We have our own oil, the Tar sands, oil shale.....

2 trillion Barrels of it. The Middle East had better watch it as the West has the ability to get it and it will get cheaper to extract.

Damn, 2 TRILLION barrels!


WASHINGTON — Utah, Colorado and Wyoming sit on a massive fortune in untapped oil — maybe more oil than in the Middle East — if they could just figure out a way to harvest it.



And with crude oil hovering above $50 a barrel, Congress is now showing signs it may be willing to help.
On Tuesday, the Senate Energy Committee held hearings on the vast reserves of oil found in tar sands and oil shale located in eastern Utah, western Colorado and southern Wyoming. The amounts of oil, said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, "are mind boggling. Who would have guessed that in just Colorado and Utah, there is more recoverable oil than in the Middle East, except we don't count it among our nation's oil reserves because it is not yet being developed commercially."
And therein lies the rub. The technology to recover oil from tar sands and oil shale is costly, and it just wasn't justified when oil was $30 or even $40 a barrel.
But with oil prices expected to remain above $50 a barrel for the foreseeable future, a lot of people in the oil industry want to revisit what could become a huge financial windfall for Utah and its neighbors to the east.
"If we can get it out, it will be a huge resource for the United States and a significant industry for the two states," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. "But getting it out at an economic level is a problem."
On one hand it will cost billions to develop and implement the technology. And there also is a problem in that the oil shale and tar sands are located in a portion of eastern Utah coveted by conservationists for its wilderness qualities.
"The wilderness advocates will say, 'Over my dead body.' But it looks like oil prices are going to stay above $50 a barrel, and I could see people moving into this business in a big way," Bennett said.
Congress could be the wild card when it comes to defraying the cost of jump-starting oil shale and tar sands oil production. If Congress were to infuse massive amounts of research capital into production through the Department of Energy, the United States could conceivably generate enough oil to wean itself from


Vast 'oil' reserves in Utah may tempt feds to help out

I'd like to see us get weaned off fossil fuels altogether, but sustaining our own oil habit will have to do for now. There's so much free power out there, we just need to simplify the technology and make it more accessible and attractive to the majority of consumers.

Wait a minute. I'm confused:

According to Mark Maddox, a deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy, the Green River Formation — located where the three states come together — contains an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. It also constitutes more than 50 percent of the world's oil shale reserves, of which 80 percent are owned by the federal government.

hmmm....Stuff like this doesn't go with all the "we invaded Iraq for oil" talk, does it? (you better delete this post edsinger!)

*sigh* *shmack* *shmack* *shmack*

Isnt this oil very costly to extract?

Originally posted by ufo3
Isnt this oil very costly to extract?

Well from the estimations I have read, it costs around $30+ dollars a barrel but they are looking at costs of less than that in the long run as the technology is developed. OPEC had better take notice as their monopoly is in danger.

Interestingly enough, two senators from one of the three states are in the news on this one. Are they pushing for pork-barrel style projects in their state when they should really be pushing for alternative energy research? Certainly, the capture of this oil could help reduce our dependence on foreign sources and thus would not be considered a pork-barrel project; but the coincidence is astounding. I'm a republican by the way -- just to get that out of the way.

hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all.

Originally posted by jprophet420
hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all.

greedy OIL companies will stop the expension of hfuel cars at all cost, and besides they pretty much control our dam government!

greed

just buying time. that also goes for most of the alternatives presented.

Originally posted by ulshadow

Originally posted by jprophet420
hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all.

greedy OIL companies will stop the expension of hfuel cars at all cost, and besides they pretty much control our dam government!

greed

dude, i worked for intel, they are a big greedy political corporation too, you gonna stop using computers (dont say amd either intel made amd ad the gov. subsidises them)? i said there was no need, which there isnt. i am sure that any company that made hfuel cars would be greedy and political too.

dude, i worked for intel, they are a big greedy political corporation too, you gonna stop using computers (dont say amd either intel made amd ad the gov. subsidises them)? i said there was no need, which there isnt. i am sure that any company that made hfuel cars would be greedy and political too.

yea... you are completely right! those companies that made hfuel cars will be just as greedy as the oil companies... i said the government should take care of energies like this, cause companies will be willing to sell us and our government out cause they fellow the money trail.

keep in mind there's many different types of naturally occuring oil. from what i understand, the oil found in the middle east is of a type requiring the least expensive refinement procedures for use in motor engines, and this is the reason it's so desirable compared to our own domestic oil.

-koji K.

Originally posted by ulshadow

Originally posted by jprophet420
hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all.

greedy OIL companies will stop the expension of hfuel cars at all cost, and besides they pretty much control our dam government!

greed

No they won't. The oil companies will simply adapt to the new business environment. In other words, they'll be the ones supplying the hydrogen for those fuel cell vehicles.

Wow - how great would this be!

The US could really corner the worlds oil market if we could tap these resources and continue to influence the ME.

Imagine - the US has in it's own boarders about 2 trillion barrels of oil. We also control Iraqi oil, have a lot of influence with Saudi oil, and then we take out Iran in the near future...

Next thing you know, it is the US setting the price of oil to the world, not the ME. We can then use this leverage to control an increasing agressive China...

Oh wait - that doesn't fit with the "America is going to fall" theory of the liberal crowd.

You missed one very important fact for every barrel of oil estimated to exist in the ground you'll lose many more barrles worth in the proccess. Shale oil isn't even economically feasable yet and you can ask anyone from the Alberta tar sands how difficult it is to get the oil out. Neither of these solve high oil prices and in fact depend on high oil prices to maintain economic feasability.

Response to Amur Tiger

The problem with your argument is two fold. First of all, getting the oil would not make us loose more then we gain - that is just simply wrong.

Secondly, in regards to depending on high gas prices, we are talking about peak oil here. The whole premiss is that there will be too little oil for the world (suply and demand?). Thus, in a peak oil world, it WOULD be economically viable. If there is no peak oil situation then there is no reason we need to use this oil.

Basically, either way we are covered

That's what's you're missing if it's economically viable then you haven't stopped or helped the peak oil problem oil prices will still be higher then we can afford for many of the more common uses. Also between the energy costs and the fact that none of the systems for extracting the oil are very efficient would easily make you lose more oil then you get. I'm not talking about using more processed oil I'm taking about the difference between what's in the ground and what you get out of it. For example it could well be(I don't know the exact figures obviously) that for every 4 barrels estimated in the ground you only get one out. If you still consider yourself covered then you should take a look at how well the U.S. economy has done with current oil prices, if oil prices are so high that it's worth getting it out of all of these places then your economy may have already collapsed or been reduced considerably.

That is amazing that all of that oil exists right here in the good old US of A.

I agree in a peak oil situation or a massive conventional war resulting from peak oil, having that kind of reserve would be strategically important. In desperate times like that we would probably use atomic power to help overcome the efficiency problems of shale oil.

However, it is a losing battle economically to try to exploit those feilds. When it takes more energy to extract and refine than you get in the end product it is pointless.

On the fuel cell cars, they would be great, but we would need proper fuel distribution or else no one would buy one. I think that is the real reason they havent been implemented, not to mention the price involved with the platinum parts used in the fuel cells.

I agree that the conjectures debunking the shale oil extraction are not very solid.

Unfortunately that question cannot be answered for sure, only speculated by people, because the oil companies withhold their information with deadly force. And that is where that information lies right now.

First the oil is there, it costs approximately $35 a barrel to get out, old wells are refilling as we speak......

Thing is, 'peak oil' is a farce...



And remember that technology to get the oil out will get cheaper and more efficient with time, look at Alberta as an example...


Point is, we have 2 trillion barrels, that should last until Fusion comes along.