[IP] Oil Independence?
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Robert C. Atkinson" <rca53@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 12, 2005 6:40:44 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
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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