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12 months ago
in Oil shale as a magic bullet? on The Colorado Independent
I haven't read a more uninformed or biased piece on oil shale this year. This article on CNN:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazines/fortu...
spells out the current oil shale situation reasonably accurately. As many as four companies, with Shell on the forefront, have oil shale recovery technology that work in situ, or underground, recovering light sweet crude for as little as $30 a barrel and Shell is recovering thousands of barrels of shale oil today, utilizing this technology.
Kosena says the technology is simple, decades old and uneconomical, but his information is literally, decades out of date. Modern in-situ recovery uses in-ground heating elements that cause the kerogen to metamorphose into an oily amber hydrogen-rich synthetic crude from which gas, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products can be produced.
Kosena says Shell's process requires large amounts of fresh water. Not true; saline water from deep wells works fine, and is recycled as well. The perimeter around the wells is frozen to keep the liberated kerogen from migrating into groundwater, protecting that vital and scarce western resource.
Kosena says the oil is thick, low quality, requiring lots of energy-intensive refining. Not true. The synthetic oil is light, sweet and yields lots of mid and upper distillates; gas and diesel. The oil quality is similar to what is being found in the 200 billion barrel Bakken formation in Montana, Wyoming and Saskatchewan and doesn't require additional energy to refine; less energy is required. It should be noted that all oil requires energy to refine, the crucial fact is the ratio of energy to final product.
Kosena is merely tapping the tired, refuted arguments used by environmental extremists to keep us dependent on our enemies and the pricing whims of the world oil market, to mask a deeper agenda: making fuel so expensive, people give up their personal freedom for their utopian, public-transit and bicycle-driven vision.
The larger question nobody is asking: Why did we willingly turn over our rights as citizens and voters to a self-appointed cadre of uninformed environmental activists, giving them the power to dictate what we drive, where can camp, what we eat, where we live, how we travel, the kind of society we must live in, even the paint we use and if economic chaos gets them what they want, the end justifies the means.
America needs the 1 - 2 trillion shale barrels in Colorado and Utah, the 200 billion conventional barrels in Montana and Wyoming, the 20 to 100 billion barrels in Alaska, the 80 billion barrels in Texas, the 20-40 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, the 8 billion barrels in and off-California, the 10 - 20 billion barrels in Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Eastern New York, Utah, Eastern Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico of domestic oil energy. We need to develop all of it to keep us economically strong and give us the time to develop the clean wind, solar, algae and cellulosic biofuel, tidal and Hydrogen energy that will sustain us into the distant future.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazines/fortu...
spells out the current oil shale situation reasonably accurately. As many as four companies, with Shell on the forefront, have oil shale recovery technology that work in situ, or underground, recovering light sweet crude for as little as $30 a barrel and Shell is recovering thousands of barrels of shale oil today, utilizing this technology.
Kosena says the technology is simple, decades old and uneconomical, but his information is literally, decades out of date. Modern in-situ recovery uses in-ground heating elements that cause the kerogen to metamorphose into an oily amber hydrogen-rich synthetic crude from which gas, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products can be produced.
Kosena says Shell's process requires large amounts of fresh water. Not true; saline water from deep wells works fine, and is recycled as well. The perimeter around the wells is frozen to keep the liberated kerogen from migrating into groundwater, protecting that vital and scarce western resource.
Kosena says the oil is thick, low quality, requiring lots of energy-intensive refining. Not true. The synthetic oil is light, sweet and yields lots of mid and upper distillates; gas and diesel. The oil quality is similar to what is being found in the 200 billion barrel Bakken formation in Montana, Wyoming and Saskatchewan and doesn't require additional energy to refine; less energy is required. It should be noted that all oil requires energy to refine, the crucial fact is the ratio of energy to final product.
Kosena is merely tapping the tired, refuted arguments used by environmental extremists to keep us dependent on our enemies and the pricing whims of the world oil market, to mask a deeper agenda: making fuel so expensive, people give up their personal freedom for their utopian, public-transit and bicycle-driven vision.
The larger question nobody is asking: Why did we willingly turn over our rights as citizens and voters to a self-appointed cadre of uninformed environmental activists, giving them the power to dictate what we drive, where can camp, what we eat, where we live, how we travel, the kind of society we must live in, even the paint we use and if economic chaos gets them what they want, the end justifies the means.
America needs the 1 - 2 trillion shale barrels in Colorado and Utah, the 200 billion conventional barrels in Montana and Wyoming, the 20 to 100 billion barrels in Alaska, the 80 billion barrels in Texas, the 20-40 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, the 8 billion barrels in and off-California, the 10 - 20 billion barrels in Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Eastern New York, Utah, Eastern Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico of domestic oil energy. We need to develop all of it to keep us economically strong and give us the time to develop the clean wind, solar, algae and cellulosic biofuel, tidal and Hydrogen energy that will sustain us into the distant future.
