Found this on Air America Radio's website. It looks like nothing special but i thought i could post it to see what everyone esle thinks of this ad. _________________ Stop Breeding!
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 7:45 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
Pure horseshit. Even a layman such as myself would know that if there was this much oil in the continental US or possibly anywhere else for that matter, it would have been found and extracted long ago. Even on the screwball assumption this was true wouldnt you think Cowboy Dubya would immediately shut off foreign oil so he could once and for all quit kissin ay-rab arse and finally fulfill his messianic fantasy of himself?
Joined: Sep 29, 2004 Posts: 2330 Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 8:29 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
This isn't horseshit, it's really there and has been known about for about one hundred years. The problem is that shale oil requires a lot of energy to make it into useful distalates. In fact, I think it's more energy intensive than tar sands. It's actually not crude oil, rather something called kerogen which requires heat for a long period of time to convert it into light sweet crude.
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
There are 10 trillion tons of gold dissolved in the ocean, more than all gold ever mined or collected.
It doesn't help us.
Poor people along africa borders can't benefit.
It is not "useable" and neither is oil shale.
It just isnt useable.
You have to burn tons of natural gas to extract the little oil athat you are negative in what you get out.
Just burn the natural gas in cars and be done with it. _________________ ___________________________
WHEN THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND...GET OUT OF THE WAY!
Using evil to further good makes one evil
Doubt everything but the TRUTH
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Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 9:36 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
grabby wrote:
There are 10 trillion tons of gold dissolved in the ocean, more than all gold ever mined or collected.
It doesn't help us.
Poor people along africa borders can't benefit.
It is not "useable" and neither is oil shale.
It just isnt useable.
You have to burn tons of natural gas to extract the little oil athat you are negative in what you get out.
Just burn the natural gas in cars and be done with it.
Oh, grabby. Are not you cruel to point out the reality of the future.
Nobody wants to face the big dieoff, so any and all straws are grasp as if they are golden saviors.
To think of being part of a hugh bubble in human population that will soon burst is more than most minds can accept, especially with the almost certain odds in favor your own elimination as excess population.
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Sounds easy enough, but there's more to it than that, of course:
...the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.
And we've hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing.
Ice is impermeable to water. So around the perimeter of the productive site, you drill lots more shafts, only 8 to 12 feet apart, put in piping, and pump refrigerants through it. The water in the ground around the shafts freezes, and eventually forms a 20- to 30-foot ice barrier around the site.
Next you take the water out of the ground inside the ice wall, turn up the heat, and then sit back and harvest the oil until it stops coming in useful quantities...
Then you pump the water back in. (Well, not necessarily the same water, which has moved on to other uses.) It's hot down there so the water flashes into steam, picking up loose chemicals in the process. Collect the steam, strip the gunk out of it, repeat until the water comes out clean. Then you can turn off the heaters and the chillers and move on to the next plot (even saving one or two of the sides of the ice wall, if you want to be thrifty about it).
"Commercially feasible" with oil at $30 a barrel, huh? I seriously doubt that, but what do I know? _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 10:30 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
I can see the idea of simply skipping the whole protect the ground water bit when oil starts to hit $200 to $300 a barrel. I see no reason why the current policy of economy first environment second will change, just get the oil out and Fark the consiquences.
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 11:51 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
I didnt read the whole thing The headline said "oil" not "oil shale", "shale" not mentioned until well into the story. That's why I called it horseshit...deceptive from the start...
In all honesty, this DOES look potentially promising from a layman's perspective. I of course, know NOTHING about extracting petroleum from the ground, but it would be interesting if those on this forum who do know more about it would comment on this one way or the other.
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 446 Location: Salem, MA
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:57 am Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
if i may be so crude as to use a pot-smoking reference...
mining oil shale is like scraping your glass pipe and smoking the resin. it's the dregs... just admit you have a weed problem, stop smoking, and deal with the headaches... _________________ UNLESS
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
FireJack wrote:
I can see the idea of simply skipping the whole protect the ground water bit when oil starts to hit $200 to $300 a barrel. I see no reason why the current policy of economy first environment second will change, just get the oil out and Fark the consiquences.
From what I remember, they also need the icewall to ensure the cooking area keeps warm enough. SO they will have to ensure the water stays out.
The real question I don't see answered is how much electricity is going to be required and what are we going to use to generate that required energy? Natural gas?? Coal?? recovered shale oil?? Nuclear??
There are more answers before this is ready for prime time. If ever. _________________ UNplanning the future...
http://unplanning.blogspot.com
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 1:07 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
Quote:
This isn't horseshit, it's really there and has been known about for about one hundred years.
Make that 600 years (at least).
Quote:
Extracting oil from shale is not a new phenomenon; it has been around for at least 600 years
Source And that is just the extraction. Probably been known for millenia, since some of it is above ground.
Quote:
The real question I don't see answered is how much electricity is going to be required and what are we going to use to generate that required energy? Natural gas?? Coal?? recovered shale oil?? Nuclear??
Quote:
Although Shell's method avoids the need to mine shale, it requires a mind-boggling amount of electricity. To produce 100,000 barrels per day, the company would need to construct the largest power plant in Colorado history. Costing about $3 billion, it would consume 5 million tons of coal each year, producing 10 million tons of greenhouse gases.
A normal sized coal plant is about 500 MW but uses up about 1.4 million tons of coal/year, which would mean that this is equal to about 3.5 normal coal plants or have the capacity of 1.75 GW. But to be fair, to produce 1 mpd by the process, if it works, would only increase our coal consumption by 5.8%.
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 5:24 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
A typical pump and dump scam. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 5:25 pm Post subject: Re: The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery
According to the PDF document from RAND Corporation, oil extraction from shale at a significant level is still decades away.
Quote:
A firm decision to commit funds to such a venture is at least six years away because that is the minimum length of time for scale-up and process confirmation work needed to obtain the technicaland environmental data required for the design and permitting of a first-of-a-kind commercial operation. At least an additional six to eight years will be required to permit, design, construct, shake down, and confirm performance of that initial commercial operation. Consequently, at least 12 and possibly more years will elapse before oil shale development will reach the production growth phase. Under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably more than 30 years into the future.
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The headline said "oil" not "oil shale", "shale" not mentioned until well into the story. That's why I called it horseshit...deceptive from the start...
