RockMonkey
Suddenly Enthusiastic
Let's talk about oil shale. How many of you watched the video of Chris Cannon that was sent to the U4WDA list?
http://blip.tv/file/924814
He contradicts himself a couple times(is it Wyoming, or Colorado that has trillions of barrels?), but he did make some interesting points, and I like that he used the term "back in the day."
So we've all known about oil shale for a long time. Historically, oil has been too cheap to develop the oil shale deposits. With the current price of oil, and cheaper extraction technologies, this may have changed. It would be awesome to be able to produce all of our oil needs domestically, even locally. But I have some questions about the process. The oil shale is spread over a large geographic area. Does the extraction process turn the area into a huge open-pit-mine style landscape? Chris Cannon mentioned the old process required the shale to be crushed and heated. Does the new process also require the shale be removed and crushed? If an area is stripped, would there be reclamation efforts required to return the land to a usable state? How much of this area would need to be used at any given time to satisfy the need? Are we talking about a few square miles, or hundreds-thousands?
It seems to me this could be a solution to our oil problem, but it could also be devastating to the local landscape. Imagine a thousand Kennecott mines spread all throughout the area... :sick:
So what do you guys think?
Is there anyone out there that really knows about this stuff?
http://blip.tv/file/924814
He contradicts himself a couple times(is it Wyoming, or Colorado that has trillions of barrels?), but he did make some interesting points, and I like that he used the term "back in the day."
So we've all known about oil shale for a long time. Historically, oil has been too cheap to develop the oil shale deposits. With the current price of oil, and cheaper extraction technologies, this may have changed. It would be awesome to be able to produce all of our oil needs domestically, even locally. But I have some questions about the process. The oil shale is spread over a large geographic area. Does the extraction process turn the area into a huge open-pit-mine style landscape? Chris Cannon mentioned the old process required the shale to be crushed and heated. Does the new process also require the shale be removed and crushed? If an area is stripped, would there be reclamation efforts required to return the land to a usable state? How much of this area would need to be used at any given time to satisfy the need? Are we talking about a few square miles, or hundreds-thousands?
It seems to me this could be a solution to our oil problem, but it could also be devastating to the local landscape. Imagine a thousand Kennecott mines spread all throughout the area... :sick:
So what do you guys think?
Is there anyone out there that really knows about this stuff?