Fill 'er Up with Oils Sands!

TechCentralStation.com ^ | 10-31-05 | Michael Fumento

[ModelBreaker]

That fact is the more you make of something, the cheaper it should be for the unit price based on the nature of mass production yet, this is not occuring.

Unless, of course, the demand for the 'something' is increasing faster than the supply. In which case, the price should rise. Which is exactly what has happened.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/109/testimony/2005/jacksavage.htm

[Cold Heart]

JoJoba oil from a desert plant is very close oil to whale oil. I actually saw it for sale by the quart in a discount store. Turns out that oil was for sale at the discount price because the government was subsidizing it to increase production. Naturally as soon as I figured out what a quality lubricating oil it was everyone else did too. The subsidy was dropped and it is now a high priced additive for cosmetics.

[quantfive]

"You're making one rather glaring omission:
At the same time production of petroleum has increased, consumption has increased enormously due to the rising purchasing power of India, China, and others.

There's another economic principle having to do with supply vs demand at work here."

You are correct sir. Actually, the real story is coal right now. since we are talking about work to draw oil from our existing resources, we don't need Canada's resources, we have trillions of barrels of oil trapped within our coal, right here in the USA. Coal will work just fine for the next 20-30 years as we move toward cleaner hydrogen. I also hate us using Arab oil when we are their biggest customer but all they do is *hit on us.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A guy from Exxon told me about their first try at squeezing oil from shale at Rifle, Colorado. They blasted the shale and crushed it to 2 inch top size, then radiated the chunks to get the oil to flow. The 2 inch golf balls swelled by 30 percent in the process. Add this to the normal 25 percent swell factor for heaped yards vs. bank yards and you have a major spoil problem, not to mention an environmental disaster to deal with.

[jec41]

Oil sands are not oil shale, and this alone destroys the author's credibility.

Yes it does and they also forgot to mention that light crude or sweet oil is the primary source for gasoline. Most refineries will not even buy heavy oil because they lack the cracking process to refine heavy oil. New processes have to built for heavy oil. Production of light crude world wide has decline by 2.4 millions a day since 2002.

[AmericaUnited]

The US should start programs on a comparable scale to the Manhattan project, to extract sand and shale oil. Even if the break even price is $15 or $20, and oil drops to that level, we should do this in the name of national security. No more blackmail or extortion by two bit dictators. No more hard currency leaving the US.

[Kozak]

This is a completely bogus statement.

BS. That is a fact. Your statement about unit price ignores DEMAND. If I produce twice as many units but demand triples, guess what prices do?

[HiTech RedNeck]

The oil isn't hurting the environment where it is now?

[hripka]

Oil, Oil Everywhere
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | Sunday, January 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST | PETER HUBER AND MARK MILLS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1331914/posts

Anything into Oil(solution to dependence on foregn oil?)
DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 ^ | May 2003 | Brad Lemley
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897232/posts

[TexasTransplant]

Bump

[HiTech RedNeck]

I'd assume it would be preprocessed at the shale oil sites to turn it into the proper form for general refining.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

If the refinery has a delayed coker, this problem goes away. They can chew up the asphalt stream in the heavy crude, get a cut of gasoline, coker gas oil (distillate) and other useful, upgradable products. Three new cokers at existing refineries are coming on line in 2006.

[jec41]

If the refinery has a delayed coker, this problem goes away. They can chew up the asphalt stream in the heavy crude, get a cut of gasoline, coker gas oil (distillate) and other useful, upgradable products. Three new cokers at existing refineries are coming on line in 2006.

Actually if I remember correctly as many as 8 refineries are upgrading their coker process and there are other improvements made constantly. Also most of the cracking units have to be upgrade to handle the temps. More cokers are required because the gas cut is less and the additional cokers allow them to maintain production. No new refineries should be built without the ability to handle heavy oil.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Cokers are the key to Canadian heavies (Cold Lake, Lloydminster, etc). I noticed that three new units were coming on line besides the upgrade/expansion of existing cokers. One was at Cenex/Laurel, a small refinery, but significant when you consider its a coop and a new coker is quite expensive.

[ClaireSolt]

This effect is not produced by some invisible hand. "That fact is the more you make of something, the cheaper it should be for the unit price based on the nature of mass production yet, this is not occuring." Efficiencies, increased productivity and economies of scale come from better technologies which seem more feasible with mass production. However, without such innovations, mass production will not reduce unit costs. A case in point is the flu vaccine which requires millions of chicken eggs and painstaking manual labor. If you lower the cost by fiat like Hillary did, the company goes out of business.

To the poster who called for a Manhattan project, I say no way. The oil biz is already the most overregulated biz there is, and the last thing the energy sector needs is more input from the lawyers in Congress, the EPA, etc. The oil companies will allocate their record profits in ways that make economic sense and are best positioned to evaluate information such as this.

Check out the latest Manhattan project to see when the WTC will get rebuilt, if you want an example of paralysis your suggestion would bring about.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Eh ?

[Ghengis]

If gasoline and diesel stay in the plus $3.00 per gallon range for an extended length of time, I believe that butanol and bio-diesel will slowly supplant the traditional fuels in the market.  Read this link and check out what David Ramey is doing  as far as developing butanol as a fuel alternative.  Bio-diesel is even simpler to manufacture.

[democrats_nightmare]

Thanks for the post.... Sure would like to see the day when we can tell the Arabs and Chavez in Venezuela to keep their oil.

[jec41]

Cokers are the key to Canadian heavies (Cold Lake, Lloydminster, etc). I noticed that three new units were coming on line besides the upgrade/expansion of existing cokers. One was at Cenex/Laurel, a small refinery, but significant when you consider its a coop and a new coker is quite expensive.

I am not as versed with Canadian or heavy oil refining as I should be. As you know most US refineries have used strictly light crude. I will brush up. But not so long ago I can remember shutting in sour oil and walking away because their was no market. Hopefully shale oil production can be increased to a million barrels a day in the near future. That would off set the declining production of light crude.