In an article entitled, ‘Smells like money’ – Canada’s oil tar sands industry booming, Utah’s U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch is quoted as saying, “If they can do it, we in Utah can do it. Unconventional fuels like tar sands and oil shale are the real thing.”
This article reports on the benefits, from the producers view, of this industry.
I found a September 2005 article called Shell Oil Shale Extraction Technology Economically Viable? by a group called Future Pundit. The article begins with
The development of an economically viable way to extract oil from oil shale would put a ceiling on oil prices and would extend the oil era by decades. It would also increase the odds of significant global warming. Well, in light of all that a variety of media outlets are reporting that Shell Oil thinks it can produce oil from oil shale at $30 per barrel using an in situ process where the shale is cooked without first mining it onto the surface.
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.
And we’ve hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O’Connor said, it’s counterintuitive.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 