It is hard being this knowledgeable. I know, I make it look easy, but it isn’t. Trust me.
On the podcast recently, I was asked about oil prices, and I commented that we have about a trillion barrels of oil sitting in the mountains right here in the United States. It’s called shale oil, or oil shale. I’ve actually read it both ways. Anyway, I said that the problem with it is that it is expensive to produce but Shell Oil has been working on making it viable. Last I read, it wasn’t considered because prices needed be above $30 a barrel to make it economically sound.
It’s been above that for some time now. It seems oil shale may be a solution to our energy needs.
Harold Vinegar…is the energy industry’s leading expert on the complex petroscience of transforming solid oil shale into synthetic crude - a liquid fuel that can be refined into diesel and gasoline. The breakthroughs this 58-year-old physicist has achieved could turn out to be the biggest game changer the American oil industry has seen since crude was discovered near Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 1968.
If that sounds like hyperbole, then consider this: Several hundred feet below where Vinegar is strolling lies the Green River Formation, arguably the largest unconventional oil reserve on the planet. (”Unconventional oil” encompasses oil shale, Canadian tar sands, and the extra-heavy oils of Venezuela - essentially, anything that is not just pumped to the surface.)
Spanning some 17,000 square miles across parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, this underground lakebed holds at least 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s triple the reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Triple the reserves of Saudi Arabia! Man, oh man. Let’s get that stuff out of the ground and quick!
Shell is convinced that oil shale is no myth and that after years of secret research, it is close to achieving this oil-based alchemy. Shell is not alone in this assessment. “Harold has broken the code,” says oil shale expert Anton Dammer, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves.
Vinegar has developed a cutting-edge technology that, according to Shell, will produce large quantities of high-quality oil without ravaging the local environment - and be profitable with prices around $30 a barrel. Now that oil is approaching $90, the odds on Shell’s speculative bet are beginning to look awfully good.
You know something…I can’t remember to take my lunch to work with me some days, most days in reality, and have to go back for it, but for some reason, I can remember Shell oil, $30 a barrel, a trillion barrels and oil shale.
I don’t get it. Remembering my lunch seems to be much better thing to remember.
One last thing to think about:
In contrast, there’s enough oil shale to maintain high production levels for hundreds of years.
Very nice. Let’s get on with it already.
