Oil from a stone or A dream come true

[cryowizard]

Go Shell! Let's see that oil flow domestically (until we find something better).

Apparently, Shell has spent 28 years and 200 million working out the process to extract oil from oil shales.

And shales we have!

Spanning some 17,000 square miles across parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, this underground lakebed holds at least 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That's triple the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

[...]

Vinegar has developed a cutting-edge technology that, according to Shell, will produce large quantities of high-quality oil without ravaging the local environment - and be profitable with prices around $30 a barrel. Now that oil is approaching $90, the odds on Shell's speculative bet are beginning to look awfully good.

Of course, considering the U.S. uses almost 21 million barrels a day and imports about ten million (and rising), even the most optimistic projections do not get the country to the nirvana of "energy independence." What oil shale could do, though, is reduce the risk premium built into oil prices because energy traders could rest easy knowing that the flow of oil from Colorado or Utah won't ever be cut off by Venezuelan dictators, Nigerian gunmen or strife in the Middle East. In a broader sense, U.S. energy security lies in diversity of supply, so enhancing domestic sources is appealing.