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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."
3 Dollar a gallon -- how about 3 euro a Litre !
Dw
Many people here in Europe pay over $5.60 per gallon nowadays. We wish we had $3.00 per gallon prices.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
My solution was to get rid of my car, and get a bike!
Instead of finding a more difficult technique to the problem, I simplified the problem of purchasing gasoline for a motor vehicle almost out of existence.
Won't work for everyone, but it worked for me. Some people may need to change the way they live much more than I have had to, but then again, it's been an ongoing process that's been worked on by myself for years, not overnight.
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
The US needs to learn to use energy more efficiently. Experts suggest that current prices are driven by growth and demand, rather than a supply shortage causing a spike as has happened in the past. This means that prices are not likely to drop quickly. Interestingly The Economist (not generally in favor of big government, taxes, or other impediments to business) says:
From:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystor
(You have to pay for access...sorry).
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
The reason they're talking about getting oil from shale at all is because the gas price is $3/gallon. If it was less, they wouldn't bother, so you aren't going to see the price go down when they start on the sand and shale deposits.
Deleted
I am not sure we need more fossil fuels for our climate and our lungs.
Hurrah! I was worried I'd have to get rid of the Hummer H2 I use to drive to the office every day!
Anyone who likes economic disincentives towards buying peniscars is Un-American!
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
which are mean to reduce use of cars. They also make it seem much less of a shock when the price of oil goes up.
but afaict most of the high fuel prices at the moment are due to catrina knocking out refining capacity not oil prices.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
In North America, people need personal vehicles due to the design of the infastructure, and the placement of essential services. This is particularly true for rural areas, and small cities to a lesser extent.
Gas prices have a greater direct effect on the average American or Canadian consumer than their counterparts in Europe.
Last week's tragic events should have demonstrated to America the foolishness of such excessive consumption of fossil fuels. That said, I doubt Pres. Bush's recent failure to enforce reasonable standards of fuel economy on all vehicles will be overturned..
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Since we will be buying Colorado-extracted oil from the Chinese, will this shale extraction technique benefit us? Are the Chinese going to sell this oil to us cheaper than the Arabs? I guess they will be able to since the oil is coming from the U.S. and won't have to be shipped.
See this Rocky Mountain News article from 8/23/05. http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/business/article/ 0,1299,DRMN_4_4022438,00.html
I'm happy to pay a bit more to keep SUVs off the roads. I just moved from Canada (where petrol guzzlers are on the rise) to Australia (where there are very few SUVs). If paying an extra dollar or so at the pumps every couple weeks keeps them off the road, I'm more than willing. I honestly can't believe people still choose to drive those things.
Shale oil requires hideous amounts of energy to extract and when it is used emitts all kinds of gross pollution. It's the worst of the worst fossil fuels. There have been massive protests in Australia over plans to extract it from North Queensland. It's a step in the wrong direction, not only because it means fuel prices will go down again but also because the fuel itself is dirty and contributes more to the greenhouse effect than normal oil. Oil prices in the US are artificially low and your government is unnecissarily plunging deeper into debt by subsidising petrol. Tax petrol, spend the tax money on developing alternatives. It's win win win win win win win win win - who cares if some rednecks complain. The worst thing a government can do is ignore common sense and strategic thinking for the future for the sake of appealing to the lowest common denominator.
We drive about 10x more than you guys. It's not uncommon to work in a completely different city than where you live, driving for an hour on a highway to get to work. I know a guy who commutes every day from another state, at least two hours away. In Europe, that'd be like commuting from another country.
/. sig) "anything you can do with hydrocarbons can be done with carbohydrates". Already pumps in Iowa deliver fuel which is 10% ethanol from corn.
Well, yes, and high fuel tax is partly intended to dissuade you from doing that. In "old" Europe, the roads wouldn't be able to take many more commuters, and we don't have the space to just build more roads. For the record, it's not uncommon to drive over an hour to work in the UK -- it's just that it'll take you an hour to drive 30 miles, much of that sitting in traffic.
(I laughed heartily when Slashdot reported the London congestion charge, and some American suggested "just make the roads wider")
Much of the USA is built around the car -- to the extent where it's often easier to walk from one strip mall car park to another rather than walk to the next shop. When you buy a house, you count the garages rather than think about how close the train station or bus stop is. Local shops are rare, Walmarts are common.
In rural parts of the States, it's not uncommon to live in a town of a few hundred residents, over 50 miles from the next one.
It's no wonder in the USA fuel is taxed as if it were a necessity, rather than a luxury.
Nonetheless, I've driven over 12,000 holiday miles in the USA, and even this year, with the papers full of outrage at rising oil prices, we would cackle with laughter every time we filled a tank for under $20.
Oil's going to keep getting more expensive. I hope to see a free market drive to alternative fuels. If CO2 emissions won't change people's buying habits, maybe the mighty dollar will.
The USA is capable of growing an awful lot of carbohydrates, and (as I read in a
First question: How do I put the wind power into my fuel tank?
I'm willing to mess with my fuel injection system, air intake and computer to get things just right.
Thanks in advance!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
It sounds like this is a terribly inefficient process. One poster offered the 80/1 statistic for traditional oil pumping (1 barrel of oil in -> 80 barrels out). By comparison, this process requires that you burn about a third of your production. I could be thinking about this wrong, but it seems that (from a global warming perspective) it's as though we would take every car in America and reduce its fuel efficiency by a third.
From the article, it's not clear whether the "wall of ice" is taken into account when doing the energy calculations. If it's not, then it may be even less efficient, closer to a 2:1 yield perhaps.
From an environmental standpoint, it doesn't sounds downright scary. Drilling a shaft every ten feet around the perimeter of the site, freezing it, then heating the bedrock to 700 degrees? That's going to take a lot of equipment and manpower, and produce a lot of waste. Nor am I as confident in this "wall of ice" as the author. So they may have to scrub the groundwater once they're done, if there is any chance of contaminating drinking water. Finally, I do believe that most bedrock contains extremophiles, and while I don't want to be an alarmist or a eukaryote-rights activist, we can't be sure of the environmental impact of burning them away.
Can't we just agree to not do this? Our country has an energy addiction, and this article just goes to show how far we are willing to go to avoid facing the problem (Exhibit B being the way our lustful eyes keep falling on the ANWR). If we start the transition away from fossil fuels now, we could quickly become the leaders in alternative fuels and energy efficient technology. If, on the other hand, we use this process as a crutch to keep us strung out on oil for a few more decades, then it ends with us having the same energy-inefficient infrastructure we have now, a much more serious global warming problem, and no expertise in alternatives. We'll have to buy all our fuel efficient vehicles from the French.
C'mon, Republicans. You hate the French. Hop on board with this.
Rather than eliminating this option entirely, I think it would make more sense to put a tax on it, so that the break-even point is around to $7/gallon, not $3.50. The revenue generated would go to subsidize alternative fuels research and to mitigate the environmental damage from this process.
Also, if we're going to do this come hell or high water, it seems sensible to pursue the idea of using geothermal to provide the heat for this process, rather than heaters powered from the surface. Hydrocarbons are good heat carriers; that's one reason we use oil to cool and lubricate our engines. The oil is down there, the energy is down there. It seems like all you would need to do is heat it long enough to distill out a small amount of oil, then use that oil to circulate heat up from the hot bedrock below. Of course, that means deeper holes. Like I said, maybe this idea should just be scratched altogether.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Why high Oil and Gas prices have a good side too
or
The best way to force people to change is making them wanting to change
First of all - I live in Europa, Germany.
Today Fuel prices have reached 1.43 Euro / liter, this is about 7.9$ / gallon. Yes, driving is EXPENSIVE here.
In the last few years, cars with a high efficiency have become very high in demand - of course, when fuel is expensive, people want cars that use little fuel.
And the same thing is going to happen to the USA.
People will look at the prices, look into their purses and the next car they buy won't be a 15 miles per gallon SUV, but perhaps a 30 / 35 miles per gallon car. Or they might grab one of the ultra fuel-efficient cars (many of them are from Germany - guess why...) like the VW Lupo - 78 miles per gallon (Diesel) - well, truth to be told, it ain't a beauty, you've got no real storage space, and acceleration isn't, but if you want fuel economy, there you go.
And this is the positive side of the high prices - there will be a demand for fuel-efficient cars, thus the industry will build them, and people will buy and drive them. And overall, less Oil will be used, causing less pollution and conserving it for more important uses
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Taken as a whole, Europe is pretty big too. What is very different is that not everyone thinks they have a god-given right to a spread-out, one story home with a big garden. People have learned to build up, rather than out, and out, and out some more so that it takes 1+ hours to cross some major areas by freeway (Phoenix, AZ, Los Angeles from personal experience).
Sure, it's a compromise, like most things are. It's nice to have a big back yard, at times. But that compromise begins to look less favorable when you have to drive 5 kilometers to even get food or go to otherwise basically available services. At some point, maybe it's good enough to have an appartment of your own, and a common green area that you can share with others...
Your point about who gets hit first is a good one, however, at some point, you've got to start changing, even though that means some pain. Perhaps the next time you are in the housing market, you will give some consideration to whether you could use the car a little bit less. Perhaps you will start appreciating politicians who do something about implementing changes making it easier to do more with less car use. Perhaps you will pay attention to vehicle fuel efficiency when you buy one...
As the article states, fuel efficiency in the US has been *declining*, which is absurd, considering that technology continues to improve energy usage in vehicles.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Cheap gas enables speed and distance for both goods and people. This has many beneficial effects, including:
- Consumers can afford a wider variety of goods at a lower levels of cost. This means that a person in NY in winter can get Florida orange juice for a modest price.
- Consumers can afford to drive a little farther to find the best goods at the best prices. Rather than be forced to buy from an expensive, small store nearby (as much as I like Mon'n'Pop stores, they are more expensive and offer worse selection), consumers can shop around and buy the best items at the lowest cost.
- Workers can find a better job by traveling a longer distance at higher effective speed -- a fixed commute time, but greater commute distance. Mass transit, in most regions of the country, is much slower than a personal automobile. Our area has a decent mass-transit system, but the effective speed is half that of an automobile due to frequent stops, schedule intervals, and the walk to/from the bus stop. Speed has a quadratic effect: a 2X increase the average speed means 4X the number of possible employers within given maximum commuting time.
- Workers probably can probably get higher pay by finding an employer in their expanded commuting range. With more employers to chose from, a job seeker can probably find an employer who will pay a little more to get that employee's unique combination of skills and experience.
- Employers get better workers. Imagine a company that can only hire people living within a mile of the company versus a company that can tap into a much larger pool of applicants. When employees are mobile, companies get better workers. This translates into more success for the company, shareholders, workers, and greater tax revenues for government projects.
- Companies can tap into suppliers that are further from them. It means that a manufacturer in Arizona can find and buy the best components, even if they are made 2000 miles way in Georgia.
- Likewise, each company can sell goods to a greater part of the U.S. giving them better economies of scale.
The result is both higher standards of living and better economic growth than we would see if we had high gas prices. I'm not saying that gas taxes explain all of the disparity between the U.S. and Europe in terms of economic growth and unemployment rates, but I'd bet its a factor. My point is that low gas prices have under-appreciated, hidden benefits that are good for consumers, good for workers, good for employers, good for companies, and good for the country.I have no idea if these hidden benefits override the hidden costs, but I feel that both sides of the indirect effects must be tallied before declaring that gas/oil should be taxed to inhibit consumption.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
More correctly, in Europe rich people are taxed more and poor people are taxed less. This is not very popular with the rich people, but the Europeans are still taught about popular uprisings in primary school history class. Shout "Let them eat cake" on Monday and you'll be in a damp prison by Friday.
So far Americans have only seen this on a very, very small scale, but even with smack, crack and goggle boxes it's only a matter of time.
It's not the absolute price that hurts people, it's the rapid change that's doing all the harm.
In the long term, the cost of energy gets rolled in to the cost of doing business, and is budgeted for. But if the price more than doubles in a very short amount of time, it HURTS economically, since there's often no quick way to reduce your energy usage overnight.
INsigNIFICANT
There is another benefit, too. Besides buying more fuel efficient cars, more people will be interested in building and using meaningful public transportation systems. Public transportation in the U.S. is abominable. A lot of that comes from the fact that much of the country was developed in a time when driving anywhere you wanted to go was a possibility, so things here tend to be very spread out, which makes efficient public transportation difficult to implement. Up until now, the major complaint most people have about driving has been traffic congestion. So rather than focus on meaningful public transportation, most people would rather see more/wider roads and highways, even though it's been pretty much proven that such increases do little to help congestion. Now that gas prices are reaching the point where they might be a real economic concern for some people, as opposed to a minor annoyance, maybe we'll see more people start to look for alternatives...
Personally, I do grumble a little bit now that it costs over $30 to fill up the gas tank even in my fairly fuel efficient car, but it doesn't bother me too much because neither my wife or I drive on a regular basis. It means that we'll have to budget a little bit more when we go on long driving trips, but that's about it. Over all, i think high gas prices that we are seeing right now are a) inevitable, and b) good for us.
And lastly, as an aside, I always find it amusing how much more Americans complain about gas prices compared to other people in the world, considering that our gas is still among the cheapest in the world. I guess that's what happens when you are brought up in a society where it is assumed that the only way to get from point a to point b is to drive.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I am glad to see a slashdot story regarding energy as it will be the single most important topic that effects the vast majority of users here, their families, their neighbors, people they know, their jobs, etc.
Indeed, $3 per gallon or even $4 per gallon as it will likely be soon is not a big problem. We complain about $3 per gallon. At the same time we enjoy some of the lowest prices in the world. Our energy bill, which is a free for all 1700 pages, does little to curb mileage. They have designed diesels that can exceed 100mpg. We give tax breaks for large vehicles over 8.5k lbs based on weight alone. The breaks are specifically targeted at these large vehicles so that their extremely privelaged drivers can be compensated for their higher gas consumption. This class of vehicles was in a list in this bill that mandates small improvements in mileage for these vehicles in the future but it was removed by the administration. If you think we are making progress then just look around. Look at what people are driving, where they are driving to, what they are driving for, how they are driving, etc. You might see a few Priuses or some Mercedes Benz diesels running on SVO. Maybe one hydrogen powered honda in your life if you are lucky. Do it in Europe, Russia or Japan and compare that with the US.
To think that this new oil shale techniqe will drop your price of gas is probably delusional. First off, by Shells own words, they won't know if it is profitable or feasible until 2010. If the going price for oil is $69 per barrel and there is a demand for it then that is what Shell is going to sell it for. If demand goes down then all oil will go down. The only thing that would likely cause this is major economic collaps or "demand destruction". Shell isn't out for your best interest, they don't make money off charity. To the contrary, eventhough big business is firmly entrenched in the goverment, pushing bills that rule the citizens with it's vast powerful lobbying power, it is illegal by corporate law to make any business decision that will create a loss. This rules out charity for consumers.
The administration has just admitted that global supply hasn't been able to keep up with demand for three months before Katrina hit. We currently are living mostly on old mega-field oil discoveries. We use 4-5 times as much oil as we discover. Discoveries are going down at a rapid pace, they are smaller and smaller and Saudi Arabia has finally admitted that it cannot currently increase supply anytime soon. The anti-peak oilers will argue that this is all hype when the new wells come online and drop the prices this year and perhaps a little next year. But look at the facts with the mega discoveries and the capacity that we are using - this will be a shortlived peak. There is a lead time for these wells to come online; we know about these and we know about the years where there will be no wells comming online. Once they are used up there are few others to take their place. The world uses well over 75 million barrels a day. How long would a "mega-field" of 500,000 barrels last?
As people are so accustomed seeing important, high payed people on tv talking positively about economic growth they tend to lose sight of the real problem with regards to energy: growth. Business depends on it. Anything less than 3% growth in Japan is considered a recession. Domestic or global sustainability is not a topic for discussion, as there is there is more money in consumption and growth. And money is what rules business strategy and business is what rules governments, at least to a large effect.
We don't have just growth, we have exponential growth. A number that has exponential growth of 7% will double itself every 10 years. Carter said once that every new decade consumes more oil than all the previous years combined - going back to the first drop that was ever consumed. If you need another example think of the one from Professor Bartlett that explains the exponential function. There is a mostly empty jar. You drop in a few organi
Chill, already.
The world was painstakingly set up so that people depend deeply, emotionally on the flow of oil and money; to connect those things to well-being and the ability to obtain food and shelter.
That's silly.
The world is capable of making just as much food today as it did yesterday, and it has just as many houses and places for people to shelter comfortably in. So why should a few numbers stop people from eating and living?
Are people really going to starve and feel fear just because a few numbers start to change? For goodness sake! There's food and shelter aplenty. All we need to do is work to maintain and share it and everybody will be fine. (We could start by perhaps firing the CEOs and Government officials who throw chairs across board rooms and try to hang on to old family money by way of keeping the people stupid and subjugated.)
The whole confabulation of banks and economic crises, yadda, yadda, was designed in such a way that it was very easy to upset it and thus extract a fine flow of fear and anxiety. Like tapping trees for maple syrup.
News Flash: The economy is ENTIRELY a fabrication of people's belief systems; It is just as healthy as the world believes it to be. Be a part of the solution. Love is the answer.
Perhaps this contrived oil scarcity will give the much-needed kick in the pants to get alternative power sources a boost in acceptance levels. It doesn't actually take that long to implement massive infrastructure changes so long as the people in the driver's seats want them to come about.
-FL
We have been warned for over 30 years, since the first fuel debacle - how much more time did we/do we need?
No, or very few, efficient major city-to-city links, yet? Alternative fuels? Significant transport efficiency?
No, tinfoil hat people have always knew it would come, and as Katrina, we really did not prepare.
The only reason I see is that we needed to "use up" cheap energy, or someone else, likely a global competitor, would.
You're not going to do something silly like imply that the majority or even a third of SUV owners drive them because they're actually pulling boats or off-roading now, are you?
Unfortunately for the environmentalists this is not what you wanted to happen when we started running out of oil but this is by far the most practical realistic solution that will work to give us time to find alternatives.
I get the feeling that while it would give us time to find alternatives, if it provides enough supply we'll just wind up in the same boat we're in now. That is to say, we'll put off looking for alternatives until it's too late again. It's happened before, it's happening now, and should this provide enough supply, it will happen again.
This poo is cold.
The alcoholic murderer is just another example of the Gulfstream Liberal hypocrites, sneering down at flyover country from 35,000 feet, clucking their tongues at all those selfish SUV drivers below.
Teddy, his nephew RFK Jr., Michael Moore, Al Gore, Laurie David, Ariana Huffington, Barbara Streisand, and the list goes on and on and on. They live lives dripping with decadence and luxury. They live in 10,000 sq. ft. Malibu mansions with six or eight air conditioning subsystems. They go hither and yon in their Gulfstreams and Learjets. They drive around town in their limousines and Maybachs and S600 Mercs. I have two kids, but Al Gore has four, and the Kennedys breed useless mouths like rats. Their footprint on Mother Earth's limited resources is ten or twenty times my own. Yet these pampered hypocrites have the gall to criticize me for driving a Jeep? Fuck them. Fuck them hard.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
My only major obejection is that a lot of rural Americans making those routine 30 mile drives you refer to, choose to do them in absolutely enormous pickups, or other massively overpowered cars.
Take a minute to ask yourself if those rural Americans have a non-leisure requirement for those "absolutely enormous pickups." How about coal miners in Appalachia, or framing carpenters in Tennessee, or HVAC technicians in Kentucky? Do you really think that a population where nearly 80% of the mobile workforce is employed in an agribusiness or mechanical industry should haul around their equipment in a Honda Civic?
For most rural Americans, owning a vehicle with a decent payload capacity is not a luxury--it's a necessary way of life. And you need a clue.
If we were all to take Caltrain (which is subsidized) it would cost about $36 for us to go. We can take a car for under $10, even adding in the actual purchase cost of the car, I would imagine its under $20. And my car isn't the cheapest or more efficient.
There are a lot of hidden costs with cars. The cost of building, maintaining, and policing the roads. Unless you are on a private highway, those are subsidies. As well, cars are much less economical than centralized energy production for mass transit. Trains and the like can all run on the same power grid, from the same industrial power plant with better environmental scrubbers than ever be viably put into cars.
There is also the cost of lost space and real estate. Most American cities are 60% road. Reducing the amount of roads required for day-to-day transit would dramatically decrease the cost of real estate.
Also, there are serious health considerations to such prolific driving. It is one of the most dangerous activities. I believe more people die in car accidents in a week than have ever in public transit accidents. As well, driving can be conducive to a sedentary lifestyle. New York is said to have the least obese Americans because of the high use of public transit. Houston is said to be the fattest for precisely the opposite reason: no viable public transit. While I am not sure I buy the causation, there is a definite correlation. Obesity causes an enormous burden on health care, particularly public health care. Let us not even mention the cost to health care from air pollution.
Finally, the permanent destruction of non-renewable oil resources is not truly reflected in the market price of oil. So, looking way down the road, when oil becomes truly scarce, the transition costs to alternate fuels will be staggering for defunct cars and useless roads. Public transit on an electrical grid can switch transparently to more readily available sources.
So while you can say that it costs 3 times as much to take transit to to San Francisco, it is only so because the government has done a splendid job of hiding the real costs of facilitating that cheap driving. But these externalized costs are real, and their aggregate is only now becoming readily apparent.