Deseret News | Oil shale in Utah is subject of yearlong viability study

Reader comments
Oil shale in Utah is subject of yearlong viability study

More Evidence | 7:22 a.m. June 12, 2008

Further evidence that Brazil is on the rise and the US on the decline.

Dave | 7:34 a.m. June 12, 2008

I wonder if this foreign company has factored all off the law suits our enviros will file, when they computed their costs and time line.

planetgeo | 10:12 a.m. June 12, 2008

I wouldn't say the US "is on the decline" as much as it is on the leash. And that leash is being pulled tighter and tighter by the Democrats in their overt effort to restrain America. They really don't care how much pain it causes. They believe that the ends justify the means.

Vote for them at your peril.

Comments continue below

Hank Almquist | 10:16 a.m. June 12, 2008

I thought we had the technology to heat the shale in the ground, then pump oil directly from the ground.

jumping the gun | 12:29 p.m. June 12, 2008

This Brazilian company probably hasn't factored in the scarcity of water for production and other factors- if this was viable right now with current technology, Shell and other companies would be all over it pushing to open this wide open and at this point they're not- they're still doing research and figuring out what they want to do.

Gun to their head | 10:19 a.m. June 13, 2008

The Oil Companys don't want the price of oil to go down and producing cheap oil from shale oil is the last thing they want. The technology has been working for years in Brazil, that why they want to start doing it here. Of course, the oil companies will have the EPA and petty lawsuits stonewall any development of this resource so they can continue gouging US consumers at the pump, while blaming the middle east.
Plantego, you must be blind to what the republicans have been doing for the last 7 1/2 years.

Dan | 2:50 p.m. July 4, 2008

The article states that there would be 25 barrels of oil per ton which is a preposterous falsehood. Twenty five barrels of oil would equate to 1050 gallons of oil which would weigh well over three tons. Then add the weight of the rock. Perhaps 25 gallons of oil per ton of rock is reasonable. In any case, there is no such thing as cheap oil from shale. Production costs will be high. much of the energy mined will be consumed in the production process, producing more greenhouse gases before the end product is sent to market. The environmental impact of mining billions of tons of rock to produce oil is difficult to comprehend but will be staggering.

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