Shale Oil Bonanza Reaches Australia With '$20 Trillion' Discovery

TBI ^ | 1-23-2013 | Adam Taylor

[blam]

Shale Oil Bonanza Reaches Australia With '$20 Trillion' Discovery

Adam Taylor
January 23, 2013, 6:51 PM

Coober Pedy, a town near the Arckaringa Basin

A Brisbane-based company, Linc Energy, today released two reports that suggest huge figures in potential shale oil reserves located in South Australia, the Herald Sun reports.

The estimates of oil reserves in the Arckaringa Basin range from 3.5 billion to 233 billion barrels of oil — potentially worth as much as $20 trillion.

"If it comes in the way the reports are suggesting, it could well and truly bring Australia back to (oil) self-sufficiency," Linc managing director Peter Bond said.

The announcement seems to be an attempt to emulate a US style shale bonanza, but the feasibility of the claims still need to be proved. Paul Jensz, an analyst for PhillipCapital, told the Wall Street Journal that while South Australia is starved of fuels, Linc would need to prove the quality and economic viability of the resource.

Linc owns the Arckaringa Basin completely, and shares in the company jumped 10% to A$2.17 this morning, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The company has retained Barclays Bank to advise on the introduction of an experienced shale operator.

[dsrtsage]

Quick! Make it a national park!

[2ndDivisionVet]

So there’s oil, shale oil and shale gas under everyone? Doesn’t that kind of prove the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory?

[MaxMax]

Yes, but it does not fit any Government agenda here in America, or the UN.

[blam]

"Doesn’t that kind of prove the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory?"

I'm a believer but I don't think this proves it.

[AZLiberty]

Is it too late to sell Saudi Arabia short?

[Owen]

See, the thing is that people who talk like this don’t understand geology.

It doesn’t matter if oil is biotic or abiotic. It still only gets trapped in certain geological folds of rock. Where it comes from isn’t important in the context of recovery. All that matters is . . . where are those folds and how many haven’t already been drilled.

The stuff can be created by meteors if you want, and it won’t make any difference in how you find it. There has been 100+ years of drilling dry holes to learn what formations can hold it and what can’t.

Also, try to remember there is no ocean of oil underground when you have an “oil field”. It’s rock. There are bubbles of oil in the rock pores. There is “permeability” as a measurement of that rock (the interconnectedness of the pores). You can have a field with a billion barrels of oil, but if the pores are tiny and very far apart, you can’t frack them to create interconnectedness and each bubble is small enough that a 20 million dollar hold would only tap 10 barrels of oil.

This is why “we will never run out”. Those 10 barrel bubbles can be there and never be worth the joules required to get them.

[montag813]

“PEAK OIL!!!”

[98ZJ USMC]

So there’s oil, shale oil and shale gas under everyone? Doesn’t that kind of prove the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory?

It would sure seem to. If oil politics can be eliminated, an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity can dawn, while technology advances to the next source. The only thing standing in it's way, would be the purported "peaceful" Left. Oh, the schadenfreude.....

[sten]

guess who just made chinas radar

seriously, keep the strategic resource info close to the vest (like russia and their trillions of carats of meteor diamonds... discovered in the mid 70s)

[Dusty Road]

“So there’s oil, shale oil and shale gas under everyone? Doesn’t that kind of prove the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory?”

The key word is basin.

[muawiyah]

We are still in shale and such ~ that’s all sedimentary rock ~

[muawiyah]

All that’s happened is we came upon several unlimited supplies of diamonds so we can drill deeper, and lo and behold, there’s a lot of rock down there that used to be at the surface ~ proving only that 4.5 billion years is a really long time!

[Dusty Road]

Yep!

I wonder how much sediments has washed, eroded or been blown into the oceans over the last 4.5 billion years.

[huldah1776]

World View: China Warns Australia Not to Side with America in War

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2981303/posts

Will China then leave japan alone or will it kill 2 birds with one stone?

[cuban leaf]

so, it looks like we really ARE in the biggest oil boom in history.

I used to say in high school (early 70’s) that technology had a knack for solving problems when they seemed unsolvable. By the time this boom is over maybe solar and other “neutral” forms of energy production will have had enough decades of R&D applied to actually be viable in quantity.

[R W Reactionairy]

“So there’s oil, shale oil and shale gas under everyone? Doesn’t that kind of prove the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory?”

Not really. Conventional theory calls for source rock ... shales ... and a trap / place where oil from the source rock migrates and is “trapped” which has an imperiable layer above and rock which is sufficiently porous and permiable to be produced.

Oil from shale bypasses the conventional trap. Instead oil is produced at the source by means of artificial fracturing to create pockets of permiability [which unfractured shales lack.]

Oil laden shales are nothing new and are associated with almost all commercially viable accumulations of oil.

Cuttings from oily shales will glow in black light, smell like oil and may stream oil when immersed in lighter fluid. Without fracking, they simply without fracking lack the interconnected pores necessary to produce commercially.

[blam]

Up to 233 billion barrels of oil discovered in southern Australia