Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to A good article from the Colorado School of Mines

re:If you are ever camping in NW Colorado
jms — (archived)

Don't make your campfire ring out of oil shale. But do chuck some into the fire, it does burn. Stinky smoke, though.

I really don't see this being a viable replacement. There may be some production in the future, but there is no way we will ever recover the amount of oil in there, rumoured to be more oil than the Saudi Arabia reserves! The water is a big factor, the strip mining is another, the waste (unless it could be used for something), and the energy balance doesn't always work.

As I heard it, the efforts to liberate the natural gas using a nuke (Project Rusilon, was it?) was similar to hydro-fracturing a gas reserve to increase recovery, but resulted in making the Natural Gas radioactive. Oh dear. Not in the official reports (there is a USGS publication on it) but by way of anecdote.

Scotland had some small production of oil shale...don't remember where....

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