by roccman » Wed 21 Nov 2007, 13:23:57
Globe and Mail
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')rom Wednesday's Globe and Mail
November 21, 2007 at 6:04 AM EST
OTTAWA — ***In a massive new multivolume report on energy strategy in the United States, a high-powered federal task force puts "peak oil" into perspective. On the one hand, it says, the country has already consumed, in 150 years, 446 billion barrels of its own fossil-fuel endowment. *On the other hand, it says, the country has 8.59 trillion barrels left - or more "oil equivalent" than the rest of the world combined. More than 95 per cent of America's oil reserves, in other words, are still in the ground*.***
Canada enters this particular calculation in passing. "North American oil shale and [oil] sands alone far exceed all the remaining proven and undiscovered oil resources of the entire world," the task force reports. "They represent 3.5 trillion barrels of oil resources. ****America' s commercial-quality oil shale resources alone exceed two trillion barrels. This shale can be processed to generate ultraclean, high-quality diesel and jet fuels, along with high-value chemicals - with existing technologies under normal economic conditions." ****
****Further, U.S. coal reserves exceed 260 billion tons - "250 years of supply at the existing production rate [for electricity] of 1.1 billion tons a year." The task force says clean coal can be the largest and quickest single new source of oil in the U.S. - and that the conversion can be economic (producing a 15-per-cent return on investment) with world oil prices between $40 to $50 (U.S.) a barrel.****
Someone should tell these folk to check out Hall's latest EROI report before posting such nonsense...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')harlie Hall's latest research shows the EROI of existing oil and gas is about 25 to one, but that NEW oil is approaching 1 to 1, which means that the discovery of new oil may be irrelevant after 2015 to 2020.
When asked about how the future might unfold, he mentioned that he thought that people will not be willing to make the capital investments needed to build solar, wind, and so on when oil was costing them $10 per gallon or more.