Replies to post #4107 on Eldorado Exploration Inc (fka EDEP)

[Argyll]

OT: Oil Shale

A very interesting article:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2006/gb20060705_516609.htm

Excerpt:

Israel Presses for Oil From Shale

With the help of homegrown technology, an Israeli company's proposed energy plant could help the country vastly reduce oil imports

With oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel, Israel is looking for ways to reduce its near-total dependence on energy imports. It's pondering the use of the nation's huge reserves of oil shale—a dark, crumbly rock loaded with hydrocarbons—located in the central and southern parts of the country. Thanks to a technical breakthrough, it should be possible to extract fuel oil from the shale for less than $20 a barrel. That could allow Israel eventually to cut its crude imports by up to one-third.

Shale is already used as a fuel for power plants in Israel and Estonia, where the rock is burned like coal to drive steam turbines. Israel's small shale-fired power plant was built nearly 20 years ago. But past attempts to extract liquid oil from shale weren't economically feasible: The process cost upwards of $50 per barrel at a time when oil was selling for less than half that.

Now, the tables have turned. A Russian-born Israeli immigrant named Moshe Gvirtz developed a technique in the 1990s to squeeze oil from shale by mixing the rock with a residue from conventional oil refining and putting it through a catalytic process. The dramatically improved results, coupled with soaring crude prices, have inverted the economics of oil shale. That could help not just Israel but dozens of other countries, including the U.S., that are rich in shale reserves.

...

[TopHat]

There is still a lot of oil out there that we have not even begun to tap. There is times more oil that we knew of. Here is one more just for fun: (the point being that the alarmist who have claimed that we are/have run out of oil are just "the sky is falling" types):

"A new piece of oilfield technology developed by a former Howard Hughes company is about to revolutionize the oil industry – and could help producers recover 2,978 million barrels of “missing oil” in the state of Texas over the next 10 years"

http://www1.youreletters.com/t/381791/11428075/789840/280/ (note: this is a sales promo letter, but it still expresses the point of the missed opportunities now present before us thru the development of new drilling techniques.)

Here is a fun paragraph from the article which comments on the "peak oil" that others with agendas wish us to believe:
"But what does the technology mean in real dollar terms? Right now, U.S. production is hovering around 1.9 billion barrels a year - roughly 1.5 billion below the historic high set in 1970. Ideally, BDM would help to boost it from 1.9 billion barrels to about 5.7 billion barrels - a difference worth some $223 billion dollars in today's market." Like I said earlier: Our peak is still in our future!

I get this stuff weekly, this one just showed up in my email this morning, though it is actually "old" news.

[Jagman]

TopHat...I found that info with a Google search...included the link. I don't know the industry that well to know what's up to date or correct, so thanks for the additional info....