rock formations called shale, here and in the surrounding region. The move is designed to “catalyze” a new industry that can supply the military with oil from untapped domestic sources, according to a Defense Department official.

The Interior Department, meanwhile, soon will lease tracts of land in the West for research and development of oil shale – something it hasn’t done since the 1970s. Officials have received positive comments from independent producers and two big oil companies, Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Exxon Mobil Corp.

Shell has informed the Interior Department it has spent “many tens of millions of dollars” on field research for a new development process and plans to start a U.S. research projects by year end. Shell said in a filing with the Interior Department that the U.S. should designate oil from shale as a “strategically important domestic fuel that should be developed on an accelerated basis.” The company isn’t seeking government assistance but would like the government to elevate oil shale on its energy-priority list. Shell also announced in January that it was working with China’s Jilin province to develop oil-shale deposits there.

With an estimated two trillion barrels of shale oil under American soil – roughly 60% of the world’s known deposits – successful development would, at least on paper, begin to change the international oil business. The U.S. would become the world’s single biggest oil source, far surpassing Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves of 261 million barrels.

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Source: The Wall Street Journal (March 10, 2005)

[jdhill 0]

Oil just needs to stay at $30/barrel or above for shale extaction to be profitable... which it likely will...

J

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

[gjhdiver 0]

True. There more oil locked up in shale than there is under the ground. That's the good news.

Now here's the caveat. The reason that it's all sat there today is because it so prohibitively expensive to get the oil out of it, and the environmentel impact is phenomenal.

It would be cheaper to develop new forms of energy than to try to extract that stuff. I fully expect that they will though, as the political will isn't there to do anything else.

[markd_nscr986 0]

Bring it on !!!!!!!!

We have loads of oil shale here in Colorado,primarily on the western slope.Now might be the time to buy that Grand Junction real estate

Marc SCR 6046 SCS 3004