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Gold/Mining/Energy : Central Pacific Minerals & Southern Pacific Petroleum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (70)	10/19/1998 11:51:00 AM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 90

Bearcatbob, IMHO, all of the big shale deposits will ultimately be developed, but only when the price of oil justifies them. This appears to be the least expensive one to mine. I'm no expert, but Suncor's involvement convinced me that this is for real. Tom suncor.com Dave Liderth: "Yes, good morning. My question to Mr. Rick George -- there's been some talk as a result of the shale project in Australia. There's been some talk by analysts looking at maybe countries, other countries are thinking of looking into oil shale production. I'm just wondering Rick, are we looking at some possibility for doing something in the U.S., China, some of the other countries that shale has been discovered in?" R. George: "Yeah, this is Rick here. I think the best way I can answer that is there are shale deposits, known shale deposits, around the world and again, you gotta remember, no-one has commercially -- there are other shale plants around the world, but none of them have actually been proven to be a commercial success. I think what changes this is actually our success in the oil sands business and our ability to lower prices have really given us, I think, the motivation and the drive to give this a great shot. Obviously, these other deposits, if we prove this technology, there are other deposits around the world that this may work on, but you have to be a little careful with that. There are issues around logistics, around close marketplaces, and other issues including access to water and other things that you would need to make a project successful. So you just can't automatically assume that you can go to any shale oil deposit and make this work. I would also quickly add that not all shale oil deposits are created equal. You know there are varying degrees of quality. These are all laid down in geological time in varying different kind of environments. For example, this shale oil is completely different than the shale that was tried in Colorado and Utah back in the '70s. The deposition and the composition of this shale is completely different, and so you've got to be very careful about any kind of broad assumptions there."