Proving Oil Shale at $30 a Barrel?

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The Green River area of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado is said to contain more oil equivalent than all the known reserves in Saudi Arabia. This has yet to be proven. If the US Congress would kindly get out of the way, several people in the oil industry would like to have the chance to demonstrate the promise of oil shale.

Bullion Monarch Mining is pleased to announce it has begun construction on a pre-production demonstration plant to extract oil from oil shale. The plant is anticipated to demonstrate a scale feasibility of producing oil from oil shale at a target cost of below $30 USD per barrel.

...The oil shale is heated to approximately 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which releases the oil from the shale in a gaseous form, and then is cooled to become liquid oil. The pilot plant is expected to be completed by late 2008.

This patent pending process has been shown in advanced computer modeling done by the Idaho National Labs, part of the DOE, as a subcontractor for Emery Energy, to use less than three gallons of water per barrel of oil produced and has CO2 sequestering capabilities. EnShale's intent is to mine underground and disturb as little of the surface as possible. __EnergyDaily

This "gasification" method of creating liquid oil from oil shale appears to have minimal adverse environmental impact, compared to the nightmare scenarios that large and powerful environmental lobbies are using to sway congress.

Another approach developed by Raytheon using microwave energy may actually use less energy and be cleaner than the EnShale approach. It is important that the US Congress step back and allow the industry to test the resource and demonstrate its capability to extract the resource responsibly. A period of high oil prices that seriously impact national industry is a time for these irresponsible legislative prohibitions to end.