Oil Shale and ANWR: Stretching the Truth.

For a brief, shining moment, I overheard John Hinderaker fulminating on The Patriot about the many ways Democrats were plotting to stymie oil exploration and development.

I know how hard it is to be an expert on one thing, so the radio talking heads who act as if they know everything don't get my time. But then Hinderaker claimed that Democrats were preventing oil companies from developing oil shale, as if it were just there for the taking, a point he's also implied in his blog.

In fact, Rocky Mountain shale is believed to contain the equivalent of 2 trillion barrels of oil. Is that a lot? The entire world has used around 1 trillion barrels since oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859. This chart by the Institute for Energy Research shows graphically how America's shale oil reserves compare to other countries' petroleum reserves.

Well, the truth is, no one in America did more for oil shale development and other alternative fuels development than Jimmy Carter and his Synfuels initiaitives. If you want some of the history, and why Carter's investment and tax incentive strategy failed, read here. Basically, Reagan gutted energy research Carter started, including into how to economically convert shale into oil. When the Iranian crisis ended and Saudis flooded the market with cheap oil, Exxon shut down its $5 billion Colony Oil Shale project in western Colorado, and the industry lost interest in oil shale.

I spent two summers (1967-68) working on drilling rigs mapping the oil shale reserves in Utah and Colorado, including the Piceance Creek basin, the same place where Carter put an experimental conversion facility during his term 10 years later. In 2006, Chevron announced an R&D project to do essentially the same thing more than 25 years after Carter.

Most alternative energy research — and oil shale is an alternative source — has been first stimulated by government subsidies and tax breaks, not industry acting on its own. If those public funds weren't available, the industry basically sat back.

It's not access to oil shale reserves that's the problem., it's access to the oil in the formations. Oil shale has to be dug out, or the oil heated out or otherwise forced out, and no company has yet come up with an economical and environmentally acceptable extraction method. 

What's really prevented the development of oil shale has been low world prices and an industry and federal administrations that favored easy money now versus addressing an inevitability. The reason for delays in tapping oil shale is not even close to the scenario Hinderaker and others are floating. 

And while we're on the subject of GOP misdirection over energy policy, Ollie Ox writes about how much area that itty-bitty 2,000 acres in ANWR actually involves. It's a topic I wrote about back in 2005.

It's sort of like this: If your butt takes a load of birdshot, do you add up the surface area of the pellets or measure the area of the wound?

Comments

[Ollie Ox]

Wonderfully vivid analogy that American pheasant and duck hunters can understand.

[Jeff Dege]

What Jimmy Carter did 30 years may well have been instrumental in developing the technology to exploit oil shale, but that's not the issue under discussion.

What is the issue under discussion is that last year, the Democrat Congress imposed a moratorium to prevent Interior from issuing regulations on oil shale development. And just a couple of months ago the Senate Appropriations Committee voted down a measure to remove it.

The purported reason is that we don't know enough about the environmental impact. Which is a crock, because oil shale processing is not a new technology. The Canadians have been doing it on large-scale for a number of years, and the environmental concerns that need to be addressed are well known.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/15/panel-defeats-attempt-end-oil-shale-moratorium/

[Charlie Quimby]

Here's another view about the environmental impact in Canada.

http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2931

As for Jeff's claims about Canadian oil shale processing, he is confusing Canada's tar sands (which are different than tar sands in Utah, where most US oil bearing sands lie) and oil shale. Different mining and different recovery technologies.

http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm:

"While current technologies are adequate for oil shale mining, the technology for surface retorting has not been successfully applied at a commercially viable level in the United States, although technical viability has been demonstrated. Further development and testing of surface retorting technology is needed before the method is likely to succeed on a commercial scale."

In situ processing is still considered experimental.

And from a Salt Lake city report:
http://tinyurl.com/58vatv

"Terry O'Connor, a Shell vice president for external and regulatory affairs, said his company may be ready for a large-scale commercial commitment in five or 10 years if a couple of pilot programs, including one in Utah, pan out.

"But Bennett said no one will make the billions of dollars in investments in producing oil from shale and sands if they can't get access to it. The federal moratorium now prevents the Interior Department from letting prospectors onto federal land to draw out oil from tar sands and shale. Bennett said the moratorium prevents rules from being drawn up that would help regulate unconventional oil development in Utah and neighboring states."

Believe me, if you live in that region, you get tired of the posturing by both parties and especially the oil and gas lobby. They want as much public land leased for as little money with the least regulation. It's not just Democrats in Congress; two of the three states also want the brakes applied until water and environmental issues can be worked out.

[Eric E Rumsey]

We Can't. we can't, we can't. NONSENSE. Shell says their method would be viable with oil at $20.00 a barrel. Do you think we will ever see that price again? So that means that at todays prices oil companies would suck the oil through a straw to get it. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy said
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. EIGHT years later we walked on the moon. Don't tell me we CAN'T get the oil from shale.

[Charlie Quimby]

I didn't say we can't. But we haven't, we're not, and no one says they're ready to do it in production quantities, regardless of the Shell PR.

And if you live out there, where water is scarce, the land stays scarred for a long time, and your drinking water flows through some of the mining areas, you're excused for wanting to know more than that a method is viable when oil is $20 a barrel.

Some day, we may well get a lot of oil from shale, but it's hardly going to save us.

I'd also note we walked on the moon, flew around a bit more and then basically gutted the space program. The issue isn't just whether we can pull off a technical marvel. We will, no doubt. We have to be able to sustain it at a total cost that's worth it.