New Way to Tap Gas May Expand Global Supplies

From the New York Times:

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields.

The global drilling rush is still in its early stages. But energy analysts are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. They said they believed that gas reserves in many countries could increase over the next two decades, comparable with the 40 percent increase in the United States in recent years.

“It’s a breakout play that is going to identify gigantic resources around the world,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. “That will change the geopolitics of natural gas.”

Add to this the fact that Shell has also developed technology by which they can extract oil from Shale for about $30 a barrel:

The development of an economically viable way to extract oil from oil shale would put a ceiling on oil prices and would extend the oil era by decades. It would also increase the odds of significant global warming. Well, in light of all that a variety of media outlets are reporting that Shell Oil thinks it can produce oil from oil shale at $30 per barrel using an in situ process where the shale is cooked without first mining it onto the surface.

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia, all in shale.

Additionally, in the past few years, we have discovered oil fields in Montana/Dakotas, and in Colorado, which have FIVE TIMES AS MUCH OIL AS SAUDI ARABIA.

If we wanted to do so, we could soon become an oil exporting nation, rather than an importing nation.

Why?

Because of pressure from environmentalists.

We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.

I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.

That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.

MORE:

Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana.

With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.

• IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN MORE THAN THEY INITIALLY EXPECTED.
• THIS POINTS UP A VERY IMPORTANT FACT TO UNDERSTAND. WE KEEP FINDING MORE OIL ALL THE TIME.
• ESTIMATES KEEP GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER ON THE AMOUNT OF OIL WHICH CAN BE RECOVERED.
• THIS IS BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY FOR DETECTING OIL, AND DRILLING FOR IT, KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE ADVANCED.
• THE KNOWN RESERVES OF OIL ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY, AND YET THE MEDIA WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL.
• WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

AND WHY IS IT THAT OUR PRESIDENT JUST BLOCKED DRILLING AT 60 SITES IN UTAH?

IF OUR PRESIDENT ACTUALLY WANTED TO DESTROY AMERICA, WOULD HE BE DOING ANYTHING ANY DIFFERENTLY?