REPLIES ON GAS AND ETHANOL
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 11 May 2006

Jack,
An independent Ph.D. energy economist disagrees with your dismissal of LNG (liquefied natural gas). He claims "it's economic to transport LNG at $3-3.50 mBTU [million British Thermal Units]," and that "if the world price is high enough, it will make economic sense for producers to liquefy it and send it to China." In other words, natural gas (NG) is not "de-coupled" from the world market as you say. He asserts that natural gas is "just as fungible as oil."
John M.

Reply:

John,
Could this fellow be shilling for Chevron or some other outfit hyping LNG? A barrel of crude oil contains on average around 6 mBTU and costs around $1 to ship it across an ocean. That's 16.5 cents per mBTU, and this fellow says it's economic to transport LNG at some 18 times the transport cost of crude? It's ludicrous to claim that something costing 18 times as much is "just as fungible."

And even if China decided to pay this exorbitant shipping cost for LNG, plus the hyper-expense of LNG super-cooled tankers and terminals, rather than pipeline it more cheaply from Siberia, they would get it from a much closer source than the US east coast - say Indonesia or Qatar.

Lastly, an enormous increase in US production of natural gas acquired through offshore drilling would result in a substantial decrease in natural gas prices - resulting in no economic sense at all to liquefy it and send it to China on your fellow's own terms.

**

Jack,
The following is a quote from a pro-ethanol URL: "Reduced toxic emissions: Gasoline is a complex mixture of dozens of chemicals, many of them toxic. Ethanol adds oxygen to gasoline-improving combustion and reducing toxic exhaust emissions. Adding ethanol to gasoline also dilutes the potency of these toxic chemicals.

Studies have shown that ethanol:
* Reduces tailpipe carbon monoxide emissions by as much as 30 percent
* Reduces exhaust volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions by 12 percent
* Reduces toxic emissions by 30 percent
* Reduces particulate matter (PM) emissions by more than 25 percent".

Can you assert that these other reductions are either false, or not substantially beneficial? In particular, these folks claim a reduction in so-called "toxic" emissions, whereas your brief is just the opposite!
Ray S.

Reply:

Ray,
All of these claims for ethanol are true -- for pre-modern cars with carburetors. They are thus false for every car on the road today built over the last 20 years or so with computer controlled fuel-injection and oxygen sensors in the exhaust system.

So yes, the ethanol people are lying. There is virtually no difference in emissions with either ethanol or regular gas in a modern engine/exhaust system. Except that ethanol combustion emits acetaldehyde and other carcinogens. So it's worse than useless.

Ethanol is a fraud not just environmentally but in the claims it can give us energy independence. There isn't enough land in America to grow enough corn to do that. Corn can only be grown in the "corn belt" of the Midwest: north of this region it freezes, west of it is too dry, south of it too wet (so you get rot and fungus).

Then there's the energy expenditure of growing all the corn, the diesel for the tractors, and shipping it by truck as you can't pipeline it.

Once again, Americans are being conned into a phony "solution" which benefits the conmen, and rips off the taxpayer and consumer. The same old Washington story.

Is it also true that a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline? Therefore, would ethanol decrease fuel mileage? How many cars now on the road can tolerate levels of ethanol that are strong enough to make a difference?

Here in Thailand, they are trying ethanol made from palm oil (I think), as well as LPG and some other compressed gas. Are any of these carbon-based fuels the answer?

Fit, you will get about 20% less efficiency and mileage per gallon, and I have had experience with the E10 blend I believe. Let's say you have a 20 gallon tank of current blend, which is 90 gas and 10Ethanol. You should get the equivilent of distance as with a 19 gallon tank. I used to love to use this blend as it increased the octane and eliminated any spark knock.

It would be nice, if the government would just eliminate inport tarriff protection, we would be flooded with low cost ethanol.

Four comments,

One,
Corn grows just about anywhere in the South. Except, it is grown in small acreage patches and usually not the main sources of revenues and or is grown for internal or local usages.

Two,
Has anyone looked into just how little excess ethanol capacity there is for those that actually make ethanol?

I surmise they would find, not much if any, and ,if any, but drop in the bucket of excess capacity compared the volumes needed to effect even measurable change.

I submit a home grown corn/fibrous derived ethanol would be to our best interest away from any form of dependence, as now, and is likely to stand up quickest in being adapted to our advantage. Currently the cost to change a gasoline engine to a flex fuel engine is just at $100.

Several large companies are now making fast advances in fibrous ethanol and we have on our coastal plains, especially in the South, that have great potential for measurable quantities of sugar Cain and other types of ethanol source beyond the volumes more of corn and like products we could produce beyind that which is current being produced.


Three,

Shale Oil and our world’s largest reserves, current expensive true. Yet, in the 1980 experimentation at production, a price of $3.00 to $4.00 was consider viable.

Yet gain, in world were Oil prices are going no where but upward. Where not long from now, we will be seeing $100+ a barrel, at what price is independence verse dependency and this incessant blackmailing by the America basher out there.

Four,
This article portells something of consequence;

Military Plans Tests in Search for an Alternative to Oil-Based Fuel


WASHINGTON, May 13 — When an F-16 lights up its afterburners, it consumes nearly 28 gallons of fuel per minute. No wonder, then, that of all the fuel the United States government uses each year, the Air Force accounts for more than half. The Air Force may not be in any danger of suffering inconveniences from scarce or expensive fuel, but it has begun looking for a way to power its jets on something besides conventional fuel.

In a series of tests — first on engines mounted on blocks and then with B-52's in flight — the Air Force will try to prove that the American military can fly its aircraft by blending traditional crude-oil-based jet fuel with a synthetic liquid made first from natural gas and, eventually, from coal, which is plentiful and cheaper.

While the military has been a leader in adopting some technologies — light but strong metals, radar-evading stealth designs and fire-retardant flight suits, for example — any effort to hit a miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency rating has taken a back seat when the mission is to haul bombs farther and faster or push 70-ton tanks across a desert to topple an adversary. (The Abrams tank, for example, gets less than a mile per gallon under certain combat conditions.)

"Energy is a national security issue," said Michael A. Aimone, the Air Force assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics.

The United States is unlikely ever to become fully independent of foreign oil, Mr. Aimone said, but the intent of the Air Force project is "to develop enough independence to have assured domestic supplies for aviation purposes."

By late this summer, on the hard lake beds of the Mojave Desert, where the Air Force tests its most secret and high-performance aircraft, a lumbering B-52 is scheduled to take off in an experiment in which two of the giant bomber's engines will burn jet fuel produced not from crude oil but from natural gas. The plane's six other engines will burn traditional jet fuel — just in case.

The Air Force consumed 3.2 billion gallons of aviation fuel in fiscal year 2005, which was 52.5 percent of all fossil fuel used by the government, Pentagon statistics show. The total Air Force bill for jet fuel last year topped $4.7 billion.

Although the share of national energy consumption by the federal government and the military is just 1.7 percent, every increase of $10 per barrel of oil drives up Air Force fuel costs by $600 million per year.

Mr. Aimone said that if the synthetic blend worked, plans called for increasing its use in Air Force planes to 100 million gallons in the next two years.

Air Force and industry officials say that oil prices above $40 to $45 per barrel make a blend with synthetic fuels a cost-effective alternative to oil-based jet fuel.

Fuel costs have doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and crude oil prices since Hurricane Katrina have remained above $60 a barrel.

The Air Force effort falls under a directive from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to explore alternative fuel sources. Under the plan, the Air Force has been authorized to buy 100,000 gallons of synthetic fuel.

Ground experiments are scheduled to begin in coming weeks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, followed by test flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Although the Air Force is leading the project, it is working with the Automotive Tank Command of the Army, in Detroit, and the Naval Fuels Laboratory, at Patuxent River, Md.

The research and tests on synthetic fuel would ultimately produce a common fuel for the entire military, Air Force officials said.

The initial contract for unconventional fuel for the tests will be signed with Syntroleum Corporation of Tulsa, Okla., which has provided synthetic fuel for testing by the Departments of Energy, Transportation and Defense since 1998.

John B. Holmes Jr., Syntroleum's president and chief executive officer, said his firm would sell the Air Force its synthetic fuel for testing "at our cost, and we may be losing a little bit."

Neither Mr. Holmes nor the Air Force would provide cost estimates for the experimental fuel deal in advance of signing a final contract, expected in coming days.

Air Force officials have acknowledged, however, that the cost per gallon of the test fuel will be expensive.

Syntroleum can produce 42 gallons of synthetic fuel from 10,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The raw materials cost about $70.

If the military moves ahead with using the synthetic fuels, the Syntroleum technology could be used by factories elsewhere to produce the same 42 gallons of fuel from just $10 worth of coal, Mr. Holmes said.

"The United States is essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal," Mr. Holmes said. "It can be mined relatively inexpensively. We really believe that one of the things we can do to help our country's energy needs is to use the abundance of coal reserves."

Mr. Aimone said the large plants needed to produce nonconventional fuels did not exist and would have to be designed and built by the industry.

But he added: "We believe there are economic incentives as we invest in this, and invest with the industry at large, because there are vast coal reserves in this country. The economic pressures of rising oil prices can be moderated by the price of coal."



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14fue...=th&oref=slogin

I suspect that there isn't enough cropland in the entire world, arable and fertile, to produce enough ethanol. Period.

If you get a fuel alternative that's viable to sell at $40 per barrel, the great oil producing countries will just cut their 75% profit margin down to a level that will be cheaper. Now, that's good open market competition (if you could produce quantitites of alternative fuels that would seriously challenge the oil cartel), but I don't see it coming for another 30 years.

====================================================
If what you say is true why is it that Brazil is using ethanol exclusively w/o dependence on oil?

So in advancing toward the alternative even condsidering the outcomes and shortcoming that you as usual so negatively focus on, is that advancement a negative and or a positive position from where we are now?

Which is totally dependency and being sucked into this bent on genocidal abyss set forth in this 12-century mentality of self-flagellation of those who posse oil and who set in motion more and more chaos and lawlessness as to what is affecting the world.

I disagree with you theorem as to time completely. If we, Euro and Asia put, a to the moon in this decade effort into it, we would achieve imported oil independence or will be so close to imported oil independence the difference would be but marginal if we would just dedicate ourselves to the effort.

We could free ourselves of the burden of dealing with, acknowledging or even caring about the existence of these pirates of Arabia and two bit horn toads in Mexico, Canada and South Amercia.

We can advance this much further than imgainable and will if we just let price drive the effort.

I personally have found numerous ways to influence the price of gasoline oil and thusly energy in my life.

1.) I merely fill my tank to a predetermined dollar amount calculated on 3/4 what a full tank would cost me.
I just go to the fuel station a minute number of times more over a year. While each time setting aside my 1/4 tank cost and drawing interest on it until my next visit.

If 100 million drivers just did that in the short-term, demand would immediately drop, the supplies would increase and the speculators would go running for the hills and the price would drop significantly.

2.) I and the wife actually sit down and take but a moment or two to try too coordinate our known trips for the week. we have found we have cut actual miles driven by just doing that.

3.) I own a Toyota Prius rated at 60 but getting but 48 ( Energy credit applicable) and Honda CRV getting 20 in the city even as adapted with motorized wheel chair lift and access adding weight.

4.) The wife and I have adapted slow acceleration from and a coast to, the red light driving style that was recommended by Consumer reports. We weekly check for proper tire inflation as well. I am noting a slight but measurable up tick in my city mileage after this started. We also run the air less and attempt to tolerate a tad more of the heat.

5.) We reset our home thermostat to 83 degree. Programmed it to run at known peak heat hours when we are home and we turn the entire system off when we are not. I have seen a 17% drop in the electricity bill by first doing this before anything else.

6.) We go on line and look for at sites telling us the lowest gasoline petro price in a two-mile radius.

7.) We recently bought a tank-less water heater like those in Thailand but of course larger. It is projects to further decrease our electricity usage as it heats on demand instead of in reserve.

8.) We have recently bought a timer device for our Jacuzzi and cold pool that not only minimizes the heating, cooling and auto cleaning, but on the advise of the health department, even stops, for short periods, the continuing filtering. Thusly saving more electricity

9.) We have been long term and continuing investors in all types of energy including alternative sources, oil services and production as well as utility companies. It has paid off handsomely in bad and good times. Yes, Haliburton as well and it has paid off as well.

10.) We are buying a home generator that will eventually be, as they tell me, flex fuel compatible and we are seeking one that can equally be hooked up to wind and or solar or both energy sources which will give me tax breaks and allow me to sell my access energy to the utility companies when I do not need it.

11.) I am researching the flex fuel conversion kits now and if it all checks out will install this flex fuel capability in my vehicles now before the mob rushes to the door.

12.) We have even speculatively invested in Willie Nelson Biodiesel which is a Earth Biofuels, Inc. Earth Biofuels is a publicly traded company under the ticker symbol EBOF.OB

13.) Similarly, We have as well sought to invest in Superior Renewable Energy LLC who the State of Texas recently granted the rights to 39,900 acres of submerged lands in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Padre Island and south of Baffin Bay. Where they plan to build a giant off shore, wind turbine energy farm that could, in just a few more years, provide energy for 125,000 homes. That are also projecting in South Dakota, New Mexico, California and Hawaii.

13.) We are as well going to 16th Annual EPAC Ethanol Conference: Renewable Fuels - Making Progress in America, at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake, Montana, near Glacier National Park. We do this to get better informed on E85, make industry contracts and to visit this wonderful park and area.


I do all this in my own self interest realizing it is not the governments responsible to ensure my existence. IT IS MINE ALONE!!! If they are there to help or assist me all the better. But I seek self-determination and self-sufficiency as best I can by walking the walk as far as I can.

So one can but sit idly by in hopelessness and self divesting cynicism there FITs or they get off their Ersatz- like mouthy duffs and do something as best they can to effect the situation.

QUOTE

Doing is not teaching nothingness and doing nothing. It is doing something from the nothingness, if taught or not!!!-Trader

Which are you and all the other naysayer types here? What are you doing beyond the talk to affect your lives on this issue instead waiting for someone else to do it for you in this socialist epiphany of Quixotic missions?

Very admirable in your economizing, However not everyone has the investment to utilize all these shortcuts & The average consumer could in no way come up with the necessary funds to do what you have outlined.

QUOTE

Very admirable in your economizing, However not everyone has the investment to utilize all these shortcuts & The average consumer could in no way come up with the necessary funds to do what you have outlined.

Beyond the Investment issues you focused on, which I agree is not for most people directly but can be, if they save or invest in retirement plans or in 401k plans indirectly.

Otherwise, in a nut shell, you are stating Americans prefer not do anything about a personal problem they have alternatives to impact. Yet, instead, they would prefer, as they are doing, to rant and to blame someone else, demanding that someone else solve a problem that is as much self created in their choices and behaviors as individuals as to anything else.

Rather sad is it not, People doing nothing at all is the preferred choice of at least doing something even in a small way. As if, in complete dependency, we desire to be unknowing or wanting to know, that in even small ways, when attempted and when stacked upon the next and the next, they become a BIG ways of self determination and self sufficiency jus pos to do nothing choices and behaviors of dependency.

I note an ignoring of some common sense perceptions included in what I have done that do address what people can do that impacts the issue. Things like making different choices when they buy new things or replace old things daily in the millions. Things like they can do in changing choices and behaviors that are significant in the their impact on the demand for fuel. Behaviors and choices that are ineffective as compared to but a few tweaks they could make that are more effective.

We buy fuel, cars, and energy using equipment regularly and often do we not?

When we but replace a hot water heater. We make choice that have costs in current dollars and energy usage cost in future dollars. I think and know people can afford to pay less future dollars by paying but a marginal higher current dollar price for efficiency.

Daily Americans buy millions of gallons fuel for their vehicles. Yet, you say that the average American cannot afford to buy 3/4 of a tank instead of topping off in the now customary laziness that it is easier and less hassle.

Something that is but a small effort, yet, if done in volume and frequency of times, it becomes a massive effort that will drive the price of fuel and oil down quickly. They choice to act otherwise in choices and behaviors unrelated to affordability. Yet, which are instead oblivious ME NOW moments of choice and behavior.

Daily millions of Americans cars drive in urban environments in rush and stop traffic and from red light to red light, consuming a significant percentage of all their fuel usage, in a way the experts say is the most inefficient way ALL vehicle use fuel.

They stomp on the accelerator when in the traffic beings to move then slam the brakes when it backs up. In between red lights, they stomp on the accelerator as if at Indy, racing in between red lights, weaving and bobbing, accelerating in a rush to cut off another to get but one car link ahead.

Yet, you say they cannot afford to change these behaviors to save on the consumption and money that rant and complain about spending, while wasting much of it in unbridled behaviors not at all related to affordability. But, instead in a self serving unwillingness to change what can impact their complaints.

You also say they cannot afford to make any effort to keep their tires properly inflated and their car well tuned. Yet, if they do not they waste even more fuel in these urban schemes of obvious waste.

You say they cannot afford to drive 55 or 60 instead of 80 or 85, yet ,in doing so, they consume more and pay more, as much as 25% more. That is obviously a ME NOW choice not an issue of affordability.

Nor, as you say, can they afford to take two to three minutes a week to plan and consolidate and or eliminate, as best they can, regular known vehicle trips. Nor can they afford to seek out, in more efforts, of regular, none vacation, sources for carpooling and or avenues of using mass transit in some even small percentage of their transportation as compared to not doing even anything at all.

Nor, when they buy the millions of vehicles each year can they afford to stop buying 8 to 12 miles to gallon gasoline or diesel vehicles and instead defer to one of the many vehicles that offer much higher mileage per gallon and equally fits to their personal needs.

Nor, as you say, can they afford to buy programmable thermostats, live a little warmer or cooler in their homes and or seek to invest in tax credit incentive partial paying technology that will save them money when they have to replace certain equipment in their homes. A choice of behavior where future dollars spent are ill consider or not considered at all.

Nor, can they afford, if they live were E85 is available, to pay about $100 for a flex fuel conversion and save 25% per gallon.



Yet, they can afford to spend and or use more and even more later on, while ranting to high haven about some thing they actually can do something about. Be it in but a small way, which is in their best interest to do to begin with.

Yet, further in this choice of ME NOW, they can well afford to blame others and seek dependency on others to solve what IS THEIR SELF CREATED PROBLEM. A problem which has some level of resolution drawn in the choices and behaviors they prefer not to make.

I opine its choice and behavior not affordability that is the lament of the average American you describe.

....gas is gay....

Please PM TQ, he is an expert at both having gas and being gay.

The U.S. Govt's Secret Colorado Oil Discovery

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world - more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. Three companies have been chosen to lead the way. Test drilling has already begun...


Five months ago, the U.S. Energy Department announced the results of a land survey...

It was conducted to determine the official amount of oil a thousand feet deep in the Rocky Mountains...

They reported this stunning news:

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.

Here are the official estimates:
· 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
· 18-times as much oil as Iraq
· 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
· 22-times as much oil as Iran
· 500-times as much oil as Yemen
...And it's all right here in the Western United States.

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says, "We've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East."

More than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped.

"That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today," reports The Denver Post.
When asked about America's least-publicized oil supply, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch said:
"The amounts of oil are staggering. Who would have guessed that in just Colorado and Utah, there is more recoverable oil than in the Middle East?"

Here's the kicker...

The U.S. government already owns the land. It's been right there under our noses the whole time.
In fact, the government's appointed a small group of companies to begin the drilling.

Test drilling has already begun.

And the profit forecasts are ridiculous. According to the RAND Corporation (a public-policy think tank for the government), this small region can produce:

Three million barrels of oil per day... That translates into more than $20 BILLION a year.
These are the conservative estimates. The U.S. Energy Dept. estimates an eventual output of 10 million barrels of oil per day. At that rate, the money flow would be even greater.

I've written this letter to tell you everything I've learned about this rarely publicized oil reserve... who's drilling it... and how to get a piece of the world's biggest, untapped oil supply - before it's too late.

Here's the full story...

The Next American Oil Boom

There's a new source of oil in the American West.

Today, it sits idle - untapped - inside more than 16,000 square miles of rock and sand.
Geologists call what lies in this region, oil shale.

What is oil shale?



At first glance, oil shale looks like an ordinary black rock.
It feels grainy to the touch and... greasy. You see, what's inside oil shale has huge governments, Big Oil, venture capitalists, and even everyday investors scrambling to stake a claim.
Oil shale - when heated - oozes bubbling crude.

This precious resource is rare - found only in a few select countries. Places like China, Brazil, Estonia, Morocco, and Australia.

But the real story is how much untapped oil shale lies beneath U.S. soil. As the chart to the right indicates, there's 4-times more oil shale in the U.S. than in all other countries combined.

Over the past 125 years, oil shale has been the secret oil source for a handful of nations. Specifically, those fortunate enough to have it...

· China's been using oil shale since 1929. Today, China is the largest producer of oil from oil shale. It plans to double the daily rate of production soon.

· Estonia is an oil shale dependent economy. Over 90% of the country's electricity is fueled by shale oil. In fact, electricity run on oil shale is a chief export.

· In 1991, Brazil built the world's largest oil shale facility. They've already produced more than 1.5 MILLION tons of oil to make high quality transportation fuels.

· Jordan, Morocco, and Australia have recently announced plans to utilize their oil shale resources. All 3 governments are currently working to build oil shale facilities.



But all these countries' oil shale resources pale in comparison to the U.S. supply. As you can see from the table to the right, the United States dominates the oil shale market - with over 72% of the world's oil shale resources.

Our gargantuan supply of oil lies beneath an area called the Green River Formation - a barren stretch of land covering portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
World-renowned geologist Walter Youngquist calls the oil beneath the Green River Formation, "a national treasure."

Congress calls this area simply, "the next Saudi Arabia."

It's easy to see why...

This region holds the largest known oil reserve on the planet...



Colorado's Oil Lands - Restricted for 76 Years, Now Open for Drilling

There are over 16,000 square miles of oil shale in the Green River formation...
Each acre holds 2 million barrels of oil - it's the most concentrated energy source on earth, according to the Energy Department.

The federal government owns 80% of this oil-rich land.

In fact, the government placed protective legislation on this land in 1930, forbidding anyone to touch it.
You see, the government always knew this land was saturated with oil - but getting it out has always been expensive.

Buying oil from foreign countries was always the cheaper bet. It has been for the past 80 years.
Wisely, the government kept the land around for a "rainy day", protecting it with 1930s legislation.
I'm sure you're aware of today's situation at the gas pump. Buying oil from foreign countries has gotten out of hand. The price of oil is sky-high. It's way too expensive to keep buying foreign oil. In other words, the "rainy day" has finally arrived.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. Oil shale technologies have begun to advance - drastically.
Companies are coming up with ways to extract oil from the Green River Formation very cheaply.

For example, one Utah-based company says it can extract the oil for as little as $10 a barrel. In fact dozens of companies have stepped forward with similar claims. With oil prices approaching $70 a barrel - these are pretty significant breakthroughs.

That's all the government needed to hear.

On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed into law, a mandate lifting the protective legislation on the Green River Formation.

This mandate is called The Energy Policy Act of 2005. It calls for the opening phases of oil extraction in the Green River Formation - the world's most concentrated energy source.

We're finally ready to tap the largest oil reserve on the planet...

"The United States Could become 'The New Middle East'"~ U.S. Energy Department Survey





Just look at the numbers:

Fact #1 - U.S. oil shale is 2-times as dense as Canadian oil sands: It takes 2 tons of Canadian oil sand to produce one barrel of oil. It takes only half as much oil shale to generate a barrel of oil. There's simply more oil in oil shale.

Fact #2 - The U.S. has larger oil resources: There's 11-times more oil in the U.S. than there is in Alberta, Canada. See for yourself in the chart below.





Source
The Oil Report research service $199 for a full year.

The Pentagon has announced plans to purchase 300,000 barrels of Green River oil shale every day. They'll use this fuel for military aircraft and vehicles. This deal shows just how fast things are moving in the Green River Formation.




Who cares about you baby?

Not the US HOUSE!!!

$3.00 soon to be $5.00 gas

H.AMDT.856 (A023)
Amends: H.R.5386
Sponsor: Rep Putnam, Adam H. [FL-12] (offered 5/18/2006)

AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
An amendment to prohibit use of funds in the bill to conduct activities in violation of the moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.

( No Oil Drilling off California or Florida and or other coast areas where. like in Alaska where there are known proven reserves awaiting.)

STATUS:
5/18/2006 7:48pm:

Amendment (A023) offered by Mr. Putnam.
5/18/2006 9:50pm:

On agreeing to the Putnam amendment Agreed to by recorded vote: 217 - 203 (Roll no. 170)

Republicans--Yes-59--No-165--Not Voting -6

Democratic--Yes-157--N0-38--Not Voting-6

Independent--Yes-1

TOTALS--Yes-217--NO-203--No Vote- 12

Link to see just which party and how much your representative REALLY CARES about the price gas you pay.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll170.xml

P.S Cuba has given Oil Drilling leases to Chinese Companies who will be side drilling right under our territory by 2008 tapping our oil. Thanks Congress.

Great sales promotion from DailyWealth.com. However, it is a bit too pie-in-the-sky for me. But the potential is enormous.

Try this site, which is not quite up to the sales hype as the former post.

QUOTE

United States Of America

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world’s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The shale oil can be extracted by surface and in-situ methods of retorting: depending upon the methods of mining and processing used, as much as one-third or more of this resource might be recoverable. There are also the Devonian-Mississippian black shales in the eastern United States.

Data reported for the present Survey indicate the vastness of US oil shale resources: the proved amount of shale in place is put at 3 340 billion tonnes, with a shale oil content of 242 billion tonnes, of which about 89% is located in the Green River deposits and 11% in the Devonian black shales. Recoverable reserves of shale oil are estimated to be within the range of 60-80 billion tonnes, with additional resources put at 62 billion tonnes.

Oil distilled from shale was burnt and used horticulturally in the second half of the 19th century in Utah and Colorado but very little development occurred at that time. It was not until the early 1900’s that the deposits were first studied in detail by USGS and the government established the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, that for much of the 20th century served as a contingency source of fuel for the nation’s military. These properties were originally envisioned as a way to provide a reserve supply of oil to fuel US naval vessels.

Oil shale development had always been on a small scale but the project that was to represent the greatest development of the shale deposits was begun immediately after World War II in 1946 - the US Bureau of Mines established the Anvils Point oil shale demonstration project in Colorado. However, processing plants had been small and the cost of production high. It was not until the USA had become a net oil importer, together with the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, that interest in oil shale was reawakened.

In the latter part of the 20th century military fuel needs changed and the strategic value of the shale reserves began to diminish. In the 1970’s ways to maximise domestic oil supplies were devised and the oil shale fields were opened up for commercial production. Oil companies led the investigations: leases were obtained and consolidated but one-by-one these organisations gave up their oil shale interests. Unocal was the last to do so in 1991.

Recoverable resources of shale oil from the marine black shales in the eastern United States were estimated in 1980 to exceed 400 billion barrels. These deposits differ significantly in chemical and mineralogical composition from Green River oil shale. Owing to its lower H:C ratio, the organic matter in eastern oil shale yields only about one-third as much oil as Green River oil shale, as determined by conventional Fischer assay analyses. However, when retorted in a hydrogen atmosphere, the oil yield of eastern oil shale increases by as much as 2.0-2.5 times the Fischer assay yield.

Green River oil shale contains abundant carbonate minerals including dolomite, nahcolite, and dawsonite. The latter two minerals have potential by-product value for their soda ash and alumina content, respectively. The eastern oil shales are low in carbonate content but contain notable quantities of metals, including uranium, vanadium, molybdenum, and others which could add significant by-product value to these deposits.

All field operations have ceased and at the present time shale oil is not being produced in the USA. Large-scale commercial production of oil shale is not anticipated before the second or third decade of the 21st century.

I gather, in assumption, by your tone, making money is not your thing and somehow it is offensive to make money and or gain some knowledge from pitchmen. Is that true?

Actually John, you may recall I have posted often on this subject and have well researched the subject.

I have even visited the former Shell Oil Company Site in Colorado and have studied their "in situ conversion," methods of extraction. I, likewise, visited the Colorado School of Mining. I have also come across some information about a new pipe embedded laser deflection heating method being experimented with now and funded by DOD dollars as I understand it.

The data was from a Services who sales information indeed. But, not the one you linked as best I understand.

Furthermore, I did, purposefully, leave out the sales pitch part out, using only the data I have verified before from other sources like the one you linked

I used only the data as I thought it was more comprehensively laid out in Graphical forms than most sources I have seen.

http://www.newsmax.com/fir/oilbust.cfm?PROMO_CODE=1EAA-1

No matter though, as you noted, it does not change the facts of the potential for this untapped energy if we let price drive the market and these idiots with oil keep threatening to cut it off for us as if big dogs but with little barks.

Even Mexico's oil Minister said yesterday, using the immigration debate and border security, WE NEED THEIR OIL, like they did not need our trade and open borders to push their unemployed workers here. Similarly in a need for us as much as we them, the 31 year El Presidente for life, Chavez's Oil Monopoly is spending $500 million in the US for better refinery capability.

This shale is likely as you pointed out a very a good long term source for energy and in my parlance for investment as prices increase, along with coal, nuclear and efficiency technology, it will be the nectar of the US survival for centuries to come while others tanks are running dry.

The kicker, in this early stage, is picking the company or companies that will emerge leading the pack in all these arenas.

Like E85 and Flex Fuel conversion kit producers, manufactures and distributors, the eventual winners, IF E85 emerges at all as a strong widely available alternative, is a game with great potential but high risk requiring a skillful well informed selections in this early stage of uncertainty.

We, those like you and I, cannot control which direction the country is to head, in this regard, as it leaves foreign oil dependency. Nevertheless, I instinctively feel the nation is on some track in that direction. The BIG question is which track and on what rails are we to ride to promise land?


P.S. Any fool can pitch or be pitched. Yet, only a fool does not examine the real worth in the pitch. Hey!


What did you think about the US House's desire to NOT get more oil to the market to help us out in what is surely to be an ever increasing, and likely at some point with Iran and all, sky rocketing oil price outcomes as time goes forward?

Of course not! Of all people, you should know me well enough by now. I'm the ultimate free enterprise person. However, the nature of the piece gave me the impression that we were dealing with a cheerleader presentation from DailyWorth.com, in an attempt to get me to immediately send them investment monies.

I believe in positive thinking, but attempting to blow sunshine up the 'backside' is not realistic.

In truth, shale oil is not ready for 'primetime' yet. The large amount of tar sands in the same area are a better bet, as they are not as hard to get out of the ground.



I've been researching it as well, but maybe not as much as you, since I am more into fission and hydrogen fuels, which go together like 'hand in glove'.

But I am all for it, if it will put us into readiy available fuel, where we will not have to rely on outsiders. I'll look into it a bit more since it is being bandied about more. I still have reservations about extracting all that material, steaming it, and then processing the fuel. It's much more expensive than regular oil.



Very short sighted and selfish on the part of the Coastal representatives. Here is my opinion.

I Thought I had ASSumed incorrectly. Thanks for clearing that up.

I am in complete agreement that shale is not ready for prime time at $3.00 per gal but at $5.00 or higher that may begin to prime the pump for prime time especially in conjunction with some ideas being bantered around about E85.

I look not at it being here as a consumer but as an investor in it getting here.

Nonetheless, what an ace in the hole to actually have in this America hating world especially by these Alaways threatening cut off oil sumps types out there.

I also prefer fission and fuel cell but keep reading contradictory information as to their prime time readiness as well.

I have read an interesting review oh Hydrogen Fuels at
http://fermat.nap.edu/catalog/10922.html#toc

and at

http://www.fuelcells.org/

I once thought cold fusion was going somewhere but it appears dormant these days.

As to electric gas hybrids, I had a very interesting conversation with a Honda Mechanic a few days ago. As to the correctness of his comment, I have no idea.

I was astounded to hear the unspoken long-term repair, maintenance, and replacement costs of the current generation of hybrids. He implied due to the complexity of having two powered drive systems. You in comparison to flex fuel or regual fueled vehicles, increase repair, maintenance and especially replacement cost substantially.

Something few people I think consider. I know I did not on my 2006 Prius. Thank god I bought in on an optional buy and or return fixed terms instead of cash like I almost did.

I think these cost need more examination and visiabilty for the buyers who are rushing to buy them if what he said is true.

The biggest problem with Ethanol fuel is what it does to the gaskets of the engine. With gasoline, the character of the fuel causes the gaskets to remain the same size as before, and they do not tend to go bad. With Ethanol, it tends to dry out the gasket and does not have the lubricant effect of gas. Consequently gaskets tend to break down and the engine has to have them in order to seal it's many chambers. I think that that is the primary cause for early rebuild. With an 85/15 of gas to ethanol as has been common, this does not degrade the engine.

I'm an ignorant neophyte ignoramus on these technical matters, but let me see if I understand the basic primary elementals here:

1. The USA (and Canada, perhaps) has a skillion bazillion barrels of gunk that can be heated into gasoline, from tar sands and shale, but it would require a tetra-giga amount of BTU's to heat it all up, and a million grinders to crush or squeeze it all, and it would cost as much as the annual federal deficit to manufacture. So, maybe it will take prices for Saudi crude oil around $100 for a barrel, before it becomes competitive.

2. The oil companies have had their chances at this bonanza, and already they have all folded their tents and disappeared (unlike Bedoins) into the night, because it cannot make a P-R-O-F-I-T.

3. The car companies are belatedly working on engines that can run on higher blends of ethanol, and LPG and LNG and maybe the PGA, but that's still pretty much in the experimental stages.

4. The same car companies are also feverishly trying to discover a cure for the four-stroke engine, the diesel engine, etc., including turbocharging, supercharging, hybrids, hydrogen, and electric - but still can't beat the incredibly inefficient processes of the four-stroke. Even the rotary engine wasn't the answer, in spite of Dr. Wankel, whose staff at NSU didn't have unlimited funds, nor has Mazda.

5. And that brings us back to gasoline for $5 per gallon.

Right?

For someone, who does not like Wesley Pruden's satire, you aparantly like it for yourself. Not being ungrateful, mind you.

In truth, satire aside, you are on the right track here. The US and canada, along with others, are at least knee high in hydrocarbons, US and Canada up to their necks. And this is good. However, it is not all that economically feasable, with petroleum prices being lower, or at least volatile today.

However, with the costs as they are now, it is probably proffitable for them to begin the process of unlocking the hydrocarbons burried beneath the surface in the US. Canada is already working with the tar sands and doing quite well. But note that their deposits are at the surface, and less costly to reach and process.

Also, the current cost of petroleum is over inflated, due to the inefficiencies of SOBs(state owned businesses), civil war(as in Nigeria), terrorist threats(as in Iraq, Iran, etc) and Left wing kooks(Read Uncle (H)Ugo Chazez. This creates fear in the markets, and thus artificially high futures market prices. Certain investment companies have been correct in predicting this rise in price, and they are now predicting it's drop. Steve Forbes has been doing this since November 2005, and I concur.

Keeping this in mind, the oil companies are able to read the 'tea leaves' as well as I, so they are holding back, knowing that the price will most likely drop again, making this venture into shale oil again not economically worth while.

Stay tuned! News at 11.

I would add to John L’s correctness as to his Canadian Sand tar production snap shot. As it has been, for a while now, in the case of Canada, a viable economic endeavor as a source of oil. Other countries, as his link showed have a more difficult and costly extractable types of sand tar.

I would disagree with both John and Fits on this presumption about Oil company manipulation, unless I misunderstood it. Unlike was correct in the past, that the Oil companies nor, now, do even the producers of oil, have near the control as to the price of oil, currently and especially into the future, they once did.

I submit it is competitive demand that spurs speculation, which spurs competitive demand in repeating cycles of upward pricing pressures that is now the driving force for the price of consumer related oil usage.

It is not the oil companies nor even the producers who can be proven to, in fact, be near flat out in capacity of production and fullfilling current demand, that is evidence that they no longer are in command as they once was in impacting this rising trend of higher prices.

I submit one of the most striking pieces of evidence of this is China's and India's aggressive hunt for sources. This is the new paridigm, unlike ever before, and, is the ultimate proof that this cycle has just begun of an upward spiral in prices. This is if nothing else drastic impacts the supply and demand equation.

I will try to put it as succinctly as I can in my simple mindedness.

I’ll bet the farm on Boone Pickens. A man who has yet to be wrong on oil prices and production since the 1970’s.

He says, he guarantees, that we are more likely to see $100 or more a barrel prices for oil, way before we ever see less than $60 per barrels, under current conditions, notwithstanding more world energy instability brought on by politically destabilizing productions and demand issues or unstable Nations and or terror related incidences, which he says, would only add to his prediction of ever increasing price from this point on.

As the graph below shows us, as production decreases, as it shows, prices will keep increasing.

Oil production Graph.



PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:
IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT
February 2005

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/t...rsch_report.pdf

Shale Oil

As I mentioned there is the technique of "in situ conversion," methods of extraction that has already proven more cost and pollution efficient than open pit mining as first tried.

Likewise, Hydrogen, Fissional materials and lasers are being examined as sources to produce the 500 degrees Celsius needed to convert the shale while underground into what is Kerogen, a pre-oil and a liquid, which can then be pumped out, mixed with Hydrogen and distilled into oil we can use.

In-Situ Retorting.

In-situ retorting entails heating oil shale in place, extracting the liquid from the ground, and transporting it to an upgrading or refining facility. Because in-situ retorting does not involve mining or above ground spent shale disposal, it offers an alternative that does not permanently modify land surface topography and that may be significantly less damaging to the environment.

Shell Oil Company has successfully conducted small-scale field tests of an insitu process based on slow underground heating via thermal conduction. Larger-scale operations are required to establish technical viability, especially with regard to avoiding adverse impacts on groundwater quality.

Shell anticipates that, in contrast to the cost estimates for mining and surface retorting, the petroleum products produced by their thermally conductive in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel. The company is still developing the process, however, and cost estimates could easily increase as more information is obtained and more detailed designs become available.
Some more food for thought.

2005 Rand Corporation study on cost of production for Shale Oil.

Cost information available from projects and design studies performed in the
1980s can be escalated to give a very rough estimate of the anticipated capital costs for mining and surface retorting plants. Using this approach, a first-of-a-kind commercial surface retorting complex (mine, retorting plant, upgrading plant, supporting utilities, and spent shale reclamation) is unlikely to be profitable unless real crude oil prices are at least $70 to $95 per barrel (2005 dollars).

Production Costs.

Oil shale has not been exploited in the United States because the energy industry, after some halting efforts, decided that developing oil shale was economically unviable. Over the past two decades, very little research and development effort has been directed at reducing the costs of surface retorting. For thermally conductive in-situ retorting, costs might be competitive with crude oil priced at less than $30 per barrel, but the technical viability of in-situ retorting will not be fully established for at least six years.


National Security.

A drop in world oil prices would reduce revenue to oil exporting countries. A 3 to 5 percent reduction in revenue would not change the political dynamic in those countries a great deal. With regard to enhancing national security, the principal value of oil shale production would be its contribution to a portfolio of measures intended to increase oil supplies and reduce oil demand.

Other claims of the benefits of increased domestic oil production, such as a reduced trade deficits and more reliable fuel supplies for national defense purposes, are not well justified.

We are rapidly approaching a critical juncture for oil shale development. On June 9, 2005, the Bureau of Land Management released its Call for Nominations of parcels to be leased for research, development, and demonstration of oil shale recovery technologies in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.sum.pdf

United States Of America

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world’s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The shale oil can be extracted by surface and in-situ methods of retorting: depending upon the methods of mining and processing used, as much as one-third or more of this resource might be recoverable. There are also the Devonian-Mississippian black shales in the eastern United States.

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/public...shale/shale.asp

Shale oil.

Production of oil from oil shale has been attempted at various times for nearly 100 years. So far, no venture has proved successful on a significantly large scale (Youngquist, 1998b). One problem is that there is no oil in oil shale. It is a material called kerogen. The shale has to be mined, transported, heated to about 4500C (8500F), and have hydrogen added to the product to make it flow.

http://www.energybulletin.net/2680.html

http://www.rand.org/news/press.05/08.31.html

Like I said before, DOD has begun, with some optimistic results, looking at other sources for aircraft fuel through a pilot program begun in 2005. It is testing as we speak.

Lastly, at what price is a nations continued existence and or, are its jobs and the economy that creates them, measurable in importance, in a world where many would withhold or seek to effect the supply of this needed dependent product for merely political and non-economic reasons. A fact of threat we hear about daily from All quarters of terror and nation states The Republic of Chavez, from Iraq, Mexico and to Iran.

P.S When Oil People start beating the drum of no more oil dependency who is a better indicator as to what they see for tomorrow?