US Oil Find Holds More Than OPEC (3 TRILLION barrels)

**Shsm** · 11-13-2012, 12:36 PM

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=17536852

Originally Posted by -

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.

"In the past 100 years — in all of human history -- we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here," said Roger Day, vice president for operations for American Shale Oil (AMSO).

The Green River drilling is beginning as shale mining is booming in the U.S. and a report by the International Energy Agency predicts that the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer by 2020. That flood of oil can have major implications for the U.S. economy as well as the country's foreign policy which has been based on a growing scarcity of oil.

The IEA report does not detail where the American oil will be coming from, but the largest deposit is the Green River formation which has yet to tapped in any significant way.

This tantalizing bonanza, however, remains just out of reach, at least for now. The cost of extracting the Green River oil at the moment would be higher than what it could be sold for. And there are significant environmental obstacles.

The operation might require so much water it would compete with Denver and agriculture for vital supplies, the GAO report warned, could pollute underground streams, affect fish and other wildlife, and kick up so much dirt it would leave national monuments in a cloud of dust.

Nevertheless, the federal government has authorized six experimental drilling leases on federal land in an effort to find a way to tap into the riches of the Green River Formation.

Day's American Shale has a lease on 160 acres 40 miles northwest of Rifle, Colo. It has already produced oil on a pilot basis, and now stands poised, if it gets the necessary government permissions, to produce on a larger scale.

Getting oil from Green River shale is a different proposition than getting gas and oil from other sites by using the controversial method of "fracking," fracturing the underground rock with pressurized, chemical-infused water.

The hydrocarbons in Green River shale are more intimately bound up with the rock, so that fracking cannot release them. The shale has to be heated to 5,000 degrees Farenheit before it will give up its oil.

Producers have been trying to accomplish that in one of two ways: Either they bring the shale to the surface and then cook it , or they sink a deep shaft and place an electric heater at the base, a process called in-situ. AMSO has been testing in-situ with mixed success.

"We put in a 600 kilowatt electric heater in, 2,100 feet below the surface," said Day. "The idea was that this would heat the shale and cause the conversion of solid hydrocarbons into liquid oil and gas. These, then, would be brought to the surface."

Things have not gone smoothly.

"We plugged it in the first week in January," said Day, referring to the heater. "It burned out like your toaster, only this is a toaster that costs several million dollars to repair. Just in the past month we've figured out what went wrong. We expect to re-install in December. If we're lucky, we'll put heat in the ground again before the end of the year."

If everything pans out and if AMSO gets the green light from the federal government, the company's half-dozen wells initially might produce about 1,000 barrels a day. Later, at peak production, Day estimates they could produce "100,000 barrels a day for 30 years."

Enefit, an oil producer headquartered in Estonia, has been producing oil from oil shale in Europe for more than 30 years, according to the CEO of its Utah subsidiary, Enefit American Oil. Rikki Hrenko says Enefit brings the shale to the surface, then heats it in retorts.

"It's more labor intensive to have to mine the shale," Hrenko said. "But the economics are still quite feasible." She puts the break-even price at about $65 a barrel. The cost of producing in Utah, she thinks, will be only slightly higher than in Estonia.

Enefit doesn't lease its Utah site from the U.S. government; it owns it. "We purchased it March 2011," Hrenko says. The company's goal is to have all the necessary permits by the end of 2016, start construction, and to be producing oil commercially in 2020 at the rate of 25,000 barrels a day.

Among the hurdles faced by would-be Green River producers are environmental costs, first among them being water consumption, according to the GAO report. Current estimates on how much water might be needed to realize the potential of Green River oil "vary significantly," the report admits. But water in the arid west already is in short supply, and ranchers and environmentalists eye warily the oil industry's potential thirst.

Green River Oil Reserves Larger Than OPEC
Water would be used not for fracking, but as a lubricant for drilling. Frank Rusco, GAO's director for energy and science issues, told ABC News water also would be used as steam "to stimulate the flow of oil." Water would also be neeeded, as at any work site, for dust control and cooling.

Day said he expects AMSO's in-situ wells will be water-neutral. Experiments so far suggest that the company may get a barrel of water from the rock for every barrel of oil extracted. AMSO intends to cool its operations using radiators, not water.

What are your thoughts on this?

**RaginCajun** · 11-13-2012, 12:58 PM

I love it!!!

Now they will have to figure out how to frack it successfully to recover the most oil possible.

Hopefully this will help us get the Middle East tit!

**AdrenalineJunkie** · 11-13-2012, 01:20 PM

The US has oil everywhere... yet something always gets in the way of letting us drill for it. Hopefully this time is different. The facts are, setting these facilities and processes up takes years. If we keep shutting it down, we won't have the time to get it going when need it even more desperately. I still remember when clinton veto'd the bill for alaska because it was going to take 10 years for us to benefit from...well its almost 15 years later and I don't think anyone can argue now that not having that option is a cold slap in the groin.

**Armykid93** · 11-13-2012, 01:41 PM

Originally Posted by AdrenalineJunkie

The US has oil everywhere... yet something always gets in the way of letting us drill for it. Hopefully this time is different. The facts are, setting these facilities and processes up takes years. If we keep shutting it down, we won't have the time to get it going when need it even more desperately. I still remember when clinton veto'd the bill for alaska because it was going to take 10 years for us to benefit from...well its almost 15 years later and I don't think anyone can argue now that not having that option is a cold slap in the groin.

Liberals hate thinking about harming the environment by drilling. Even though we need the dam oil for everything. Liberals fvck everything up

**spywizard** · 11-13-2012, 01:50 PM

but the unions won't let us use it.. and the birds and trees and global warming.. i mean weather patterns all will be effected if we don't "invest" (tax) others that have to take care of those that won't work..

**spywizard** · 11-13-2012, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by AdrenalineJunkie

The US has oil everywhere... yet something always gets in the way of letting us drill for it. Hopefully this time is different. The facts are, setting these facilities and processes up takes years. If we keep shutting it down, we won't have the time to get it going when need it even more desperately. I still remember when clinton veto'd the bill for alaska because it was going to take 10 years for us to benefit from...well its almost 15 years later and I don't think anyone can argue now that not having that option is a cold slap in the groin.

part of the promised hope and change..

**migs** · 11-13-2012, 01:51 PM

Drill baby drill, once we are getting oil out the ground tell OPEC we don't need them sell gas for 1$ a gallon and not export a single barrel to no foreigner. Drill baby drill

**Times Roman** · 11-13-2012, 01:54 PM

Watch. An endangered specie like a screech owl will live there and we won't be able to drill there.

Mark my words....................

**Times Roman** · 11-13-2012, 01:55 PM

Watch. OPEC will spend billions and buy the rights to mine, then let it just sit there idle.

Mark my words.................

**BUTTERYGOODNESS** · 11-13-2012, 02:00 PM

I dont see this being as positive as we hope...

**Shol'va** · 11-13-2012, 02:03 PM

They almost shut it down already due to them thinking they found a rare single cell Amoeba. But it turned out to be Todd Akin instead. It was his body having a way of shutting that thing down thinking he was being legitimately raped.

**RaginCajun** · 11-13-2012, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by Shol'va

They almost shut it down already due to them thinking they found a rare single cell Amoeba. But it turned out to be Todd Akin instead. It was his body having a way of shutting that thing down thinking he was being legitimately raped.

Hahahahahaha!!!

**cherrydrpepper** · 11-13-2012, 11:33 PM

Todd Akin lol. The comment about OPEC buying the oil field for billions then not even drilling, stuff like that happens more than people know.

**red_hulk** · 11-13-2012, 11:39 PM

Originally Posted by Times Roman

Watch. OPEC will spend billions and buy the rights to mine, then let it just sit there idle.

Mark my words.................

I can see this happening. Words marked TR

**JD250** · 11-13-2012, 11:48 PM

Yea, I'm sure Obama and his socialist regime will get busy drilling muy pronto... LOL.... that oil is as worthless as tits on a boar.

**kmms** · 11-13-2012, 11:48 PM

locating new deposits around the US has never been an issue. it is not our intent to use them in any significant amounts until we have drained other countries of theirs first.

think about it, would you rather we deplete our own and then become dependent upon another country, or should we use theirs first and make them dependent upon us?

**Ernst** · 11-14-2012, 12:11 AM

If a more cost-efficient method of extraction could be found this could be good news. Until then it's just oily rock buried really deep... and it's controlled by companies who have nothing but their own profit margins at heart who are in turn governed by people who don't want them to drill it anyway. *sigh*

**cherrydrpepper** · 11-14-2012, 01:19 AM

Originally Posted by kmms

locating new deposits around the US has never been an issue. it is not our intent to use them in any significant amounts until we have drained other countries of theirs first.

think about it, would you rather we deplete our own and then become dependent upon another country, or should we use theirs first and make them dependent upon us?

I used to think this exact way but you can't really speculate that we won't have something else invented in a 100 years. Its a dice roll. Personally I say use it now. We have made the most backward people on the planet wealthy beyond belief over oil.

**kmms** · 11-14-2012, 02:36 AM

i think we've already had some solid breakthroughs in electricity and combustion engines that would drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuels we consume each day however, as alluded to earlier in this thread, someone always comes along and buys the invention/patent and we never hear of this technology again.

**Honkey_Kong** · 11-14-2012, 03:32 AM

I really don't think we should tap this oil just yet really. Let's wait for the rest of the world to go past their peak production. That way, we can conserve this stuff a little. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. And if one drop of this oil gets to foreign soil, we need to execute the person(s) who delivered it and the people/government officials who okayed it.

**lovbyts** · 11-14-2012, 05:43 AM

Originally Posted by Honkey_Kong

I really don't think we should tap this oil just yet really. Let's wait for the rest of the world to go past their peak production. That way, we can conserve this stuff a little. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. And if one drop of this oil gets to foreign soil, we need to execute the person(s) who delivered it and the people/government officials who okayed it.

No the problem is we will wait until oil is no longer needed and it will be worthless. We already have more oil than anyone else in the world now we just have 3x more. It's not any good if we don't use it and I don't think we will anytime soon. Those who are in charge really don't want us to be prosperous or out of debt at this point. If they did we would already be there.

**AdrenalineJunkie** · 11-14-2012, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by lovbyts

No the problem is we will wait until oil is no longer needed and it will be worthless. We already have more oil than anyone else in the world now we just have 3x more. It's not any good if we don't use it and I don't think we will anytime soon. Those who are in charge really don't want us to be prosperous or out of debt at this point. If they did we would already be there.

Exactly. They said we have more than 3x the amount the entire world has used over the past 100 years in that area alone. Now add up the other areas we discovered in the past but haven't drilled either and we have an overwhelming majority. Oil is international liquid gold right now. Think of how far technology has come in just the past 15 years? Cars run on vegetable oil, grain alcohol, solor, electric, the list goes on and on. Yes running other countries out of their supplies before ours is obviously ideal, but the facts are that won't happen for hundreds of years and it would take the world over 4 centuries (probably more) to use up our reserves in america if everyone used soley ours. Who knows where technology is going to be that far down the road and if people are even going to be dependant on oil then? The progress we've made these past years you have to figure the next couple centuries bring unthinkable feats in science. The things scientists are doing with water and air molecules is incredible, and someday that progress is going to reshape the world as we know it. The possibilities and research into alternative energy is a race. Years ago countries were racing to space and the moon, science is always a competition. Facts are we need oil now. We certainly aren't running out anytime soon, let's use it when its worth something to us.

**MickeyKnox** · 11-14-2012, 10:13 AM

Ever time i read about how much oil has been discovered, i cant help but to think of the Exponential Function.

Not to detract form the OP's message, but this is a very interesting video.

**Tron3219** · 11-14-2012, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by MickeyKnox

Ever time i read about how much oil has been discovered, i cant help but to think of the Exponential Function.

Not to detract form the OP's message, but this is a very interesting video.

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Honestly, as long as we are drilling I'm happy! I know it's prolly not the best for the world but its the best for my family. I'm in the oilfield. Keeps me in work!

**MickeyKnox** · 11-14-2012, 10:20 AM

Yup, me too. Did you watch the link? Its not an anti video. Its about an important calculation that can be applied to anything constant.

**Tron3219** · 11-14-2012, 10:24 AM

Originally Posted by MickeyKnox

Yup, me too. Did you watch the link? Its not an anti video. Its about an important calculation that can be applied to anything constant.

Nah, I'm at the gym lol I browse an respond on my brakes between sets. Lol set my stopwatch browse then alarm goes off, time for set lol

But I dd subscribe so I can watch it in about an hour. But is there a constant rate on oil production? Or is it a guess? That may b in the video lol