[CB]

What if the USA had 5 times Saudi's oil reserves hidden in some massive shale deposits under the Colorado desert? What if the US govt owned most of that land, and oil companies the rest? What if some oil majors had conducted successful feasibility projects to extract that oil in-situ at mkt prices of $50pb?

Hey then we could all just drive around in SUVs, and not care about our foreign policy in the middle-east and stuff like that...

Oh... isn't that what we already do?

CB

[NeoPeasant]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CB', 'W')hat if the USA had 5 times Saudi's oil reserves hidden in some massive shale deposits under the Colorado desert? What if the US govt owned most of that land, and oil companies the rest? What if some oil majors had conducted successful feasibility projects to extract that oil in-situ at mkt prices of $50pb?

Hey then we could all just drive around in SUVs, and not care about our foreign policy in the middle-east and stuff like that...


Oh... isn't that what we already do?

CB

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CB', 'W')hat if the USA had 5 times Saudi's oil reserves hidden in some massive shale deposits under the Colorado desert? What if the US govt owned most of that land, and oil companies the rest? What if some oil majors had conducted successful feasibility projects to extract that oil in-situ at mkt prices of $50pb?

Hey then we could all just drive around in SUVs, and not care about our foreign policy in the middle-east and stuff like that...

Oh... isn't that what we already do?

CB

[WebHubbleTelescope]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CB', 'W')hat if ...

[aldente]

What if enlightenment would strike us all over night? Would that put him out of business??

[mgibbons19]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CB', 'W')hat if the USA had 5 times Saudi's oil reserves hidden in some massive shale deposits under the Colorado desert? What if the US govt owned most of that land, and oil companies the rest? What if some oil majors had conducted successful feasibility projects to extract that oil in-situ at mkt prices of $50pb?

Hey then we could all just drive around in SUVs, and not care about our foreign policy in the middle-east and stuff like that...

Oh... isn't that what we already do?

CB

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CB', '.')..What if some oil majors had conducted successful feasibility projects to extract that oil in-situ at mkt prices of $50pb?...

[0mar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('albente', 'W')hat if enlightenment would strike us all over night? Would that put him out of business??

[sch_peakoiler]

<sarcastic>

ummm HIS CLOTHES???

</sarcastic>

[aldente]

Omar, he promotes and strives for enlightenment, nowhere does he state that he is (enlightened).

My comment was a continuation of the original "what if" questions in the start of the thread since on the same line with such a nuisence.

What if we all weren't born in the first place....

[J_S_Bokchoy]

Anxiety over global warming I understand because the science looks convincing. What baffles me is all the angst and seeming paranoia about Peak Oil, when 49 gallons of gasoline can be produced from a ton of coal. The U.S., Canada, Russia and China have coal to last centuries, and to get $125 of car fuel from $16 worth of coal seems like a persuausive argument to just drop the whole Peak Oil concern, or shift emphasis to more pressing topics like the Greenhouse Effect. Maybe I'm overlooking something, it's such an apparent no-brainer from the profitability standpoint, there must be obvious objections or else energy firms would be falling all over each other to start coal gasification projects. Like maybe they've got lots more oil than they admit to. Here I quote Harold Schobert's 1987 "Coal the Energy Source of the Past and Future" describing a fuel plant South Africa built to bypass an oil embargo...
"Sasol-2 differs from Sasol-1 in two respects. (1) All of the synthesis gas is fed to synthol reactors because the principal desired product is gasoline. (2.) The methane is reacted with steam to produce more carbon monoxide and hydrogen because methane has no market in the vicinity. Sasol-2 consumes about 38,000 tons of coal per day and produces 49 gallons of gasoline from each ton. The Sasol-2 plant became operable in 1981; in the mid-1970's, when crude oil was selling at $11-$12 per barrel, Sasol-2 would have been considered barely proitable on the basis of coal cost in the range of $4-$5 per ton."
...so from the above , one might conclude that if you just got to wail and lament about something, put your efforts where they at least look sensible, like climate shift from fossil fuels. Nitpicking over what flavor of carbon to spew is at best a waste of time, and possibly a deliberate change of focus away from real issues like nuclear energy to reduce greenhouse emissions.

[Tyler_JC]

...coal to gas again...

If we started using coal as carfuel, pollution would increase dramatically and GW would get a lot worse.

Can we really dramatically increase coal production? It's a lot easier to drill a few more holes in an oil well than dig a mile underground to get a massive rock crushing machine down to get a few more tons of coal out.

Those millions of tons of coal start to disappear if coal demand doubles because we want to turn it in to carfuel.

What happens to coal prices if we suddenly double demand. Would prices double? Try 10x.

The shortfall in coal production is already here. China can't keep its plants going full steam because they can't get enough coal.

I could keep going on and on...

Please do some research on this site before saying that coal to carfuel is the perfect solution. It will help, but it won't be enough to continue anywhere near this level of civilization.

[clover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('J_S_Bokchoy', 'W')hat baffles me is all the angst and seeming paranoia about Peak Oil, when 49 gallons of gasoline can be produced from a ton of coal.

[J_S_Bokchoy]

Hirsch says $30 to $35 for a barrel of liquid fuel from coal right now. So oil companies could at least double their money by setting up liquefication plants, if they genuinely thought petroleum prices were going to stay at current levels. They're not doing this, so they must think petroleum prices are coming down, implying demand reductions or supply increases. In fact they did set up a coal-to-gas plant in the 80s and lost money on it because oil prices came way down. So i'm guessing they 're just milking the consumers by poormouthing about how thry're running out of oil, sorry, no more, you just have to fork it over, too bad. Otherwise they'd have had coal to gas systems up and running ready to go by now already. But why spend when you can just scare people? DOUBLE their money, that's chickenfeed, they can triple and quadruple it right now just by choking off supply.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('J_S_Bokchoy', 'H')irsch says $30 to $35 for a barrel of liquid fuel from coal right now. So oil companies could at least double their money by setting up liquefication plants, if they genuinely thought petroleum prices were going to stay at current levels. They're not doing this, so they must think petroleum prices are coming down, implying demand reductions or supply increases. In fact they did set up a coal-to-gas plant in the 80s and lost money on it because oil prices came way down. So i'm guessing they 're just milking the consumers by poormouthing about how thry're running out of oil, sorry, no more, you just have to fork it over, too bad. Otherwise they'd have had coal to gas systems up and running ready to go by now already. But why spend when you can just scare people? DOUBLE their money, that's chickenfeed, they can triple and quadruple it right now just by choking off supply.