more on Oil Independence?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: gjones () ScottStringfellow com
Date: September 13, 2005 8:13:36 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Oil Independence?


Why folks continue the canard of oil independence is beyond me.  Ask
anyone in the oil business and they will tell you that unless everyone
walks to work, lives in the dark, and has a coal-fired or nuke plant in
their town, we won't have energy independence.  60% of crude is imported
today and it grows all the time.  It will not be long before we will
require massive amounts of natural gas imports as well.  The depletion
rates of the mature basins can not be overcome by even the most heroic
efforts of tar sands, oil shale, coal-bed methane, and any number of
alternative crude energy sources.

I would have thought that the Katrina experience would have driven home
just how reliant we are on energy imports.  I was wrong.




-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 20:02 PM
To: Ip Ip
Subject: [IP] Oil Independence?



Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert C. Atkinson" <rca53 () columbia edu>
Date: September 12, 2005 6:40:44 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Oil Independence?


This is a promising development. Excerpts below, full link:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/
0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html
What do IP skeptics say?


> Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity
> itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry
> O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at
> Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they
> have done it, in several test projects):
>
> Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft.
> Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most
> desirable first. Collect them.
>
> Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're
> brewing your own.
.



> Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile.


> And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is


> in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest
> fossil fuel deposits in the world.
>
> Wow.
>
> They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible


> with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is
> favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield
> 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process
> recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing
> and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade.
> Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface


> is the oil you want.


--
***************************************
Robert C. Atkinson
Director of Policy Research
Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) 1A Uris Hall, Columbia
Business School
3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027-6902

212-854-7576
cell: 908-447-4201
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