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Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
We assume that the next time we stop by the Chevron station for another tank full, the gas will be there.
Northwestern Colorado has been viewed for a century as a potential oil treasure. By some calculations, the Piceance (pee’-awnce) Basin alone contains 300 billion barrels of recoverable petroleum, equal to 48 percent of Middle Eastern reserves. Yet no one has been able to extract profitably the keragen, a waxy petroleum, from the shale.
Shell executives think they now will be able to produce shale oil at a cost that can compete with $15-$25 per barrel crude oil. Their proprietary extraction technology uses electricity to heat the oil shale underground. They then pump out the liquid keragen with traditional oil-drilling techniques. This approach still uses water and energy, but not as much as the retorting process, and it leaves a much smaller environmental footprint, Hansen says.
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Most of us never think about where the gas comes from when we fill up our cars, do we? We assume that the next time we stop by the Chevron station for another tank full, the gas will be there.
World oil peaking represents a problem like none other. The political, economic, and social stakes are enormous. Prudent risk management demands urgent attention and early action.
www.peakoil.net...
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
In the U.S., we have been fortunate enough to enjoy what others do not - cheap fuel. Yeah, I know, it's hard to see it as cheap when regular is over $2.00/gal, but Europeans have been paying more for years. Because we have relatively cheap fuel, we have learned to squander "fossil fuels" like we'll never run out of the stuff, but the fact of the matter is, we are running out.
Originally posted by AlwaysLearning
People are going to have to re-think all the gas-guzzlers in future.
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
In the U.S., we have been fortunate enough to enjoy what others do not - cheap fuel. Yeah, I know, it's hard to see it as cheap when regular is over $2.00/gal, but Europeans have been paying more for years. Because we have relatively cheap fuel, we have learned to squander "fossil fuels" like we'll never run out of the stuff, but the fact of the matter is, we are running out.
Originally posted by marg6043
No..........civilization will not end.
Originally posted by DeusEx
I beg to differ.
DE
asposted by masqua
The place is Fort McMurray in Alberta. The patch is called the Oil Sands and it has the potential of 1.6 trillion barrels within the largest hydrocarbon deposit IN THE WORLD.
Charles Ruigrok, spokesman for Syncrude, says "With the decline in more conventional supplies of crude oil, and continued strength in world demand, the oil sands opportunity is coming to the forefront."
The bad news is that oil derived from these oil sands is extremely financially and energetically intensive to extract and thus suffers from a horribly slow extraction rate. Whereas conventional oil has enjoyed a rate of "energy return on energy invested" - "EROEI" for short - of about 30 to 1, the oil sands rate of return hovers around 1.5 to 1.
For those who may not know...Canada is not part of the United States...yet.
The companies involved are Syncrude and Suncor and guess what...the Chinese want to get a deal for 2 million barrels a day from there. In fact, Enbridge is working out a deal with the chinese now to build a $2.5 billion pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver to pump it onto their ships.
Where to find such a huge amount of capital is largely a moot point because, even with massive improvements in extraction technology, the oil sands in Canada are projected to only produce a paltry 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015.
The huge reserves of oil shale in the American west suffer from similar problems. Although high oil prices have prompted the US government to take another look at oil shale, it is not the savior many people are hoping for.