Just the tip of the iceberg.
Posted on 05/14/2012 3:35:29 PM PDT by tobyhill
The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world's proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.
The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in "a unique position to influence the development of oil shale" because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.
It also noted that developing the oil would have an environmental impact and pose "socioeconomic challenges," that included bringing "a sizable influx of workers who along with their families put additional stress on local infrastructure" and "making planning for growth difficult for local governments."
"The Green River Formation--an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming--contains the world's largest deposits of oil shale,"Anu K. Mittal, the GAO's director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
"USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions," Mittal testified.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Drill baby drill.
Finally a reporter that understands what the Green River formation really means, be sure to read the whole article.
0bummer’s fuzzy math came up with 2% of the world’s oil reserves.
And that doesn’t count the mountains of coal, oceans of natural gas, methane from waste and switch grass, etc. and the regular oil we have left. We’re awash in energy and probably on the verge of fusion power before we can even get much more of the shale refined. False scarcity is the game they’re playing, just like the South African diamond cartel does.
In a rational country with a sane government we would go and get the oil and tell Chavez and the muslim scum to go screw.
I wonder what that would be like.
November could not be anymore important than it already is.
“just like the South African diamond cartel does.”
Let’s hear it for the diamond cartel!! (Canada produces more than S. Africa now.)
"Our resources locked up would keep America strong and independent of foreign on our current crop of dictators."
Their fixed it....
“While it is true that the shale oil is “recoverable,” the cost of extracting the oil from the shale would make any large scale operations prohibitively expensive at this time. It takes a tremendous amount of heat and pressure to recover the oil from shale - extractors would expend almost as much energy removing the oil, refining it, and bringing it to market than the oil itself would generate.”
That’s exactly what they used to say about the Alberta oil sands, 30 or so years ago. (BTW, for fun, look up the use of nuclear weapons to extract oil from deposits in shale.)
That dang radiation.
I remember decades ago there was a serious suggestion that an ocean level canal across Nicaraguan could be built with nucs.
Just the tip of the iceberg.
Having been in local government I know what these commonist Demonicrats are trying desperately to control everything from international to national to state to local to family to individuals, especially those rugged conservative individuals!!!
Most local governments in rural CA suffer from "Arrested Development" by agencies such as the CA coastal commission and the new Sierra-Nevada CONservancy!!!
I worked the Tenneco Green River plant build in the early 80’s. There is Oil in them hills! There is OIL all over America. Here in S. Texas Eagle Ford Shale is KICKIN!
2012 ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ACT
It is recognized that the United States of America is at a major crossroads in its history. The people are downtrodden: affordable housing is becoming less and less available; our educational institutions are suffering continuing funding crises; large groups of people remain unemployed. To address these issues, this 2012 ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ACT is now the law of the land. Its provisions are as follows:
1)The U.S. Government shall open the treasures of the oil shale reserves on a scheduled, lease basisa, beginning January 1, 2013. Leases will be auctioned to various oil companies who pledge to harvest the oils from these leases, and make these harvested oils available for use by the American people and its military.
2) As the products of these leases come online, the United States government will systematically reduce the amounts of oil and oil products to be imported into the United States, making these external sources of oil, that would otherwise be used by the people of the United States, to be available for use by other countries.
3) An oil severance tax shall be assessed against all oils harvested, said oil severance tax representing 15% of the value of the oil in its raw form at the point of extraction. This approach has previously been successful by individual states, such as the Commonwealth of Kentucky in assessing severance tax on mined coal.
4) The monies collected from this severance tax shall be expended as follows: 10% of the monies collected shall go to management and enforcement activities of the Federal government, to assure that safe and environmentally sound practices are used in the extraction, processing, and transport of the resultant oil and oil products; 20% of the monies collected shall go towards funding of private organizations for research towards responsible means of increasing the efficencies in the use of all oil products, the selection of such private organizations to be made on a competitive basis consisting of a formula based on two components, each having equal weight: the quality and probability of any new prcess being successful, and 2) the cost of researching such new process; the remaining 70%of the monies collected shall go towards funding the social programs previously authorized by Congress and signed into law by the President. None of these monies may be used to fund new social programs.
5) The Environmental Protection Agency shall be tasked with reviewing extraction methods to conform with environmentally sound methodologies, such methodologies to be determined as environmentally sound by an environmental oversight committee composed of: a single representative designated by a coalition of oil drilling companies; a single representative from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; a representative designated by the U.S. Senate; a representative designated by the U.S. House of Representatives; and last, a representative designated by a majority of the States comprising the United States. In any split decision, a simple majority rule will govern.
6)The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shall be hereby prohibited from considering Carbon Dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and in conjunction with this, the establishment and/or maintaining of a carbon tax and/or establishing and/or maintaing a market carbon credits sahll be expressly prohibited.
I'm of the opinion that any Presidential or Congressional candidates that would espouse the responsible exploitation of these reserves would garner the votes for election this year.
It seems to me the only downside would be the opposition from the environmental contingencies out there - which, in my opinion, is not based on sound science.
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