Don't confuse the Realist with too much reality...look at it on the bright side...we're looking at about 2% of our needs.

__________________
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

~ Pat Paulsen for President

The pollution controls applied only to newly constructed facilities. So, as long as those refineries remained uncompetitively inefficient, and continued to process their target light sweet crude, they were not required to comply with the new standards.

Unfortunately, the owners of bigger refineries made massive investments to cut costs by becomng more efficient, and changes so they could process the heavy sour crude that was flooding the market at much lower prices, and while they were at it, expanded the capacity of each refinery.

And as the Carter initiated energy efficiency measures ground on even as Reagan told people to spent more money on burning money-I mean oil, cars used less gas, power plants burned less oil, and the price of oil products fell through the floor, and below the marginal cost of those refineries closed.

So, pollution controls only forced the shutdowns if you call the sulfer, metals, and waxes in the crude that would clog the refinery equipment and poison the catalysts to be controls on the pollutions the crude could contain.

In microeconomic terms, some of the refinery owners failed to invest in innovation, failed to respond to the market fast enough, and thus suffered the "creative destruction of the free market." The fact is, these refineries without the burden of pollution controls couldn't compete with refineries that had the state of the art pollution controls. Ultimately, pollution is waste and waste is inefficiency and inefficiency is uncompetitive.

A better explanation for the reason the plants closed was the price of oil and gas was too low.

The New Refinery is being built for processing oil...Alberta is only one location it'll be able to recieve oil from. I should've specified that.

Oh,,,I did in my next thread...


The part about "tar sands" caught my eye. The Tri-State area around Colorado supposedly has the largest deposits of shale oil in the World. It sounds as though we're now investing in tapping into it.

__________________
A Liberal is a Man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel (Robert Frost 1874-1963).

Democrats want to take oil company profits, so I'm not sure how they would build new refineries?

The UN said they want $45 Trillion to build nuclear plants and windmill farms.
The same thing Democrats have been blocking US energy companies from doing. Russia, India and China can drill 50 miles from US shores, but the US can not drill there.

It's not complicated, Democrats WANT an energy crisis in the US and their actions prove it. Democrats want to take Trillions from US taxpayers and hold Americans hostage over energy.

__________________
The United States of Indentured Servants

You repeat that and ignored my comment...I didn't necessarily expect a response but I also didn't expect you to repeat it...so I shall ask you directly...why does "tar sands" bring "shale oil" to mind?

Are you aware that they are two distinctly different types of formations carrying two distinctly different types of product?

Also...we are a long way off from even possibly tapping into the tar sands commercially...in fact was it not you that provided the link to the study that shows that? Perhaps it was someone else...can't remember...anyway, have a look...

http://www.npc.org/Study_Topic_Paper...Oil-Shales.pdf

__________________
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

~ Pat Paulsen for President

In 1940, Bush would have been calling for the startup of new buggy whip factories to drive down the price of traveling by horse and buggy.

And you would be claiming FDR was claiming Hitler was a threat just to create a crisis in the horse and buggy market.

I can assure you, if you want to invest $100B so you can become a trillionaire from producing oil from the oil shales, you will find no one blocking your way spending your $100B. Hey, if you want to invest just $100M so you can get rich from the oil shales, you will find no obstacles to making that investment, with plenty of registered Democrats happily taking, er investing, your money.

However, you would make more money building wind farms and solar thermal power plants.

id like to hear an experts opinion from lithuania and or isreal about our shale deposit. those two countries have long lived resource plays of it.

I'm no expert from Lithuania or Israel but I can read and have a fair knowledge of the oil industry...first off, you are comparing apples to oranges...in Lithuania, er Estonia...they use an ex situ process because their oil shale is surface mined, whereas here in the US due to the depth we would need to use an in situ process which is still in the development phase furthermore...

__________________
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

~ Pat Paulsen for President

i would think one could high pressure steam the seams to move it to a collecting point.

Steaming has it's function...I wish I had a buck for every steam program I've written...but it does not address the permeability problems relative to the shale...nor does it address the difference in the product found in the shale and that which is usually found in the heavy tar sands where conventional steam programs are used.

Don't get me wrong jebe...I remain hopeful that some day we can come up with a viable method of producing the potential energy contained in the shale...we simply are not there yet and to be quite honest, if we spent as much time and money we could probably come up with better alternatives.

__________________
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

~ Pat Paulsen for President