EROI on the Web, Part 3 of 5: Unconventional Oil – Tar Sands and Shale Oil

This is 3rd in a series of 5 guest posts by Professor Charles Hall of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry describing the energy statistic, “EROI” for various fuels. As has been discussed often on this site, net energy analysis is an incredibly important concept – just as we really care about our take home pay which is our salary minus the taxes we pay, we should care about our ‘take home’ energy, which is what is left after energy costs have been accounted for.


As important as it is, this measure is not easy to quantify, as: a)data is almost always measured in $ as opposed to energy terms, parsing non-energy inputs (and outputs) into energy terms is difficult, and analysis boundaries (including environmental impacts) are very disparate. As such, there is not (has not yet been) a consistent formula for EROI applied to all energy studies that has led to energy policymakers speaking the same language in useful ways. The lead paper in this months Royal Academy of Sweden’s journal AMBIO will be about such an EROI framework, and we will link to it when it comes online. Professor Hall has been working in this area for over 30 years. Below are net energy analysis from Hall’s group on the unconventional oil sources from tar sands and oil shale – two resources that theoretically are enormous in energy scale, but practically are limited by flow rates, costs, and externalities. Just how limited is the subject of todays post below the fold.

The Oil Drum