Replies to post #338312 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Orvis]

Zeev,
Having invested in oil shale cos. 20-30 years ago and lost mucho money I would have to say that the economics of producing an oil like product is still light years away for many reasons.
This site gives some great info on the substance;
http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ser/shale/shale.asp

Orvis

[langostino]

Zeev - it's not the manpower

there's no shortage of ex-auto workers that could be exported north <vbg>.

The problem is the net energy budget is less than 10%, and that's before you get the to the fact there simply isn't enough water available without constructing enormous water projects and competing for (read: paying for) water bound for other destinations. And then there are the environmental impacts. Canada would have to drop out of the Kyoto Treaty if it were to pursue this extraordinarily polluting refining process. Add in reclamation costs and the equation just gets worse.

Because all of these costs per production unit grow dramatically with scale (the larger the refining needs, the further the water has to be imported from, for example), they are NOT fixed costs, but rather INCREASING VARIABLE costs.

So it is simply not possible to put a single simple number as the "ceiling" this would put. It would be a sliding scale, and it's pretty clear that sliding scale begins much higher than the number you used, and goes much higher the moment you move to quantity of any meaningful consequence.