Way to lie about me, Willie... It STARTS at $70 per barrel but quickly falls down to $30 per RAND. And there are other methods that drop below $20 per barrel.
Those are marginal operating costs and do not include the massive investment required to develop the shale oil / tar sand infrastructure.
Nevertheless, it really doesn't matter.
I never said that Peak Oil would make shale oil and tar sands unprofitable.
Quite the opposite.
I expect that the market price of oil (as determined by supply and demand) will greatly exceed the costs of production. But the problem remains... we simply won't be capable of processing it fast enough to satisfy demand. Shortages will occur and prices will skyrocket.
And so will ridership on passenger rail systems.
Willie, the train from Tampa to Orlando has an initial investment of $1.5 Billion and most people think it will take at least $3 Billion to get it built.
At a $30 ticket per person it will take 100 million tickets to pay off the cost not including the operating expenses. At $30 a ticket its cheaper to drive or rent a car.
Even assuming they can build it for the $1.5 it would still require 50 million tickets to be sold. Lets give them a generous 500 passengers per trip, it will take 100,000 trips to pay off the cost. At 8 trips per day it will take them 34 years to recoup that investment.
But we know nobody will pay $30 a ticket so it will never get paid off. Passenger rail does not make sense in low population density areas.