Technocrat

Colorado becoming more important as Energy Center

zogger
Wed Feb 21 19:03:45 -0800 2007
Science.
manage

More important, and in two different directions, first, as an "alternative fossil fuels" center with the expansion of Shell's exploratory camp to try and recover some of the trillion barrels+ estimated in the oil shale reserves. Second, with the signing of the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory agreement, where a large partnership of universities, private companies, and others will push for Colorado to be the leader in research and development and deployment of various alternative energy plans.

ed: I found a tech overview of the oil shale project on Shell's site, here is their Mahogany Project. Interesting, they want to heat the ground, but on the edges, form ice walls!

Colorado becoming more important as Energy Center
DrkShadow
Thu Feb 22 09:33:36 -0800 2007
 manage

Just an interesting point, I had to take an economics class at the University of Wyoming. As the teacher was an economist, in Wyoming, he had looked at the extraction of oil from the oil shale which the Midwest appears to have a great deal of. His conclusion, in 1980? It would take oil being worth 80$/barrel before it would be profitable to produce oil from that source.

Of course, now it's nearly 30 years later, and he said that it would be approx. 120$/barrel before it would actually be worth it to dive into such a project.

Even so, I like the thought of potential foreign energy independence or great reduction of said dependence. Would having this great supply of oil shale allow for the American life as-is to continue on for a while? certainly not forever, but less worrysome than now, I think.. and at prices that wouldn't be as likely to rice as horribly as is possible if a bidding war on oil were to start.

I'd say that investing in the resource, governmentally, would be a worthwhile investment despite the fact that it wouldn't likely be profitable to extract and use a great deal of oil in this way.

Thoughts?

-DrkShadow
 

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