End of Peak Oil: 200-Year Supply Of Oil In One Single Shale Formation

[ninepointfive]

please stop fracking, because it pollutes the groundwater for human, animal, and agricultural uses!

 

[NoOneButPaul]

Helium 3 fusion is the future... soon as we start bringing it back from the moon.

Interesting... can you tell me more?

 

[Zippyjuan]

For those who would like to share this, but don't want their liberal friends to dismiss it outright because it comes from Infowars, here is another site talking about the discovery. http://thegwpf.org/energy-news/5706-200-year-supply-of-oil-in-one-single-shale-formation.html

There is no question that large amounts of oil are indeed there- the problem is that the oil is very expensive and messy to try to extact from the rocks. It isn't in a form that ordinary drilling or fracking can get it. It is bound up in solid rocks which need to be crushed and heated to get the oil out of them.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Interesting... can you tell me more?

It is seen by some as a possible nuclear fussion (vs fission of modern nuclear reactors) reactor fuel. So far, fusion energy remains a dream as tests have not yet been able to produce more energy than the reaction consumes to get going. If it works, the problem of radiation waste is also practically gone which makes it very inviting to look at.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/408558/mining-the-moon/

Advocates of He3-based fusion point to the fact that current efforts to develop fusion-based power generation, like the ITER megaproject, use the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle, which is problematical. (See "International Fusion Research.") Deuterium and tritium are both hydrogen isotopes, and when they're fused in a superheated plasma, two nuclei come together to create a helium nucleus--consisting of two protons and two neutrons--and a high-energy neutron. A deuterium-tritium fusion reaction releases 80 percent of its energy in a stream of high-energy neutrons, which are highly destructive for anything they hit, including a reactor's containment vessel. Since tritium is highly radioactive, that makes containment a big problem as structures weaken and need to be replaced. Thus, whatever materials are used in a deuterium-tritium fusion power plant will have to endure serious punishment. And if that's achievable, when that fusion reactor is eventually decommissioned, there will still be a lot of radioactive waste.

"He3-He3 is not an easy reaction to promote," Kulcinski says. "But He3-He3 fusion has the greatest potential." That's because helium-3, unlike tritium, is nonradioactive, which, first, means that Kulcinski's reactor doesn't need the massive containment vessel that deuterium-tritium fusion requires. Second, the protons it produces--unlike the neutrons produced by deuterium-tritium reactions--possess charges and can be contained using electric and magnetic fields, which in turn results in direct electricity generation. Kulcinski says that one of his graduate assistants at the Fusion Technology Institute is working on a solid-state device to capture the protons and convert their energy directly into electricity.

More info- pro and cons- at the link.

 

[QuickZ06]

What about thorium?

 

[Zippyjuan]

What about thorium?

Sounds very promising. Even though it has a better energy yield than Uranium and is safer, it did not get a big push in the early days of nuclear energy. Why? Its byproducts can't be converted into nuclear weapons like plutonium from Uranium reactors can.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...nd-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”, you could say.


Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.


“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.

“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.

“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”

Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own “issues” but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.

Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University said thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. “There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord,” he said.

Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be “orders of magnitude less” than in a uranium reactor.

The earth’s crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates, he said. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining.

More at link.

 

[osan]

Sounds very promising. Even though it has a better energy yield than Uranium and is safer, it did not get a big push in the early days of nuclear energy. Why? Its byproducts can't be converted into nuclear weapons like plutonium from Uranium reactors can.

This is precisely correct. There is a huge amount of thorium out there, but has been shelved because of the weapons deal. Just how demented is that? And why have thorium reactors not been put into service since the "fall" of the soviets? Safe, efficient thorium-fueled reactors providing plentiful inexpensive energy does not play at all well into the hands of those who seek to gain control over the "global stage". I doubt that at the bottom of things it is much more complicated than that.

How can one group of humans gain control over the rest when life is good - when people have plenty, their lives are content and all is more or less well? They cannot. Under such circumstances the "rest" simply ignore the noise makers, dismissing them. That, of course, is the one thing the conquest-seeking personality simply cannot tolerate. They are as bratty children in this respect, demanding attention be paid them and when they cross some threshold of power that they be obeyed as well. We are now well past that threshold. Our history documents this readily observable and predictable quality of the tyrant in great volumes. In fact, it is a damned challenge to find examples counter to this. This, of course, is deeply pathological.

The consistently successful method for gaining the attention and eventual obedience of the mob lies in crisis. Humans, when they form large cohesive groups, become part of what I like to call a "super organism" whose power grows in direct proportion to its size and the level of its cohesiveness. A least-common-denominator aspect arises when a loosely-knit population of humans is confronted by a super-organism (usually a large and powerful foreign armed force), usually forcing them to make the choice of forming a super-organism themselves or risk being conquered or wiped out. When so threatened, populations very predictably freak out and are willing to congeal under the command of some individual or group in the shadow of their fear. The knowledge of this seemingly hard-wired characteristic of human behavior has been taken keen advantage of by an endless parade of personalities who have sought dominion over others.

Because of this, a prosperity-enabling technology that provides abundantly affordable energy to everyone must perforce be suppressed - at least until such time that control over the greater mass is so perfected that any resulting change in the general state of living conditions for the better poses no possible threat to the state of central control. With the years of observation and cogitation over such matters I have come to suspect that there is no level or manner of control as yet possible that perfects the grip of the tyrant. Therefore, as things currently stand it appears that a general state of minimally tolerable crisis and the attendant miseries issuing therefrom will become the standard of life for the great unwashed masses of the earth. Reduction of the entire global population to a single and uniform state of subsisting poverty that stifles the creative power of the individual, and therefore all prospects of anyone elevating himself above the rest, will be effectively zero. One of the things those seeking global domination must not tolerate are any examples to the rest that show to them the possibilities for independent and prosperous life. Indeed, the very meaning of "prosperity" has been slowly redefined before our very eyes over the decades through an endless and powerful barrage of wildly successful propaganda. One must hand it to these people, whoever they are, for the genius, discipline, patience, and single-mindedly vicious and treacherous devotion they have displayed in their pursuits.

We may one day see thorium reactors, but I suspect that by that time, the standard of psychological expectation regarding the quality of life and the avenues of possibility perceived by the average man will have been so tightly circumscribed that such energy facilities will put out only subsistence levels of power for the subsistence-level lifestyle that will be doled out by the masters to a grateful population of domesticated beasts. The spark of the individual is by no means extinguished yet, but it is so very apparent that the trend is heading in that direction at an ever accelerating pace. If the economic hammer is brought down with great craft and absence of pity, that spark will be gone in 1/2 a generation and the world as we have known it will become nothing but a memory.

 

[LibertyRevolution]

Interesting... can you tell me more?

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2006/12/72276?currentPage=all

They are doing fusion in lab now, but when they fuse hydrogen or normal helium it creates too many neutrons.
Neutrons are waste partials, they have no charge and cannot be channeled, so they just smash into the reactor wall destroying the reactor.
Helium 3 when fussed create only a fraction of the neutrons.

 

[Revolution9]

My mind is not made up on this one, but I do wonder how hydrocarbons exist on planetary bodies sans ancient rain-forests.

I mean if oil can exist abiotically there, then why not here?

Maybe someone with more knowledge in chemistry can help explain.

H2O and Calcium carbonate under great pressure produce hydrocarbon soup. Really simple shit here.

Rev9

 

[Revolution9]

Exactly, and the media still isn't willing to talk about the implications of peak oil on the American suburban lifestyle.

I think some on this forum are unwilling to accept peak oil because it demonstrates that the free market usually doesn't solve problems before they happen. We're going to have a rough time in this country dealing with really expensive gas until we reconfigure our society to not need it so much.

Propaganda.

Rev9

 

[Revolution9]

Peak Oil is just common sense. Finit e world, finite resourses.
I find is astonishing that anyone could think it a "myth".
As others have indicated, the crucial issue is not how much oil there is, but how much oil there is that can be extracted for a net energy gain. There may be huge reserves but if it requires more than a barrel's worth of oil-energy to extract a barrel, it may as well be on the moon.
At the beginning of the oil age 100 years ago you could get 100 barrels at the cose of 1. Its about 10 to 1 now.

It regenerates. It is only H2O and calcium carbonate under huge megabar pressures creating hydrocarbon soup. Interestingly they established the event horizon of a black hole by calcium in the spectral bands from the light that escapes.. BTW..many formerly tapped out reserves have filled back up.

Rev9

 

[John F Kennedy III]

It regenerates. It is only H2O and calcium carbonate under huge megabar pressures creating hydrocarbon soup. Interestingly they established the event horizon of a black hole by calcium in the spectral bands from the light that escapes.. BTW..many formerly tapped out reserves have filled back up.

Rev9

You learn something new everyday. I had no idea it regenerates.

 

[Zippyjuan]

It regenerates. It is only H2O and calcium carbonate under huge megabar pressures creating hydrocarbon soup. Interestingly they established the event horizon of a black hole by calcium in the spectral bands from the light that escapes.. BTW..many formerly tapped out reserves have filled back up.

Rev9

The "refill" is never complete. It is often seepage from surrounding areas. To see this effect, drink a glass of a beverage. A couple of minutes later you may see liquid again in the bottom of the glass. Did it spontaneously appear? No, it was drips stuck to the side of the glass which dripped back down to the bottom. The same can happen in oil wells. Wells are never 100% emptied either. There is a certain amount which is "recoverable".

As others have indicated, the crucial issue is not how much oil there is, but how much oil there is that can be extracted for a net energy gain. There may be huge reserves but if it requires more than a barrel's worth of oil-energy to extract a barrel, it may as well be on the moon.
At the beginning of the oil age 100 years ago you could get 100 barrels at the cose of 1. Its about 10 to 1 now.

For example, the shale oil deposits in the original post will require about one barrel's worth of energy to get out one barrels of oil (that energy could come from other sources like natural gas or coal- the heating the shale rocks to extract the oil is the biggest user of that energy) and would also require if I recall correctly about two barrels of water for each barrel of oil- water being a scarce resource in the region.

 

[Revolution9]

The "refill" is never complete. It is often seepage from surrounding areas. To see this effect, drink a glass of a beverage. A couple of minutes later you may see liquid again in the bottom of the glass. Did it spontaneously appear? No,

Correct up to here. After the hydrocarbon soup is drained residual oils in fissures and cracks and from porous rock may infiltrate back in but it is the water that is constantly created within the earth (see the work of Viktor Schauberger) that fills it back up and dissolves the calcium carbonate within the chambers. It is under enormous pressure and at points change forms as it cycles through various compositions and precipitations which get redissolved at future points when the polar solvents build up in the soup bringing forth further compounds such as calcium oxalate which will heat up the entire mix and cause chemical reactions to occur at a quickened pace. Due to the reactions releasing and recombining gazillions of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen in a highly volatile solvent per second(hydrogen under extreme pressure exhibits the qualities of a conductive metal and water is not a stable compound but several that cross combine) and the stray dance up a jig and get long chains going where the carbon hooks grab the hydrogen and oxygen. Various surrounding mineral traces will affect the final composition of the crude. It takes a while but wells tapped out in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the century are filled. Russians knew of this phenomena since the 50's and the process has been successfully recreated in the laboratory.

Rev9

 

[Zippyjuan]

It takes a while but wells tapped out in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the century are filled.

Do you have any links to the Pennsylvania wells refilling? Thanks!

Granted not a great source but from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvanian_oil_rush

After 1871, the oil industry was well established, and the "rush" to drill wells and control production was over. Pennsylvania oil production peaked in 1891, but Pennsylvania still has some oil industry.

Found a chart going back a long ways showing Pennsylvania oil production:
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2010/11/peak_oil_in_pen.html

For two decades the state of Pennsylvania was to be the world's main producer of crude oil. Although production rates from the initial wells on Oil Creek dropped off quickly as the oil was taken out, these were more than replaced by other sources within the state. For example, in 1865, Pithole City, PA became a phenomenal boom town, accounting for a third of the 2.5 million barrels produced in the world that year, only to turn into a ghost town as production rates fell substantially by 1868.

Pennsylvanian production continued to increase as ever-more-productive new fields within the state were developed, reaching almost 32 million barrels in 1891. But I was interested to learn that, despite amazing improvements in technology since the nineteenth century, that was the highest annual production rate that Pennsylvania would ever achieve.

BIt more info on older field areas:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...st-and-boom-again-in-pennsylvania-834598.html

In five years, production of the waxy, paraffin-rich crude from Pennsylvania's Appalachian basin field has shot up 50 per cent to 3.8 million barrels. But experts reckon that two-thirds of the oil that was there when Drake drilled his way into history is still in the ground. Once it wasn't worth bothering with, but no longer. Rock Well Petroleum, a Canadian company, has plans not only to drill scores of new wells, but to dig huge underground caverns to collect the oil and pump it to the surface.

There's just one problem, however: what to do with the brine that comes with the oil, especially from older wells. McClintock No 1, for instance, now delivers 300 barrels of brine for every barrel of oil, says Barbara Zolli, the director of the state oil museum in nearby Titusville, at the site of Drake's first well.

Doesn't sound like they are completely refilled with oil. Sounds like water has been filling them up.

 

[Revolution9]

Do you have any links to the Pennsylvania wells refilling? Thanks!<snip BS>
Doesn't sound like they are completely refilled with oil. Sounds like water has been filling them up.

Yes. They fill up with water and it changes to hydrocarbon soup. Oil reserves have been kept in the ground in the US on purpose. Are you frikkin' dense or being paid to shill constantly. Links? Dude.. I read the internets like 20 times over and do not care if fools cannot do their own research but I read like 200-500 pages a day and have a mind like a STEEL TRAP FOR DATA..BUT NOT AUTHORS OR WEBSITE LINKS.. These facts are on the web and your charts and rhetoric mean shit. I ain't doing legwork for an Obama shill. And I don't give a frak who believes these facts. I know them to be accurate and the lab data on oil creation to be accurate and true. So..what is your gambit then if you are trying to disprove abiotic oil??

REV9

 

[AmericasLastHope]

I wonder what Jim Rogers thinks about this.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Yes. They fill up with water and it changes to hydrocarbon soup. Oil reserves have been kept in the ground in the US on purpose. Are you frikkin' dense or being paid to shill constantly. Links? Dude.. I read the internets like 20 times over and do not care if fools cannot do their own research but I read like 200-500 pages a day and have a mind like a STEEL TRAP FOR DATA..BUT NOT AUTHORS OR WEBSITE LINKS.. These facts are on the web and your charts and rhetoric mean shit. I ain't doing legwork for an Obama shill. And I don't give a frak who believes these facts. I know them to be accurate and the lab data on oil creation to be accurate and true. So..what is your gambit then if you are trying to disprove abiotic oil??

REV9

I see. Jesus works in the oil fields- turning water into oil. Water (which is one oxygen atom and two hydrogen and zero carbon atoms) is miraculously being changed into carbon atoms. Amazing stuff! Do you have any links showing how this works? that would be cool to check out. Thanks!

You offered as an example of abiotic oil the refilling of Pennsylvania oil wells from 100 years ago and said they had completely refilled. I tried to see if that was true and could not find that it was- the opposite instead seems to be true- they have not refilled with oil. I asked if you had anything which would help show that and I guess you could not- but thanks for looking.

I will agree that we do not know with absolute certainty how oil is formed (even the fossil fuel idea is a theory but based on evidence the most likely right now), but observations so far do not support abiotic theories. If the oil is being formed within the earth and pushed up to the surface, then deeper sources should be younger oils and so far, they are not.

Perhaps the 100 years since the oil was taken out from the Pennsylvania field is not enough time? If so, then this is still a problem because it means that it is still being used up much more quickly than it can be replaced.

 

[gerryb]

Can someone more knowledgable than myself please explain how it is that hydrocarbons exist elsewhere in our solar system, yet abiotic oil is considered a non-possibility according to orthodox scientific thinking.

Hydrogen is abiotic?

Problem solved?