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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SEC-ond-chance who wrote (96367)	10/30/2006 8:59:33 PM
From: SEC-ond-chance	Respond to of 122087

Sometimes the delusions have been motivated by a stock scam Oil Shale and Dung Cakes Oil shale has many apologists. They suggest that technology is lacking. They suggest that cheap oil is to blame. Ever confident, they suggest that “its day will come, just wait.” Yet the day never comes. Why has shale failed to deliver? The primary explanation is that oil shale is a very poor fuel. Compared to the coal that launched the Industrial Revolution or the oil that sustains Western Civilization, oil shale is a pathetic pretender, the dregs. When it comes to energy, quality is everything. Quality can be measured in various ways—cost, convenience, and cleanliness all matter—but energy density trumps them all. Coal seams a few feet thick are worth mining, sometimes at depths exceeding 1,000 feet, because coal contains lots of energy. Dense forms of energy like coal and crude oil invented prosperity; they are industrial oxygen. If coal is good, oil is better. Petroleum contains 50% more energy than the best coal, twice that of the hardest oak. There’s a lot of “grunt” in a gallon of gasoline, enough to propel a 3,000 pound car thirty miles. If crude oil is king, oil shale is a pauper. Pound per pound, oil shale contains just one-tenth the energy of crude oil, one-sixth that of coal, and one-fourth that of recycled phone books. Shale outcrops are common in Colorado, but in prehistoric times the Utes did not use it for heat; why bother when you could gather pine or juniper instead? In poor countries, millions of people heat their homes with dried manure. Dung cakes have four times more energy than does oil shale. Oil shale is a fossil fuel—but just barely. Searching for appropriate low-calorie analogues, we turn to foodstuffs, the realm of Weight Watchers. Oil shale is said to be “rich” when it contains 30 gallons of petroleum per ton. An equal weight of granola contains three times more energy. The “vast,” “immense,” and “unrivaled” deposits of shale buried in Utah and Colorado have the energy density of a baked potato. If someone told you there were a trillion tons of tater tots buried 1,000 feet-deep, would you rush to dig them up? Take a memo, Senator. Oil shale has one-third the energy density of Cap’n Crunch, but no one is counting on Kellogg to become a major energy producer soon. In other words, no one is drilling in the cereal aisle. The mystery is not that we lack an oil shale industry—it’s why we’ve spent billions trying to develop one. energybulletin.net