Fast forward to 2012: with the recent departure of natural gas producers, who are moving out of dry shale gas areas to focus on new oil-based shale initiatives due to low pricing for the former, the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to become weighty again in the minds of gas traders.
FORBES: Damaging Hurricanes Could Impact Energy, Insurance Industries In 2012
The dramatic migration pattern can be chalked up to the rapid development of an oil- and gas-rich shale formation in the western part of the state.
FORBES: North Dakota Leads List Of America's Fastest-Growing States
For their calculations, the two assumed that where there was a gap between demand and conventional supply it would be filled with synthetic fuels, first with tar-sands oil and later with oil from coal and shale. (According to high-end estimates, coal and oil shale could together yield some ten trillion barrels of unconventional crude.) They then calculated what the impact would be on global carbon-dioxide levels.
Elliott has said it wants Hess to boost shareholder value through various means, including a potential spin-off of the oil company's holdings in North Dakota's Bakken shale-oil field.
Thus, without even considering the technological advancements that would be made were oil shale to be returned to, oil shale is a long-term, sensible solution literally right beneath our feet.
While these resources might permit Estonia to become largely energy independent of the USSR -- Estonia's electricity output from the shale oil provides twice its domestic requirements -- at present it is required to provide the electricity derived from the shale oil to the Soviet Union at prices set by Moscow and far below production costs.
On federal lands, Shell has been researching methods to cook oil out of the shale (basically oil-soaked rock) without mining it or polluting groundwater.
The result is, there is now a vociferous group of shale-gas (and oil) enthusiasts who have created a mini-bubble in shale.
This has encouraged gas producers to scurry after oil in liquid-rich shale beds such as the Bakken in North Dakota.
Colorado fears another boom-and-bust oil shale cycle, as in the early 1980s.
Morgan Stanley, a bank, reckons that shale-oil production will increase nearly fivefold by 2016 (to around 1.9m barrels a day).
What if it is right there trapped in oil and natural gas-bearing shale, enough to possibly supply our U.S. needs for centuries?
It may be too early to call Utica the last big shale-oil deposit, in part because its productivity hasn't been proven, said Pete Stark, with energy consultancy IHS. But the Utica's size, geology and organic content make it "a promising play, " he said.
At first Amgen tried using genetic engineering to create organisms that would extract oil from shale, man-made proteins that would make chickens grow faster and new specialty chemicals such as a cloned indigo, a substitute for the natural dye used to color blue jeans.
This at a time when permitting of offshore drilling has been slowed to a near halt, oil rigs are being displaced to foreign locations by government regulators, and vast land and ocean oil and gas reservoirs, including oil shale deposits, have been put off-limits altogether.
Unconventional oil production (whether from shale or oil sands) is an energy-intensive process, and emits more CO2 than conventional extractive methods do.
FORBES: Carbon Tax: Will Tweedle Dum Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory?
Thanks to this flood of shale gas, the oil-to-gas ratio has risen to almost 17 on average.
Similarly, oil produced from shale will allow the U.S. to un-hook from the spigot of oil supplied from global hot spots.
He says the Bakken has a layer of nearly impermeable shale that sits above the oil-bearing reservoirs.
The joint venture will provide Sinopec with know-how to produce oil and gas from shale and other unconventional basins in China.
FORBES: U.S. Policies And Economic Doldrums Fuel Chinese Energy and Tech Grabs
It was a Republican speak-in, and their message was clear: Start the drill - offshore in Alaska, tap oil shale in Western states.
Others include Oklahoma City, prospering on the shale-fracking boom in oil and gas, and Denver, which is adding jobs in construction, professional services and mining.
Republicans also want to legalize drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and allow the processing of oil shale on public lands in the West -- two actions Democrats also oppose.
President Obama specifically mentioned clean coal, shale oil and gas as well as well bio-fuels and renewable energy.
Schlumberger (nyse: SLB - news - people ) succumbed, along with shale oil properties like Suncor.
Vale council rejected an application by Bridgend-based Coastal Oil and Gas to carry out exploratory drilling for shale gas at Llandow.
Oil man Trevor Rees-Jones, who netted billions drilling in the Barnett Shale, has been buying up several properties in the University Park neighborhood of Dallas, according to public records.
One must drill the one or two year shale oil options and produce in order to convert them to open-ended arrangements.
FORBES: Driven by Oil Shale Economics, Natural Gas Prices Primed for Slow and Steady Rise
Innovations like hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking, " have made it easier to extract oil and especially natural gas from energy-rich geological formations such as the Niobrara shale, which stretches from Wyoming to beneath the densely-populated Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
In the past couple of years Chinese state energy firms have struck multi-billion-dollar shale deals in America with Chesapeake Energy, mainly for shale oil, and with Devon Energy Corp for gas.
应用推荐