OT: Oil Shale

[RN7]

Fracking (haydraulic fracturing) is how you do it. If you can, watch the documentary film Gasland. Then tell me how you feel about shale oil.

Is there an alternative to oil Living near a nuclear power station would not be to my liking, and scientists have been trying to make breakthroughs in nuclear fusion since the start of the atomic age but yet to no avail. Green energy would be great but hydroelectricity only works in areas with favourable geography and solar panels just don't produce enough power. Also people who live near wind farms complain about the noise causing a lack of sleep and being irritating and down right unbearable. Oil shale is America's energy future, although it will need some serious government regulation to avoid irresponsible wildcatting and profit mongering in the early stages of its development.

[RN7]

I strongly disagree with some of what you said (although I completely agree that non-human influenced climate change has occurred countless times before) but the views being expressed here are obviously so entrenched I don't think any further OT discussion here will be helpful.

Climate change like politics is very divisive and can bring out extreme views. My intension was to start a discussion about oil shale not climatic change and its starting to go way OT.

[kalos72]

Can oil shale be burned as is, like coal maybe Otherwise, I don't see the T2k timeline working for the relatively new tech.

Unless you live in an area with no coal or oil I guess...then you do what you can to survive.

[RN7]

Extraction was nearly economically viable in the early 80s when oil prices were at historically high levels.

Opec's response to us potentially tapping our own reserves was to increase production to make it economically nonviable (in 1986 the price of oil dropped 46%). Lots of investors in the technology went bankrupt so the market has been very gun shy about approaching it again. The thought now is that with emerging markets in China and India, OPEC can not meet demand enough to crater prices again. That combined with historical high prices has renewed interest.

After using oil as a weapon against the west for decades, and creating massive nationally owned oil concerns to freeze out the Western Supermajors, it now seems that worlds largest oil reserves are in America and there is nothing they can do about it. How ironic!

I would just love to know what OPEC and the Arabs are thinking

[kato13]

Can oil shale be burned as is, like coal maybe Otherwise, I don't see the T2k timeline working for the relatively new tech.

Unless you live in an area with no coal or oil I guess...then you do what you can to survive.

Most of it would burn but I believe it would produce ash residue similar to very low grade coal. That makes it very non desirable for power generation.

Another thing to remember is that almost all of the chemical industry developed as coal and oil were being tapped as a resource. This is due to the huge number of chemicals in oil, oil shale and coal what can be acquired from their pre-processing.

[Raellus]

There's apparently a Gasland II coming out soon on HBO. It's focus is the corporate influence on politics resulting in a scaling back of environmental impact studies and government regulation of the drilling industry.

[kato13]

As I said before I do not want this thread to descend into conflicting studies, but since i looked them up and read them I felt others might find them interesting. Here are counter points from opponents of the Gasland documentary, an affirmation document from the director and a summary of the discussed errors from the New York Times

Debunking Gasland

http://www.energyindepth.org/2010/06/debunking-gasland/

Affirming Gasland

http://1trickpony.cachefly.net/gas/pdf/Affirming_Gasland_Sept_2010.pdf

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtruthing-academy-award-nominee-gasland-33228.htmlpagewanted=all

[Bullet Magnet]

If you're going with the v1 timeline, it may not be that big of an issue. "Classic" drilling, once back in operation, should be able to provide at least a good proportion of our oil needs. Keep in mind the population depletion as a result of the war, though this may also result in a shortage of skilled workers.

I'm not sure what level of development we had for fracking by 2001. I'd imagine as we got into post-war rebuilding, there might be some efforts on research in this field, though I cannot speculate on the rate of progress relative to real world. On one hand, the consensus may be "we have more important things to worry about right now", slowing progress. However, if more people think along the lines of "we need to make sure we have an infrastructure in place so we're not so hosed if some asswipe decides to start up WW4" could make the T2K progress equal to real world, or maybe even a little ahead.

[Targan]

I'm not sure what level of development we had for fracking by 2001.

This from the Wikipedia article on hydraulic fracturing:

Due to shale's high porosity and low permeability, technology research, development and demonstration were necessary before hydraulic fracturing could be commercially applied to shale gas deposits. In the 1970s the United States government initiated the Eastern Gas Shales Project, a set of dozens of public-private hydraulic fracturing pilot demonstration projects. During the same period, the Gas Research Institute, a gas industry research consortium, received approval for research and funding from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In 1997, based on earlier techniques used by Union Pacific Resources, now part of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Mitchell Energy, now part of Devon Energy, developed the hydraulic fracturing technique known as "slickwater fracturing" which involves adding chemicals to water to increase the fluid flow, that made the shale gas extraction economical.