Forget Your Silver Bullet
Bill Moore, EV World
US Task Force finds unconventional fuels from tar sands to shale oil will make little contribution to future energy needs.
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The United States' Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels (www.unconventionalfuels.org) has made public its findings and recommendations on the futARTHUR MAX, AssocARTHUR MAX, Associated Pressated Pressbe played by five non-petroleum energy sources found in America: shale oil, heavy crude, tar sands, coal-to-liquids and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using captured carbon dioxide.
In three volumes, the Task Force, made up of the U.S. Secretaries of Energy, Interior nd Defense, along with the governors of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Kentucky, takes a comprehensive look at the potential contribution these, heretofore under-utilized resources can make in supplementing the nation's declining petroleum production. They conclude that even under the most aggressive development scenario, these resources could produce about 7.6 million barrels a day of synthetic liquid fuel by 2035. Ander current, business-as-usual, conditions -- and assuming a whole host of issues from socioeconomic to technical can be resolved -- unconventional fuels might add 2.3 mbld by 2035, about one-tenth of what America currently consumes.
While there are no known proponents of "peak oil" to be found among the senior task force members, nonetheless, Volume One of "America's Strategic Unconventional Fuels" reads as if it might have been produced by the Association of the Study of Peak Oil. There are references to M. King Hubbert and energy return on energy invested (EROI).
(4 October 2007)
