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RE: weak canadian oil
"What About the Oil Sands in Canada and the Oil Shale in the American West?"
The good news is that we have a massive amount of untapped "non conventional" oil located in the oil sands up in Canada. The bad news is that, unlike conventional sources of oil, oil derived from these oil sands is extremely financially and energetically intensive to extract. Whereas conventional oil has enjoyed a rate of "energy return on energy invested" (EROEI) of about 30 to 1, the oil sands rate of return hovers around 1.5 to 1. This means that we would have to expend 20 times as much energy to generate the same amount of oil from the oil sands as we do from conventional sources of oil.
Where to find such a huge amount of capital is largely a moot point because, even with massive improvements in extraction technology, the oil sands in Canada are projected to only produce a paltry 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015.
(Update 8/15/2006: Oil Sands Production Costs Skyrocket and Oil Sands Production Costs up 55%)
More optimistic reports anticipate 4 million barrels per day of oil coming from the oil sands by 2020. Even if the optimists are correct, 4 million barrels per day isn't that much oil when you consider our colossal and ever-growing demand in conjunction with the small amount of time we have left before the global peak:
-We currently need 83.5 million barrels per day.
-We are projected to need 120 million barrels per day by
2020.
-We will be losing over 1 million barrels per day of production
per year, every year, once we hit the backside of the
global oil production curve.
-The general consensus among now disinterested scientists
is that oil production will peak by 2010 at the latest.
See also, "San Francisco Chronicle: Oil's Dirty Future"
The huge reserves of oil shale in the American west suffer from similar problems. While Shell Oil has an experimental oil shale program, even Steve Mut - the CEO of their Unconventional Resources Unit - has sounded less than optimistic when questioned about the ability of oil shale to soften the coming crash. According to journalist Stuart Staniford's coverage of a recent conference on Peak Oil:
In response to questions, Steve guesstimated that oil shale production would still be pretty negligible by 2015, but might, if things go really well, get to 5 mbpd by 2030.
Disinterested observers are even less optimistic about oil shale. Geologist Dr. Walter Youngquist points out:
The average citizen . . . is led to believe that the United States really has no oil supply problem when oil shales hold "recoverable oil" equal to "more than 64 percent of the world's total proven crude oil reserves." Presumably the United States could tap into this great oil reserve at any time. This is not true at all. All attempts to get this "oil" out of shale have failed economically. Furthermore, the "oil" (and, it is not oil as is crude oil, but this is not stated) may be recoverable but the net energy recovered may not equal the energy used to recover it. If oil is "recovered" but at a net energy loss, the operation is a failure.
This means any attempt to replace conventional oil with oil shale will actually make our situation worse as the project will consume more energy than it will produce, regardless of how high the price goes.
Further problems with oil shale have been documented by economist Professor James Hamilton who writes:
A recent Rand study concluded it will be at least 12 years before oil shale reaches the production growth phase. And that is a technological assessment, not a reference to the environmental review process. If it takes 15 years to get an oil refinery built and approved, despite well known technology and well understood environmental issues, viewing oil shale as something that could make major contributions to world energy supplies in the immediate future seems highly unrealistic.
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, i wish KSA was that liberal and fun as well.
