fayfreethinkers.com

Study sees harmful hunt for extra oil
By Carola Hoyos in London

Published: February 18 2007
All the world’s extra oil supply is likely to come from expensive and environmentally damaging unconventional sources within 15 years, according to a detailed study.

This will mean increasing reliance on hard-to-develop sources of energy such as the Canadian oil sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt.

A report from Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based consultancy, calculates that the world holds 3,600bn barrels of unconventional oil and gas that need a lot of energy to extract.

So far only 8 per cent of that has begun to be developed, because the world has relied on easier sources of oil and gas.

Only 15 per cent of the 3,600bn is heavy and extra-heavy oil, with the rest being even more challenging.

The study makes clear the shift could come sooner than many people in the industry had expected, even though some major conventional oil fields will still be increasing their production in 2020. Those increases will not be enough to offset the decline at other fields.

See here.

Oil shale and tar sands are horribly expensive both economically and environmentally (I proofread a Bechtel proposal for extracting and processing oil shale back in 1981) and are only "viable" if "conventional" petroleum is incredibly expensive (we're talking over $100 barrel) AND you dismiss replacing petroleum with various forms of biofuel - which the petroleum industry & it's hired economic as well as scientific guns are doing. Again, if the nimrods would just start building the alternative plants, they'd both save money (BRI Energy plants are mucho cheeper than extracting and processing oil shale to a consistency that can go into a refining plant - and faster with an 18-24 month groundbreak to online build) and retain their power in society.