Shale Mary

It's a 1980 flashback, as energy price spikes make oil shale economical once again

Posted by David Roberts at 4:59 PM on 22 Jul 2008

The Bush administration's latest push to force dirty energy extraction down the throats of Americans living in western states has some historical pedigree. Extracting oil from keragen -- somewhat misleadingly known as "oil shale" -- by cooking the rock at high temperatures is an environmental, social and economic nightmare that's been with us since the 17th century. It's come and gone in various countries at various times, most persistently in such vibrant, prosperous democracies as Russia and Estonia, but it really blew up in the wake of the 1970s oil crash. In the early '70s, companies like Exxon, Chevron and Shell were pushed toward oil shale development by an Interior Dept. leasing program (sound familiar?).

That expansion was followed by a spectacular crash; on 2 May 1982, so-called "Black Sunday," Exxon shut down its $5 billion Colony Shale Oil Project and left thousands of families stranded and jobless. It's boom and bust, the "resource curse," the oldest fossil fuel story in the book, and the U.S. is no more immune than any other country.

But now oil prices are back up, and it's a good bet they're going to stay up for the duration. That means oil shale is coming back into the picture, not only in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, but in Australia, China and other countries with large deposits.

This time, the industry says, it has new technology that allows it to extract usable oil from shale "in situ" -- that is, in place, instead of strip mining the rock -- with no environmental damage at all. There are a range of techniques, but they mostly involve super-heating the rock, effectively fast-forwarding geological processes until usable crude bubbles up. This raises the prospect of oil leaking into water tables, so Shell, for instance, creates a "freeze-wall" around the site with pipes filled with frozen ammonia, sometimes extending over 1,500 feet down. All the heating and cooling requires enormous amounts of energy and water, both precious and rare commodities in the arid, dry West.

Of course, ahem, the technology is in testing and, er, might not be ready for a decade or two and, um, if it doesn't work out they may need to strip mine anyway. But let's go ahead with the leases!

If this all sounds familiar, it should. A great many energy-intensive, water-intensive, heavy-infrastructure-intensive, centralized, highly polluting oil alternatives -- oil shale, oil sands, "clean coal," liquid coal -- have recently become economically viable, and are likely to stay that way. Oil prices may fluctuate a bit, but they almost certainly aren't going to come down substantially.

This is an inflection point in our history. If Americans believe there's no other way to reduce energy costs than to exploit hard-to-get-at domestic fossil fuels, they will support oil shale etc. no matter the horrific consequences for the climate.

Everything now depends on proving the viability of clean energy. The race is on.

For story: Shale Mary
6 Comments | Post a Comment

The race is on

I remember when the big block V-8 engines were being replaced with six and four cylinder engines. There was a period of adjustment but V-8 engines are pretty rare now. We will have a similar transition to cars with double and triple today's mileage. People will find ways to use less gas. Oil shale will never be cheap. There is no way out of this but to use much much less.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 8:03 PM on 22 Jul 2008

Viability of renewables

Renewables are already proven, viable technologies - the race is not to prove it but to convince enough people in time to pressure governments to invest in renewable technologies. Check out this modelling which shows that Australia - which currently gets 80% of its electricity from coal - could phase out coal entirely in a shift to renewables and energy efficiency: http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/news/ ...

by Energy revolutionary at 9:08 PM on 22 Jul 2008

Oil shale *rolls eyes*

The absurdity of oil shale development was made clear to me when it was pointed out that unprocessed oil shale has a lower energy density than Capn Crunch cereal. The same writer went on to comment that burning natural gas to extract oil from shale was like feeding steak to your dog and eating his Alpo.

Of course, if oil shale ever really gets going, it's not going to rely on natural gas. Probably not coal either -- it'll be all about the nukes.

by GreenEngineer at 10:57 PM on 22 Jul 2008

disaster

That such a hideous idea could even be seriously considered is a testament to the depavity and literal insanity of America's oil addiction.
Let's go over it:

Given the tremendous energy requirements to bake the shale, the EROEI would be paltry at best, perhaps negative.

It would be astronomically expensive. Who's going to pay for it? (One of Pombo's bills, as you might imagine, would have socialized all the costs.)

It would require monumental amounts of water in a place already dying of thirst.

It would be an environmental cataclysm. Picture MTR throughout the Rocky Mountains.

Advocates of this, anyone who would actually try to do this, would be among the worst capital criminals of all times.

by Russ at 1:49 AM on 23 Jul 2008

Oil Shales, and the topic of Rust

I believe that Canada has recently enacted legislation to crack down on the carbon emissions of oil sands. I'm still looking for references to actual bills/documents, so if anyone has come across them and could post them, I would greatly appreciate it. I found only this:

http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=714D9AAE-1& ...

Another topic regarding oil is the phenomenal amount of steel that goes into its infrastructure - from the drilling to the gas tank. Here is a link to a presentation that outlines how rusting infrastructure could kill the oil economy before the effects of limited supply does.

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/OTC%202008.pdf

The point being that even in spite of emerging drilling and extraction technologies, a vast network of infrastructure is decaying and make them almost irrelevant.

by westside at 11:57 AM on 23 Jul 2008

Shale

Both oil shale and oil sands are terrifically expensive sources of petroleum to put into barrels and pipelines to be sent thousands of miles for processing into gasoline.

In fact, the expense of extraction was the prime reason for non-development of the resource for many years though the presence of the oil was well-known.

Is there some connection now between the current price at the pumps and the rush to give government sanction to Big Oil's 'exploration' and 'development' of the 'new' sources of energy?

Could the oil companies have manipulated the price of gasoline to justify the development of expensive extraction? I wonder...

Arctic oil and gas, offshore drilling in deeper and deeper waters, hhmmm... I guess that with enough manipulation and incubation an interested person could ensure that the egg does come before the chicken, after all.

Des Emery

by Des Emery at 9:31 PM on 01 Aug 2008

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