Put your money in oil shale production

November 18, 2006 6:55 PM

This Israeli process could turn the gigantic oil shale deposits of the US into the largest energy production in the world, outstripping the Middle East's role and dramatically altering the world economy to be even MORE US-centric.
posted by Kickstart70 (39 comments total)

Is it worth destroying mountains and filling in watersheds with slag just so people can drive SUVs between Wal-Mart and McDonalds and back all day long? God forbid we'd actually try to use energy efficiently or anything. Christ, look what they're doing in Appalachia to get at the coal. Apparently $3/gal is too high a price for Americans to pay (let alone the $6 or more that Europe pays), but any amount of environmental destruction is perfectly acceptable.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:10 PM on November 18, 2006

In my country there is problem,
And that problem is the oil.


Throw the shale into the Israeli process
So my country can be free.
We must make oil easy,
Then we have big party!
posted by orthogonality at 7:14 PM on November 18, 2006

Oh God.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:16 PM on November 18, 2006

I don't know the answer to one thing (and many more, but I wanna know this currently): Does anyone know of some before-and-after pictures of a strip mine that's been 'greened' after it has had the resources removed?
posted by Kickstart70 at 7:28 PM on November 18, 2006

America pwns everyone.
posted by Science! at 7:28 PM on November 18, 2006

Is it worth destroying mountains and filling in watersheds with slag just so people can drive SUVs between Wal-Mart and McDonalds and back all day long?

Of course not! Now if it was Target and Burger King....
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:34 PM on November 18, 2006

Pound for pound, oil shale contains one-tenth the energy of crude oil, one-sixth that of coal, and one-fourth that of recycled phone books. The energy content of oil shale is about on par with that of a baked potato. No nation has ever produced more than 16,000 barrels/day from oil shales, and global production is currently about 10,000 barrels/day. Oil shale is strip-mined and burned, and the waste rock is carcinogenic. In other words, using oil shale as a source of energy is a little like mining and burning coal, but 80% less efficient.

In any case, this is basically a press release for this Israeli company, and I predict we'll never hear about it again. Given that the article claims that "oil shale is limestone rock," I'm not particularly confident in any of its other claims.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:43 PM on November 18, 2006 [2 favorites]

How fucking unimaginative. An even less efficient way to fuck the planet 3:1 as opposed to 5:1 - I'd love to see some stats on what it *actually* costs to extract, refine and export a barrell of oil (from reserve to tank) - is there a nice little graphic that illustrates this?
posted by strawberryviagra at 7:47 PM on November 18, 2006

KICKASS!!!!!
posted by sourwookie at 7:47 PM on November 18, 2006

George_Spiggott opines "Christ, look what they're doing in Appalachia to get at the coal."

Who needs silly things like mountains and streams anyway? Given enough time West Virginia will end up looking about as hilly as Kansas.
posted by clevershark at 7:47 PM on November 18, 2006

m_b: I took a look around before posting this...this was widely reported in a great number of other locations (like Business Week, NYT, etc.). I think this is a legit new process. And it's talking about creating a barrel of oil for $17-20, so it's financially feasible, even if the pound-for-pound caloric value is less. The US has pretty much avoided major oil shale production, even though they have by far the largest oil shale deposits in the world. Since this process is out there, and the middle east is a shambles, and oil costs are at historic highs, I do think this will go a lot further (perhaps within the next 20 years).
posted by Kickstart70 at 7:52 PM on November 18, 2006

I've heard homeless people make good fuel. Why not chop them down and refine THAT shit up.
posted by dobie at 7:58 PM on November 18, 2006

monju is correct. Canada is currently going crazy over oil sands, which are sort of the same thing: some sort of substance which contains hydrocarbons, in a format which used to be considered economically infeasible to retrieve.

Getting at Canada's oil sands is causing environmental destruction on a scale usually associated with strip mining, rainforest burning, and the like.

Some things I think are true:

--The U.S. will, eventually, dig up every bit of hydrocarbonesque substance it can find, and turn it into gasoline. E-v-e-r-y b-i-t.
--The environmental costs are going to be staggeringly, mind-bogglingly awesome in their destructiveness.
--Since the whole process is so incredibly inefficient, the environmental costs are going to be compounded, and then compounded again. It'll be like having the whole U.S., covered with tire fires, all the time.
--But you're still going to do it. Because you need the gas. Duh.
posted by jellicle at 7:59 PM on November 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

I've heard homeless people make good fuel. Why not chop them down and refine THAT shit up.

Well, that should make the breaking of the housing bubble, REALL interesting.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:00 PM on November 18, 2006

Hey Israel and America! harvest this
posted by strawberryviagra at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2006

Oh, crap. This will end well.

(and I don't mean this thread)
posted by kosher_jenny at 8:25 PM on November 18, 2006

I've heard homeless people make good fuel. Why not chop them down and refine THAT shit up.

No, we're going to need that for food.
posted by JekPorkins at 8:28 PM on November 18, 2006

If it wasn't for greed, what the hell would we talk about?
posted by JWright at 8:34 PM on November 18, 2006

Remarkable. And here I was, thinking, "well, now that we've invested so heavily in alternative fuel sources, we'll be pushing hard for green energy and looking forward to breaking our dependency on oil."

Little did I realize that we'd be signing on, nay, applauding for open-air and strip mining previously useless oil shale, simply because we may be able to produce cheaper oil. Not only will we not reduce our oil usage, but we'll actually destroy more land in the process as well. "Yay! Now we can drive our Hummers, and all we'll have to do is flatten the Rockies! Whoo-hoo!"

Yes, I'm glad Israel figured out a cheaper, more environmentally friendly way to process oil shale. No, I'd rather not drop alternative fuel research so we can grind up mountains for gas.
posted by FormlessOne at 9:03 PM on November 18, 2006

"Yay! Now we can drive our Hummers, and all we'll have to do is flatten the Rockies! Whoo-hoo!"

Aw, come on. Most of the oil shale is in red states, anyway. Sure, you'll see the stip mines from the plane as you fly from coast to coast, but as long as you don't ever actually go anywhere in Republican America, you'll never really notice that the Rockies are being flattened.

Besides, the Rockies are Granite, not oil shale. Yellowstone's what will be dug up.
posted by JekPorkins at 9:06 PM on November 18, 2006

"The company estimates it will consume 6 million tons of oil shale and 2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product."
Let's see:
8 million tons of raw material produces
3 million tons of product
and
5 million tons of what precisely?
(Plus of course the odd rock or two excavated in the course of mining the shale.)
JHC what a nightmare! I hope MB is correct...
posted by speug at 9:57 PM on November 18, 2006

I prefer the E85 arguement for alternative fuel with Nuclear at the backend.

If we could have Nucler power our processing plants and transport using E85 and develop plants and transport using E85 we may be somewhere. Sure, its only 70% as efficient as gasoline, but if we make a shift and its all we have, it will be 100% as efficient as the alternatives.
posted by subaruwrx at 10:03 PM on November 18, 2006

Like a junkie moving from Heroin to Meth.
posted by delmoi at 10:48 PM on November 18, 2006

Thorium.
posted by spazzm at 2:45 AM on November 19, 2006

There may be ecofriendly and economically, technically efficients ways to exploit oil shale.

But the critical mass of well trained brains needed to find the best ways to do that..is nowhere to be found, possibly because the logic of cost&revenue forbids investing into high risk, unstable, unreliable investments such as humans.

It is just a lot more profiteable to just mountaintop and openmine leaving the locals dealing with consequences, as it is apparently easier to just invade a country to get access to its reserves, maybe pacifing the locals with some industrial goods.

Yet in Israel, giving their enormous limitation in resources, what did they do ?

According to Professor Ze'ev Aizenshtat, an oil shale expert, the Hom Tov process is more environmentally friendly than other methods of converting oil shale into energy. It also allows for more flexibility in the kind of fuel produced, produces less waste and operates at lower temperatures than other methods.

oh dear they invested in brains ? Don't tell me ! And they managed to pull that while in company of people wearing funny hats and curious hairdo banging their heads on walls ?

If they did that, I wonder what we could.
posted by elpapacito at 4:25 AM on November 19, 2006

I wonder how many square miles of strip mines would be needed to maintain current daily oil demand. My wild guess would be on the scale of an entire state, seeing as how any single mine can only produce so much in a 24hr period and the daily demand is so huge.
posted by stbalbach at 6:52 AM on November 19, 2006

BusinessWeek has a slightly more substantial article apparently based on the same press release. It's an interesting development, though the technology isn't new or proven. The idea's been around a decade, but for some reason nobody's yet tried it on a large scale.

There is little chance of it becoming "the largest energy production in the world", unless perhaps you're one of them people who predict world energy production will soon shrink to a tiny fraction of what it is today. Makes about as much sense as predictions that the tar sands of Alberta will soon be producing more oil than Saudi Arabia; maybe, but only if Saudi oil production crashes really hard.
posted by sfenders at 7:07 AM on November 19, 2006

I would be interested in the comments from anyone who remembers this from the 1980s? Particularly if they lived in the area at that time. Do any of us live in Grand Junction, Colorado, who would like to share what it was like in the 80s, during the boom and then after the bust?
posted by Houstonian at 7:43 AM on November 19, 2006

2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product.

The refinery waste they refer to appears to be bitumen. If they were paying those reported market prices in India for the stuff, that'd add something like $250 per tonne to the cost of their unspecified product ($34 per barrel if that product were synthetic crude oil). That's if they're getting the stuff for free in Israel (which seems to have a surplus of the stuff). Maybe my calculations are off? Maybe the price in India is absurdly high (I don't have a good source of global bitumen price quotes)? Or is some portion of that input from the refinery something else?
posted by sfenders at 7:51 AM on November 19, 2006

Actually, $250/tonne for bitumen would add only $23/bbl to the cost, I forgot to adjust for the 3:2 ratio. Cheap stuff for $120/tonne (lower than the lowest price I could find quoted on the web for any kind of bitumen), if we assume that's available in quantity over there, would be $11 out of the claimed $17 cost of final product. Perhaps less if some quantity of that 2 tonnes from the refinery is something less expensive (diluent? coke?) That doesn't seem to leave much for mining and processing the shale, but I guess it's not completely impossible.
posted by sfenders at 1:06 PM on November 19, 2006

Speaking of Yellowstone: NATURE presents CHRISTMAS IN YELLOWSTONE, a breathtaking look at wintertime deep within America's first national park.
posted by homunculus at 1:22 PM on November 19, 2006

Seriousely, I'm more and more sure that big heads on this earth already found a planet where they live for years already, with their family and all, and they are sending some of them around here to take the most they can when they can still use us as a workforce

we should begin look for the thruth
posted by zouhair at 1:58 PM on November 19, 2006

Jesus, we went through a shale oil process back in the 1980s and it's destructive as hell. Forget it. Give up the SUVs, folks.
posted by etaoin at 2:33 PM on November 19, 2006

Or we could stop ripping up the Earth for fossil fuels, and face the future determined to be responsible to future generations by advocating and funding renewable, non-polluting energy sources, and conservation technologies.

There's plenty of talent to tackle this job. There is plenty of popular support. There is NO serious consideration underway for this obviously necessary step. There won't be while dinosaur organizations continue to oppose it.
posted by Twang at 4:04 PM on November 19, 2006

it's not very hard to be "more" "environmentally friendly" than mountain top removal. Even on the EPA "reclaimed" sites, it turns lush forest into barren desert scape.

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combustion of oil shale still produces net CO2 into the atmosphere. what will they do about that pollution?
posted by eustatic at 9:20 AM on November 20, 2006

Good bye Colorado.

.
posted by Skygazer at 10:21 AM on November 20, 2006

Yee-ikes. All I gotta say is, let's see how it scales. Remember, it will take insane amounts of fossil-fuel energy to strip-mine the shale and process it, which has a large probability of making the Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) less than 1:1.

Anything that uses as much or more energy than it produces isn't going to be a worthwhile energy source at any price.

Of course, building nuclear plants or wind farms to power the mining machinery by electricity might help...

But how about we start scaling back on driving cars some, huh? Hm? Maybe?
posted by zoogleplex at 11:33 AM on November 20, 2006

That's right. Cars are for pussies.
posted by Skygazer at 12:13 PM on November 20, 2006

There was a dearth of information on the actual process, so I'm guessing it's more of the same, just slightly more environmentally sound. Shell, on the other hand, has been working on a method of in-ground oil extraction from shale that could be both cost-effective and avoid mining.
posted by chundo at 9:32 AM on November 21, 2006