High Gas Prices Fuel an Octane Rebellion 2010

Roger that big guy.

Here's an interseting hit:

Two excerpts for your academically challenged self:

Amoco said its commercial production should get underway by 1980, with full scale production of 50,000 to 100,000 bopd by 1982. Some projections indicated possibly 900,000 bopd by the mid-1980s.

Hmm, that's gonna help. Especially since it NEVER happened.

However, military demand for fuel changed, and the strategic value of shale oil reserves began to diminish. And, after spending several billion dollars, oil companies gave up their oil shale interests. Unocal was the last to do so in 1991. At present, shale oil is not being produced in the US, and large-scale commercial production is not expected for 20 to 30 years under present economic conditions. But it's not for a lack of reserves. According to published World Energy Council (WEC) estimates, nearly 62% of the world's potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the US. At year-end 1999, WEC says the US had a possible shale oil reserve approaching 1.0 trillion barrels.

So let's see: 20-30 years for it to come online. Any idea of what the oil supply-demand picture looks like worldwide for the next 30 years? I didn't think so.

Below forty dollars a barrel, oil-shale oil is not compebreastive with conventional crude oil. If the oil price were to stay permanently at over forty dollars a barrel (with no chance of declining, which could be the case if oil shale were to be exploited on a large enough scale), then companies would exploit oil shale. Generally, the oil shale has to be mined, transported, retorted, and then disposed of, so at least 40% of the energy value is consumed in production. Water is also needed to add hydrogen to the oil-shale oil before it can be shipped to a conventional oil refinery. The largest deposit of oil shale in the United States is in western Colorado (the Green River Shale deposits), a dry region with no surplus water. The oil shale can be ground into a slurry and transported via pipeline to a more suitable pre-refining location. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, people thought that oil supplies were peaking, expected oil prices to be around seventy dollars a barrel for some time to come, and invested huge amounts of money in refining oil shale - money that they lost. Because of the astronomical sums that were lost last time around there is considerable reluctance to invest in oil shale this time around. Investors are waiting to see if oil prices really will remain this high (in mid-2005: US$50+). Prices are rising because of increased demand in rapidly developing countries, particularly China. Will high prices result in the discovery of more oil, as happened in the seventies, or will alternatives to drilling for oil have to be developed? Investors, burnt badly in the 1980s for their enthusiasm of the seventies, are in no hurry to develop oil shale. Those who lost money then are inclined to believe that more oil will be found by and by.

And this:

Environmental considerations Surface-mining of oil shale deposits (as would be done if the US reserves were to be exploited) has all the normal environmental effects from open-pit mining, the pre-refining stage to get crude oil generates ash, pipelines must be built to an oil refinery, and the waste rock must be disposed of, rock which is a known carcinogen. Oil shale rock expands by around 30% after processing due to a popcorn effect from the heating; this waste then needs disposal. Oil shale also needs water, which may be in short supply.

All forms of oil shale exploitation are very inefficient as the energy demands of blasting, transporting, crushing, heating the material, and then adding hydrogen, together with the safe disposal of huge quanbreasties of waste material, are large.

Current extraction methods produce four times as much greenhouse gas as does conventional oil production.

Sounds like somebody needs to pull their HOOTA and do their homework. That would be you Rod.