I stand by my numbers, and will dig up the links again if/when I have time, if you had not noticed from my 'Robert S. Stalk line' below my post, I'm in the middle of a computer change.

I would take that 'mean' estimate with a huge grain of salt. I don't think I've seen numbers that high anywhere else.

Oil Shale is the 'fusion power' of the oil industry. Production of oil from oil shale has always been just '$10 per-barrel' away from being economically viable since oil was trading at $40/barrel, and always also just 10 years away form being technically feasible.

If Oil Shale is going to require strip mining on unprecedented scale, then no, it should be avoided at all costs.

Oil is a dead end, in as much as it will be impossible for us to fully transition off of it in the near future, we should do exploration (globally). But putting up stalking horses like ANWAR or pipedreams such as cheap Shale Oil is silly, especially if they are intended to suffice as a point in an argument that we don't need to get off Oil, or can really impact the coupling of our economy to oil, or that Oil prices will not, over time, rise.

What sort of economic viability can we attain when oil is trading at $400 or $500? It won't happen in this decade probably, but eventually it will- even adjusted for inflation. Its a finite resource with infinite demand. Do the math.

Yeti