Originally Posted by
Speedo
By any chance, do you line your helmet with aluminum foil to keep the aliens from reading your mind?
Speedo
Actually there is some amount of truth to his somewhat zany statement. The oil shale in the west is estimated to hold at least 3x the known reserves of Saudi Arabia. The problem has been how to extract the kerogen/ petroleum product effectively. Until recently, the thinking was that of strip mining, trucking, separation, refining, etc, etc. The resulting crude was rather low grade.
Shell Oil has spent upwards of $200MM in search of a solution, they've filed a number of patents and have recently revealed a much improved method which allows them to extract a high grade crude directly from the shale. The method involves the insertion of heating element into the shale, liquefying the kerogen and drawing it off (oddly enough, about 10 years ago I was part of an effort to manufacture some ceramic dome elements that the customer said was being used for below ground heating via microwave / oil recovery). By controlling temperature, they get high grade crude. Bonus points allowed for a process which leave a minimal footprint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahogany_Research_Project
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...051709,00.html
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This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in a wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day.