Living in Colorado most of my life there was always kind of general knowledge that oil would never get too expensive because of the oil shale. Some hugely big number of equivelent barrels of oil locked in rocks under the eastern slope.
I know that it’s a much more difficult process to extract and refine into a usable form than simple crude and was not being exploited other than a few experimental in-situ sites by HP and Exxon, and wasn’t ecomically viable, and wasn’t expected to be for years. The estimates I had always heard was that oil would have to climb anywhere between $70 and $110 a barrel(My god that will never happen ;)) to make it worth the effort.
Now that oil has sailed past $120 a barrel I have to wonder the real truth. I know that the Government and environmental bureau has been fielding thousands of applications for new oil-shale extraction set ups. and I realize that the run up has been so fast, that the infrastructure just isn’t in place yet, and it will take some time, but how much time?
Years? Decades?. was it all BS and it will never really contribute to the oil supply? I just don’t understand how people can be talking about $500 abarrel oil when the oil-shale stop gap I have always been told is supposed to prevent it. Will the entirety of eastern Colorado be oil-shale plants in 3 years?
And this doesn’t even take into account the Canadian oil sands which are between crude and oil-shale in ease and profitability.
Two big problems with oil shale:
- While there is a large supply of this, extracting the oil involves mining it, cooking the shale in retorts, and distilling the resulting heavy oil. The residue (shale dust) increases in volve-where do you put the stuff?
2 the energy to extract the oil is significant, the carbon emissions from this would be huge
Various in-situe means(like burning the shale underground) have been proposed-but nothing feasible yet.
We would be FAR better off, paying people to junk their 12 MPG SUVs, and buy 4-cylinder engined cars. Of course, that is too logical for the Congress-sueing OPEC is a nice legal solution (it will involve millions of billable hours) and accomplish zero!
I am interested in the answer to this too.
The break-even point is a moving target, though. E.g., the number I originally heard for tar sands was that with oil at $30 a bbl., they were economic. I doubt that this is true anymore, because the cost of all the inputs (natural gas, fuel to run the mining equipment, steel) have all gone up (of course, they are still making boatloads of money at $130/bbl., but I wouldn’t be surprised if $50, say, was a money-loser given their current economics).
Another thing to keep in mind is that when we say “Yes, it’s profitable at $70/bbl.,” that does not mean someone will turn a switch on and begin pumping when oil hits $70.50. Not only does the infrastructure take time to build, but people hyave gotten burned in past oil price spikes by investing in expensive alternative energies only to see oil crater down to $10 and their synfuel plants mothballed (not saying we’ll ever see $10, but we might see $69.50, which scares someone who’s only breaking even at $70).
Finally, you should know that the tree-huggers (no offense to those who like hugging trees) have indefinitely stalled full-scale commercialization:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/15/panel-defeats-attempt-end-oil-shale-moratorium/