"Vast Oil Reserves" In Colorado

I have not posted on ATS peak oil before, but I have been monitoring and participating at peakoil.com for quite some time, and this article just made me kind of mad. Just to make the record clear... I do believe we are very near, if not at, peak oil production, and bad things will happen when the supply runs out.

I love how the media seems to be kind of making some stabs at peak oil, but still haven't quite got the concept. They seem to think that we can save ourselves by just finding more oil, or opening more reserves. They need to start telling people what is really happening (if they can find out, themselves), or at least admit they don't know for sure, but things don't look good.

Link to Article "New process may unlock vast reserve of oil in Colorado"

Anyway... thought this was kind of interesting... Shell is claiming the "Green River Basin" (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming) could have up to one trillion barrels... they say this new technique could get them one million barrels per acre. Does anybody know how this compares to current techniques? How long would a trillion barrels delay the end of supply?

Either way, they don't plan on being able to do anything like this until at least 2010, which may be just in time to slightly postpone the inevitable. Or it may be too late, already.

The time to invest in future technologies is right now before we run out of time.

The perfect fuel would be something like this:

- non destructive to the environment
- plentiful or easy to create or get
- renewable
- non destructive to life
- same or better output as fossil fuels

I asked this before on another post, what propulsion methods do you suppose UFOs use?

Troy

From looking at the article, it sounds like a pipe dream. It's known that this type of shale will produce oil and the technology sounds legit, but the mbbl quote sounds outlandish. What will the cost of running the heaters per barrel be? Shell is pushing another pipe dream of H2 stations, another eneregy source best used when produced, not pumped by consumers with knit slacks causing sparks and blowing up a city block! Kudos for shell for trying to find alternative sources, but show us the cost analasys, not the ones shown to investors to pump your stock portfolio.

I really wasn't able to find much more information about this, perhaps it's just too small, or too new at this time. I did find This article from 2001 which basically, among a LOT of other science stuff, says there is a lot of oil in the area.

I suppose this new technique is an attempt at getting more of the oil that we currently are able to. I cannot find anything related to the cost of extraction per barrel (or anything else!)

I suppose it is a good thing that we are looking for better ways to get the oil we are so dependent on, but I also wish these companies would start to put serious investment of time, money, and people to finding a better source of energy. I don't know that we can get something with all the characteristics cybertroy describes, but we have to be able to do better than oil.

I don't know how the companies can be convinced to do this, other than by showing them a potential profit. But, if you don't have a plan, and nobody willing to develop one, the circle of not doing anything continues, because you can't predict profit without a plan. I suppose it's going to take quite a significant event(s) to get the oil companies to change their game plans.

I can't even begin to guess what type of fuel/propulsion methods a UFO would use. Perhaps we will find out during The Disclosure.

.
cybertroy,

UFOs run on smoke.

That is why they spin so fast and have wonderful jazzy flight patterns.
.

I found some reported propulsion methods of UFOs on another post, electromagnetic propulsion being one. The reason I mention it is, maybe they have better and cleaner methods of propelling objects? And some of those technologies could possibly be used on our planet. I'm not so sure those things are running off Gasoline.

I think profit can allways be made. But it's kind of like comparing the huge profits of drugs with the profits of nutritional supplements, as far as fuel profits. I would hope that the oil companies would invest in replacements to oil. I guess the bottom line is we need something cleaner and renewable anyway. Heck if oil is running out, then they are going to have to have a solution, if they are to continue to profit. They could simply change from the "oil company" to the "fuel company," and because the new fuel may not be as profitable in itself as oil, they could invest in the new engine or propulsion methods and profit that way for example. If oil does run out, and they haven't invested somewhere else, then the oil companies will certainly perish. Maybe the oil companies should perish (or at least get the greedy people out of the oil companies), and make way for more responsible, forward thinking, individuals who will rise and bring about better and cleaner fuels.

Troy

This sounds like a big "if". How do they propose to pump the oil out? Is this hydro-exctraction as has been used before? I thought that had its own drawbacks.

It'll take them five years to solve their technical issues. Why is their timeline so long? What are they working on during that time?

Way back in 1967 Herman Kahn, then a well-known futurologist of the Hudson Institute, a think tank, & Anthony J. Wiener, already sounded very optimistic about those bituminous soils in their book titled The Year 2000: A Framework For Speculation On the Next Thirty-Three Years (The Macmillan Company, N.Y.)...

"It is said that the bituminous soils of Colorado, Wyoming & Utah constitute the largest oil reserves in the world. It is estimated that they hold around two billion barrels, that is, five times the known world reserves, & 70 times the proven reserves of the U.S. (...) If the extraction process can be made to be economically feasible then not only could the U.S. cover its domestic needs but they could also become an oil-exporting country."
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