My husband knows the head of the USGS....gave presentation in the same venue for Texas Utilities. He describes him as a "company" man...meaning he will say all the right politically correct things. In other words, he is not a "true" scientist.

You have to understand the difference between the median and the mean, but given the lack of reliable data, it probably doesn't make much difference.

It's the return of "fuzzy math."

Spend a lot of money and energy looking for non-existent oil - voila, negative energy!

Would any commercial operator(s) go after such a small prize?

This is not a gaussian distribution; the tail end of the distribution is where all the action is. A 5% probability of at least 34.5 billion barrels(more than 3.5 trillion USD if we agree oil will not drop significantly below $100/bbl in this timeframe) is well worth a look.

It doesn't matter if the prize is small. If the cost of producing that oil(including opportunity cost) is less than it's worth it will be produced. If the time spent picking up a dime from the ground is worth less to you than the dime you do it, otherwise you just move along.

Millard, you remind me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' character, Jose Arcadio Buendia, in his enchanting tale of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquiades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquidades' magical irons. "Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." Jose Arcadio Buendia, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquiades, who was an honest man, warned him: "It won't work for that." But Jose Arcadio Buendia at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Ursula Iguaran, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. "Very soon we'll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house," her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquiades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When Jose Arcadio Buendia and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skelton with copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck.

Millard,

please explain your flow rate assumptions for Venezuela and Bakken formation. That is, how fast ramp up, max flow rate and time to sustain max.

Surely if you think that 'oil is not a problem' you have a reality based model about the flow rates. After all, flow rates matter - not the reserves themselves.

Then please explain how 'people' are the problem.

Inquiring minds want to know.

"The Venezuela stuff can be extracted at about $1 a barrel,... Oil is not the problem. People are."

Thanks for the best laugh I've had in a while by providing this wonderful example of why "People are" most certainly the "problem."

Hi Millard,

OIL SHALE IS NOT OIL, NOR IS IT SHALE, AND THE EROEI FOR OIL SHALE STINKS AND WILL ALWAYS STINK, EVEN WHEN OIL HIT $1,000 PER BARREL

The World Energy Council makes the following assessment about the potential of oil shale energy:

“If a technology can be developed to economically recover oil from oil shale, the potential is tantalisingly enormous. If the containing organic material could be converted to oil, the quantities would be far beyond all known conventional oil reserves. Oil shale in great quantities exists worldwide: including in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the USA.

The term ‘oil shale’ is a misnomer. It does not contain oil nor is it commonly shale. The organic material is chiefly kerogen and the "shale" is usually a relatively hard rock, called marl. Properly processed, kerogen can be converted into a substance somewhat similar to petroleum. However, it has not gone through the ‘oil window’ of heat (nature’s way of producing oil) and therefore, to be changed into an oil-like substance, it must be heated to a high temperature. By this process the organic material is converted into a liquid, which must be further processed to produce an oil which is said to be better than the lowest grade of oil produced from conventional oil deposits, but of lower quality than the upper grades of conventional oil.
There are two conventional approaches to oil shale processing. In one, the shale is fractured in-situ and heated to obtain gases and liquids by wells. The second is by mining, transporting, and heating the shale to about 450oC, adding hydrogen to the resulting product, and disposing of and stabilising the waste. Both processes use considerable water. The total energy and water requirements together with environmental and monetary costs (to produce shale oil in significant quantities) have so far made production uneconomic. During and following the oil crisis of the 1970’s, major oil companies, working on some of the richest oil shale deposits in the world in western United States, spent several billion dollars in various unsuccessful attempts to commercially extract shale oil.

Oil shale has been burned directly as a very low grade, high ash-content fuel in a few countries such as Estonia, whose energy economy remains dominated by shale. Minor quantities of oil have been obtained from oil shale in several countries at times over many years.
With increasing numbers of countries experiencing declines in conventional oil production, shale oil production may again be pursued. One project is now being undertaken in north-eastern Australia, but it seems unlikely that shale oil recovery operations can be expanded to the point where they could make a major contribution toward replacing the daily consumption of oil worldwide.
Perhaps oil shale will eventually find a place in the world economy, but the energy demands of blasting, transport, crushing, heating and adding hydrogen, together with the safe disposal of huge quantities of waste material, are large. On a small scale, and with good geological and other favourable conditions, such as water supply, oil shale may make a modest contribution but so far shale oil remains the ‘elusive energy’.”

The 2007 GAO study concluded that, “it is possible that in 10 years from now, the oil shale resource could produce 0.5 million to 1.0 million barrels per day.” But the GAO noted that the development of oil shale faces key challenges, including: “(1) controlling and monitoring groundwater, (2) permitting and emissions concerns associated with new power generation facilities, (3) reducing overall operating costs, (4) water consumption, and (5) land disturbance and reclamation.”

Walter Youngquist of the Colorado School of Mines provides a detailed history and analysis of attempts to develop Colorado’s oil shale. After spending billions of dollars, industry has terminated oil shale operations due to a low net energy recovery and a lack of water resources.

Finally, anyone with common sense who has seen oil shale can look at the little bit of dry carbon embedded in marmal rock and see this oil shale stuff ain't goin nowhere.