Alan wrote:
In article Stella Starr writes:

Eh. I lived around there, had friends who went off to work in the North
Dakota oil fields a time or two. Every time petroleum goes through the
roof in price, someone reopens the oil shale fields, which require an
astronomical amount of work and expenditure to wring oil from the rock.

Back when oil was getting close to $30/barrel, an article on cnn.com
commented that there was a huge amount of oil in oil shale, but it would
not be economical to extract unless oil got to $40/barrel. Well, at $100
per barrel, it seems that the oil companies are hoping for even more profit
when they finally decide to get it.

Two things have happened:

The cost of extraction from oil shale and tar sands (both of which have
enormous amounts of oil) has gone up along with everything else. Current
costs are estimated to be in the $80 to $100 per barrel range.

Since a long term, large capital investment is required to do this, the
oil companies waited to make sure the price was above, and going to stay
above, the level where recovery was economical.

Recovery from such sources is starting now, but in some places is being
hindered by the NIMBY's and CO2 fanatics.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.