Jumper - Peak Oil Movement

I hate to contradict a man who owns guns and knows how to shoot them, but.....

I officially got my B.S. degree in Fuels Engineering, and I have me some book-larnin' on this here topic.

It's not as bad as they make it sound.

NOBODY takes into account the secondary and tertiary sources of fossil fuels. The deal with those is, IT WILL COST MORE to get the fuel to the end-user, be they consumer or factory. The secondary recovery from wells where the easy stuff has been removed already, the secondary-primary recovery from "depleted" wells that are being refed from deep pockets, and (my personal favorite), pyrolysis of oil from shale.

Did you all know that the amount of oil bound up in oil shale in the tristate area of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado is at least equal to the amount of liquid oil found in the Middle East? Problem is, it will be more expensive to recover. Back when I was in school and oil was about $12/bbl, the estimate was that break-even point for financials to make it viable to recover oil from shale was that oil would have to be at a price of ~$45/bbl. I haven't kept up with relative cost of oil to inflation, but I am sure that we are not yet at what would now (with inflation) be a higher break-even point. So, the oil reserves wait there.

It is somewhat comforting to me to know that since we have this reserve and it will be more costly to recover, this will be among the last tapped oil in the world. Hopefully, by that point we will have further developed alternative, more renewable sources of energy that will allow us to use that oil for non-fuel uses, i.e. raw materials.

Anyway, all the articles that I have seen on Peak Oil do not take these reserves into account. I think that there are well-meaning people who buy into this wholeheartedly, but I suspect that the ringleaders are mongering fear in an attempt to sell books or profit otherwise.

There will be a crisis; the cost of fuel (and therefore EVERYTHING else) will go up; everyone will have to adopt a lower energy usage lifestyle - and this is not all bad. There will be energy available - at a higher cost - for us, our children and our grandchildren.

Essentially you're making the same case I am AL. I never said we were going to run out of oil. I said we're going to run out of CHEAP oil which you kind of agree with based on your post.

Tertiary and shale deposits are abundant but very difficult to recover and refine. Ergo, costs go up. How much more will it cost to get these fuels to the end user? Who knows but more than it does now.

I agree with most of your post but I don't have time right now to argue about the points I don't agree with.

Essentially though, you're saying what I'm saying AL.....It's just a matter of scale that we disagree on.

Oh, do you have sources to these "oil reserves" in Utah, Colorado etc.

I've never heard of them and would like to read up on it.

The tar sands of northern Canada are also huge reserves. The reason they haven't been tapped to their fullest potential is because it's not cost effective.

Go buy a Wall Street. I'd type out the article, but it's like mongo long.

Wow, something to talk about Saturday after dinner that isn't about Bush or Kerry.

The cost of Oil will remain High for the forseeable future. I work in oilfield chemicals and we are flatout at the moment. The Majors are opening up previously uneconomic oilfields, The technology is there to get oil from any terrain, Now is a viable time.

Sorry for late response, I've been in the lab all afternoon. Try this for information on oil shale.

I assure you, the source is good.

An excerpt:

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United States Of America

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world?s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The shale oil can be extracted by surface and in-situ methods of retorting: depending upon the methods of mining and processing used, as much as one-third or more of this resource might be recoverable. There are also the Devonian-Mississippian black shales in the eastern United States.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Note the key word in the first line of the article (see below) is "economically".

Quote:

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OIL SHALE

If a technology can be developed to economically recover oil from oil shale, the potential is tantalisingly enormous. If the containing organic material could be converted to oil, the quantities would be far beyond all known conventional oil reserves.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

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Originally posted by travelinman:
Wow, something to talk about Saturday after dinner that isn't about Bush or Kerry.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have to TALK?

There's always a cost for a free meal, isn't there? [img]wink.gif[/img]

It is inevitable that it will become economical to retrieve shale oil because the price of oil is going to rise. It is a limited resource, and there is no end in sight to its use.

Simple supply and demand. Supply is limited. Demand increases. Price goes up. And up. And up.

For years, OPEC members kept the price of oil artificially low. One of the reasons was to keep more costly US production out of business.

When the price goes up, so will production of less viable sources around the world.

I'll see your piddly little black goo problem and raise you by the much bigger grey goo problem! [img]graemlins/smarty.gif[/img]

Why even worry about this stuff, nothing we can do can stop the shit in space, fuck it, if we are done, we are done.