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Practical Method for Getting Oil from Oil Shale?
ConfigurationManager writes "An article in the Rocky Mountain News describes how Shell has demonstrated a practical way to extract oil from the shale deposits in Colorado. Since it describes those deposits as "the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world," that could be a very good thing for those of us who are currently paying anywhere from $3 on up for a gallon of regular unleaded."
I was thinking this the other day... I read a story on CNN that said people in New Orleans were paying "as much as" $5/gallon. As if that was a major disaster. Now people are whinging about paying $3 / gallon?
/gallon = $6.96.
Everyday UK price = Very near GBP 1 / litre = GBP 3.78
When is the US going to wake up to just how much oil COSTS, and top subsidising their country's SUV's?
Every country in the EU pays prices near the UK ones (maybe not quite as much). Nobody really moans (except a little if they go up even further), because that's what it always has cost. What does the EU know that America doesn't? Or, more likely, what is America choosing to ignore in case whoever changes prices gets lynched?
Type in "1.30 aud per litre in usd per gallon" and get "1.30 (Australian dollars per litre) = 3.76065521 U.S. dollars per US gallon".
For those of you who can't do two conversion in a single calculation, this comes out to over $14 a gallon in US dollars.
The problem with oil shale is the same problem that the tar sands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands) have, they require enormous amounts of energy to extract effectivly.
Where a conventional extraction of oil through drilling into the ground yeilds about a 1:80 energy ratio (1 barrel of oil worth of energy expended gets you 80 barrels of oil out of the ground) on average, the average energy ratio for tar sands is about 1:5 (or 16x less return). I do not imagine that the energy ratio for the extraction of oil from oil shale will be much better.
This poses the same fundamental problem that alternative energy supplies pose, the energy extracted vs the energy spent is MUCH lower then conventional oil drilledout of the ground, and even if such a system where today instantly implemented, where most of americas oil was from tar sands/oil shale, there would still be a MASSIVE jump in price, due to the expense of production.
Americans I know cry bloody murder as gas prices inch up to 4 USD a gallon.
Here in Europe, we're between 5 and 7 USD a gallon, and we've never had gas prices so low as they are in the US. And averages wages in most EU countries are less than they are in the USA, so how in the hell can Americans find 3 or 4 USD a gallon as impossibly high prices?
Even the difference in Fuel economy of US and European cars can't be that much of a factor! So what gives?
Lot of folks want to throw out the "gas in Europe costs more than gas in the USA, so don't cry about your 'high gas prices'" line. What you need to look at, though, is where this cost comes from. The answer is taxes. From http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0826/p01s03-woeu.htm l:
In Britain, the government takes 75 percent, and raises taxes by 5 percent above inflation every year (though it has forgone this year's rise in view of rocketing oil prices, and the French government has promised tax rebates this year to taxi drivers, truckers, fishermen, and others who depend heavily on gasoline.) On August 8, for example, the price of gas in the US, without taxes, would be $2.17, instead of $2.56; in Britain, it would be $1.97, instead of $6.06.
Given that, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison to make: Europe has decided to tax the hell out of gasoline, a decision the government can undo should there be a need, while the USA is paying higher prices to the oil companies, which can't be controlled as easily.
Not really sure what my point is, really,
robert
The article says this would be profitable even if oil cost $30 a barral. It is near $70 now.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
They're estimating the energy cost alone to be 28% of the total energy extracted. Given all the other overhead involved, that's not going to turn into a gigantic profit margin. The most significant thing about this discovery is the potential to tap as much as a trillion barrels of oil from within the United States.
What scares me about this idea is the environmental impact. Anything growing in the ground in (or near) the affected region will die. How much "gunk" does the steam-cleaning process generate, and what will we do with it? How much is the targeted plot of land permanently altered by the process, and in what ways? There are all kinds of ways this could go wrong.
Still, I very much like the idea of the U.S. not depending on foreign sources of oil. Economic entanglement turns into political entanglement, and political entanglement has a nasty habit of turning into military entanglement. Maybe someday we'll have enough troops rested, trained, equipped, and ready to stop genocides and maintain order during natural disasters, like we used to.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Pronounced win-jing. It's not a made up word. It's in common use here in Australia. An example of its use might be "I wish those spoilt lard-arse Yanks would stop whingeing about the cost of petrol".
Right now, thermal depolymerization appears to be the best bet on this front.
This would allow us to stop short circuiting the carbon cycle and use atmospheric CO2 (via biomass) as a source for oil.
The cost per barrel of this oil has historically been around $100, which made it a hard sell. The combination of a spike in oil prices and a $42 per barrel biofuel tax credit (to be enacted at the end of the year) will make it much more attractive.
The remaining issue then is production - getting enough plants online to start making a dent in our fossil oil use.
While I believe this is not the ultimate answer, it is a step in the right direction.
Even so, perhaps now you can see why Europeans are not precisely filled with sympathy at the poor ickle Americans who are cruelly being forced to pay almost half what we do for fuel.
i nars/03-04/small052704/
Maybe if the EU didn't tax gasoline so much to line the governments pockets you wouldn't have this problem. Remember, you are subsidising public transportation systems with it.
UK Gas Tax: $2.80/gallon
US Gas Tax: $1.01/gallon
As of May, 2004. Exchange rates have changed since then.
Source:http://transportation.northwestern.edu/sem
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
and the CO2 percentage in the atmosphere has by far exceeded its natural levels.
I also found your post interesting until I stumbled upon the above sentence. Really. There's been a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere before in Earth's history.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-05zzi.html
it's in my head
The movie file of his presentaton. And the indexed transcription
According to Pimental only. You'll find that every single study that says that has his name on it. There are dozens of other researchers employed by diverse organizations that all come to the same conclusion - ethanol production is a net 30-70% positive.
Besides, it's not like that matters - nobody is proposing that you use ethanol to produce ethanol. You burn, say, biowaste, natural gas, use coal waste heat, etc, and you're converting something that you can't put in your tank to something that you can. The Nazis powered their war machine late in the war largely by coal liquifaction, powered by coal. It took a lot more coal to run the process than the produced oil had energy - yet, it kept their tanks and planes running (till their plants were bombed out, that is...).
The reason that Pimental always gets numbers way off from everyone else are a few things:
1) He uses the worst efficiency ethanol plant numbers
2) He assumes irrigation of all corn involved (little corn in the US is irrigated)
3) He assumes worldwide average fertilizer numbers instead of US numbers
All of these are very poor assumptions. First off, any new ethanol capacity will need to come from new plants. Secondly, if the corn demand increases, people aren't just going to go plant corn in the middle of the desert; corn will displace wheat, which will displace alfalfa, or whatnot - basically, you shove plants that can take drier climate into drier areas. Overall, you need to use a little more irrigation, but it's not a "one acre of corn equals one more acre irrigated" ratio. Lastly, the US is underproducing most fertilizers, and this would easily justify ramping up production if needed, so using global rates is bad in itself. However, it gets worst, as the fertilizers that we do import are from first world nations (plus Russia).
In short, Pimental is the only major anti-ethanol crusader (occasionally the papers are co-authored), and all of the "net negative" reports come from him. Additionally, it wouldn't even matter if it were net negative, as you're converting things that you can't put in your car to things that you can.
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Surely we'll never see "cheap gas" again, but with so many valid sources of fuel, we're not going to have a long term "explosion".
:)
;).
* Ethanol: Studies by everybody but Pimentel (who gets way too much press, as pretty much the sole dissenter) says that it gets 30-70% more energy than goes into it. Furthermore, you can use any sort of heat for the fermentation process, be it burning ag waste or power plant waste heat.
* Coal liquifaction: Last I heard, it took long-term prices of 30-40$ a barrel to make it economical. Well, we've got that.
* Biodiesel: Expect long-term economics similar to ethanol - only, it'll support the soybean industry instead of the corn and sugarcane industries
* Tar sands: Becoming very profitable. According to my father (a pres of Shell), they recently ordered the 5x-ing of production from their pilot plant in Canada. Vast tracts of tar sands available.
* Shale: Now becoming profitable, as the article mentioned, and very, very widespread. Again, Shell is a big leader on this front.
* Methane hydrates/clathrates: No major companies harvesting yet, but there's a lot of research on it. Monstrous natural gas deposits trapped in ice-like structures deep sea. Even better, harvesting them (cleanly) would eliminate a potential global warming runaway heating scenario (climbing temperatures cause the release of trapped methane, which is a greenhouse gas)
These are just hydrocarbon fuels being discussed here. There are countless ways to generate electricity as well.
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
I've lived in Colorado since '79 and every 10 years or so, somebody brings up oil shale as the next savior for high energy prices
Fact is, producing anything significant from oil shale is a mirage shimmering in the distance - impossible to reach. Like the fabled "hydrogen economy" it's just never gonna happen.
This may be the biggest technological breakthrough in oil shale production since the mid '80's but it's still far cheaper to import from the Persian Gulf. Hell, you can stick a fork in the sand over there and start pumping.
The price of oil today is nothing more than the result of futures speculators spreading fear and paranoia. Big oil was pissed as hell when the price fell to $10/barrel back in '97-'98 that they're using every excuse they can find to drive it up now. Oil executives drop to their knees daily and praise the Lord that their buddy Bush is in the White House now.
You think it's a coincedence that ExxonMobile just reported a whopping 44% increase in quarterly profits - just about the same percentage of gas price increases in the same period?