$20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

South Australia is sitting on oil potentially worth more than $20 trillion, independent reports claim - enough to turn Australia into a self-sufficient fuel producer.

Must be a hell of a lot more out there somewhere as well.


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/nat...-1226560401043

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Do you want me to burst bubbles?

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

I know the ups and downs of shale, but I value your opinion, as I have said. Tell you what though - I wouldn't mind you bursting the real estate bubble...

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

OK, well the short version is then - a man with an oil prospect is only marginally more trustworthy and honest than a real estate salesman. PT Barnum would say "Ooo, do you think you can really get away with a lie THAT big".

As for your second point, I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

I thought the problem with shale oil was the cost of conversion, and that it was accepted that sooner or later the price of oil would make shale oil extraction economic.

Am i wrong?

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

I read somewhere that for every 100 tons of shale you get 3 tons of oil, which has got to be pretty pricey, but then if that's the only source of oil one day...

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Normal oil fields are where the rock is permeable, but is capped by a dome of impermeable rock. All the oil collects over geologic timescales, ready for your oilman to stick a straw into it.

Tight Oil (which is what they are talking about when they mention fracking) is when the rock isn't permeable, so the oil gets stuck where its created. As you can imagine, there are wide areas of the world with such circumstances.

People have known since the 1960s how to use explosions and high pressure liquid to break apart such areas of rock underground, allowing some oil to flow out. But its expensive since you are having to do the job nature does for you on conventional fields, and because it doesn't take long for the flow to stop (because the rock isn't permeable, natch).

Not all tight oil fields are equal.

Fairly obviously there are areas where lots of oil was created and trapped, and areas where little was. So just saying there is oil means **** all.

For the high quality fields, the current price is *just* about enough to make money off drill the prospects. You can be fairly certain of getting something, but it can be touch and go if the density of oil means you will get out more money that you put in. These wells tend to die in 1-2 years.

So, as the price goes up you can move down the quality spectrum - but doing so means less oil from each well, so you need more wells drilled, more often, to keep up a flow rate (its a red queen race).

This PR release says basically *** all and is there to reap money from gullible fools in Oz/China with dollar signs in their eyes. Actually the best prospects in Oz are thought to be in QLD.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Different type of 'shale' oil - more the Alberta type. They use the term to apply to at least three different types of field - as I said, real estate level of lying.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Made Linc shares jump though:D Australia remains in a relatively strong position here though because as far as I know it is still one of the few OECD that net exports hydrocarbons. Crude oil is the problem. The bulk of it is off WA, Vic and NT but it's running out fast. Bottom line is humans use too much oil because the economic system demands constant growth or there will be collapse.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Nope, Australia imports half its oil demand. Its never really been a net oil exporter. Obviously much better off on gas and coal, where it does export.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Oil yes, but net exporter of hydrocarbons overall.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

It would be an interesting exercise to convert each nations imports and exports into a common energy value and compare them.

If I get free time this weekend I will run through the numbers.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

I am nerdy enough to look forward to that...

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/

They don't have an 'all' option yet, but they do produce figures in Mtoe, so you can manually do it, and I think the BP numbers that this is based on include a total.

Edit, actually, just go to the 'All fuels' tab

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Thank you, most interesting.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Pay enough for an 'independent' report and it'll tell you anything you like.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Smells like the Poseidon sags to me.


I'll be amazed if we see fracking on a large scale in this country, despite the bonanza it could bring.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Fact is, we're all on a crash course with no more oil because our consumption is totally unsustainable. I think it's going to last a lot longer than the preppers do, but I know it's not infinite, and I know we had better have something to replace it or we're in apocalypse territory.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Didn't see any mention of this in the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

"The water needed in the oil shale retorting process offers an additional economic consideration: this may pose a problem in areas with water scarcity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_economics

"Depending on technology, above-ground retorting uses between one and five barrels of water per barrel of produced shale-oil."

Where do they propose to get enough water to produce 3.5 billion to 233 billion barrels of oil? Or is Australia going to turn into the western USA where oil companies are buying groundwater rights?

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

There are at least three different types of thing that get classified as 'shale oil' / 'oil shale' / etc. (usually by marketeers) and they are very different things.

The first refers to the 'Alberta' type (oil sands), where the oil (bitumen really) is bound into the rock and it needs to be heated and 'washed' out of the rock, after it's been removed from the ground.

The type referred to in the PR push by Linc is the 'fracking' type, where the oil is in the rock, and can't move (tight), but if you poke a crack in it, it will flow out.

The final is oil shales type, kerogen, where you don't actually have oil at all, but a precursor which after further processing can be made into a synthetic crude. This takes heat (lots of), and water.

The first is obviously done a lot in canada and produces about 2Mbpd for them. The second is done in the US and produces less than 1Mbpd of real oil. The third doesn't produce a barrel and nobody know how to do it realistically.

BTW, those low numbers are why they shouldn't be taken too seriously. It takes quite a bit of effort to achieve those numbers - and meanwhile the big old giants in Saudi are thought to be declining at 0.6-0.8Mbpd each year, every year.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

That's interesting about Canada because they import around 1 million barrels per day, but use 2 million barrels per day. I once calculated all remaining known stocks of oil and on current consumption there were something like 40 years left.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Update

Actually others have been digging into this PR a bit more, and have suggested that what Linc claim to have found is the third type of 'shale oil' - actually kerogen - rather than the second type

If this is the case then they have found the square root of sweet FA, since nobody has a viable way of turning this 'not oil' into real oil.

Words like 'pump and dump' are being thrown around - but their press release is so opaque its difficult to be sure. Certainly some of the terms they are talking, and the numbers, make it look like this is a kerogen play - and therefore essentially worthless.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

As Robert Palmer once sung, It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough, You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to oil... or something like that anyway..

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

As a geologist, i will through in my tuppence. To extract this, the country will have a choice to make. Cheap electricity or food. The issue is that it is in the area of the Great Australian Basin Aquafer. This is the ground water that is used to keep the agriculture of Australia alive. Extracting by fracking would almost certainly cause severe damage to the aquafer. So, do you want cheap oil and starve?

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Is that a 100pct given outcome in fracking in that area ? Is there anyway that in fracking, polluting the basin is avoidable

Quite a few quesitons I'd like to ask Geologists in relation to this.... Obviously this material comes from old vegative growth and masses of it. What caused the climate change to end that growth and how long ago did that happen.

.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

lets just go nuclear.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Much easier to sell the material to third world countries & let them deal with the radioactive waste.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

And much more lucrative.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Between Australia , the US & Canada,:fingerscrossed: it would seem the middle east days may be shorter than anticipated.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

No, it is not inevitable. But the risks would be high. Is there a way around it? I am not sure. I am not a fracking expert, but anything that may alter the permiability and porosity of the basin rocks would be a significant concern.

There is a lot of debate about why the carboniferous period ended. Personally, i think it was a combination of things. Pangea had formed and was moving south. We still do not understand all of the reasons for sudden climate change. One of the reasons why a fair few earth scientists are not convinced that global warming is caused by man. At least not in its entirety.

The CO2 level in the atmosphere changed significantly, as did the oxygen levels. The trees had flourished in the high CO2 environemt and succedded very well in converting it to oxygen. The problem being that this meant there was less and less CO2 for them to grow. The mountain buiilding that took place during the formation of Pangea was significant as although initially locking up a lot of water and draining the lands, giving room for forests to expand, as climate changed again and became colder it was then a hinderance. It also was a period of new types of plant forming which may have out competed existing plants.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

A few key facts about fracking.

1. The reason you are doing it at all is that there is very poor permeability and porosity of the rocks - so provided the aquifer and the oil strata are separated by a decent distance there should be very low/no chance of the fracking allowing communication between the two.
2. When you drill down to reach the oil strata, you cement the hole that results so you nice valuable oil doesn't leak out, and pressures are contained. So unless you make a total balls-up of the concrete job, there should be no communication from the hole to the aquifer as it passes through.
3. However, the fracking fluid that you put down the hole tends to be used as a one shot job. Therefore you end up with tankers of used fracking fluid, containing not only hydrocarbons, but acids, sands, etc. - which needs to be properly disposed of. In common with most drilling activities, that gets subcontracted to the lowest bidder - and people being the short sighted, untrustworthy ****s they are - some of those tanker drivers/firms dump the fluid rather than paying the high costs of proper disposal, and rake in a nice profit.
4. So unless you watch them like hawks and have good government regulation, you can get contamination from the top down, not bottom up. You'll note that the US is private enterprise friendly and government oversight unfriendly - and has reports of contamination. Except Texas, where they have been doing fracking for ages, and also know you can't trust people, so start by putting nuts in the vice and will squeeze at the slightest hint of wrongdoing.

Overall, the risks aren't high, provided you regulate properly AND check to see they aren't cheating.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

So you would be in favour of fracking given the right circumstances then ? I was of the misunderstanding that fracking automatically led to water table contamination. I now see this may well not be the case.

So I'm back to the "jury's out" on this one.

I think most of the general public that have taken a bit of interest in fracking believes it contaminates the water table as well.... so there's a massive PR sale to get through first.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

You know the media is talking bollocks because their lips are moving....

Fracking is a desperation play. It's expensive and the wells don't last long - its the original red queen race. Therefore don't be confused about the why and the importance - frack or the available oil supply goes down. In fact it's probably going to go down even with it. So I don't have any problem with it, but I don't have any misconceptions either - it's duct tape on a bust radiator hose.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Has anyone stopped to think of the consequences on levels of atmospheric CO2 if the planet was to burn an extra $20 trillion worth of oil? Given the energy intensive nature of fracking, that's a $hitload of CO2.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Its not oil , it is mostly natural gas... far different.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Burning gas still releases CO2 - maybe a bit less than oil per joule, but still a lot. $20 trillion is more than the entire GDP of the U.S. in one year!

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Choose your poison, solar and wind are nice but a long way from the answer. Coal is and will continue to be cheap, in comparison natural gas is far cleaner. I prefer nuclear.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Just think of all that money, might be enough to buy another planet when we finish f***ing this one up.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

We're a very short-sighted bunch, humans. For a long time now there's been around one billion people using most of the oil, but now, with China and India really accelerating, this is 3.5 billion. People need to realise there simply are not enough resources to supply everyone at the old rate.

Re: $20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
 

Then there's the other side of the coin... the one that lets us progress rather than stagnate

We're also very inventive. adaptable, and capable, Chinas fertility rate is already at 1.7 and it's whole population is expected to start to decline around 2030. Indias around 2050. In the meantime there's the Hydroponic and GM techniques and arid Arid land reclamation that will fill any gaps in food supply if needs be. We will slowly change over to renewable resources and life will get better for everyone. Mankinds decline definitely wont be through overpopulation. or lack of resources IMO. The Indians and Chinese have definitely responded to the writing on the wall....They've taken action it will take time for those actions to be effective, they are working. Just got to get the message through to the Africans now.

As for energy use... To me the answer is obvious... A decent way of storing electricity in a very light medium still needs to be Invented/Perfected That'll come when the need becomes absolutely vital. As the say Necessity is the Mother of invention.