On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
OK Chris, you made some valid points and you've convinced me that I wasn't paying enough care in distinguishing between the very common kerogen oil shale that would need considerable processing to be useful and the less common shale oil (that is really just porous shale that contains light oil and gas in it ) which would need much less processing. And I concede that the bulk of the massive increase in oil and gas production in the USA came from this rarer porous shale rather than the much more common kerogen oil shale. But just because it's rarer doesn't necessarily mean it's rare; when will the USA run out of shale oil and shale gas? Estimates seem to be all over the place, some say production in the USA will plateau in about a decade and start to decline shortly after that, others say that won't happen for 30 years or more. I don't know who's right but even if the most pessimistic is correct trillions of dollars will be pumped out of the ground due to fracking. And lots of countries have far more shale oil (but not kerogen oil shale) than the USA and they haven't even started fracking yet. Concerning kerogen oil shale, I haven't found any credible source that says it would take more energy to get oil out of kerogen shale than you could get out of it which would mean it would never be economical no matter how high the price of oil went. What I've seen is that with existing technology to make a barrel of oil from kerogen oil shale it would cost between $75 and $110, and that would explain why oil companies can't make any money off it with oil selling for just $57. But even under the assumption that the technology will not improve (a ridiculous assumption) oil shale should put a lid on how high the price of oil can go. And I don't even want to get into Methane Clathrate that contains more energy than all forms of shale and tar sands combined, John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
