Comment

Comment by William Helmke on April 15, 2010 at 6:34am

Sue is right! The energy future in the US will be based on natural gas (NatGas).
We should invest out capital in developing new technologies to tap our domestic NatGas resources. We can use NatGas as the means to eventually 'replace' oil.
A next step in this scenario is to use NatGas and coal as feed stocks into synthetic fuel processes to obtain liquid hydrocarbons (synthafuel) for transportation and other applications. We will still need some liquid hydrocarbons; for jet fuel, distillates, lube oil, etc.
In the near-term; we can increase oil production, without any additional drilling, by using enhanced recovery (ER) technologies in existing reservoirs; CO2 floods for example. Using ER technologies to increase oil production is a far more cost-effective than an off-shore drilling.
We should use new drilling just to make up the difference between what oil we need and the oil we produce from ER and synthafuel production.
Investing in new energy technologies is smart. Investing in old technologies such as drilling for oil is very limiting.

Comment by Robin Fehrenbach Scala on April 11, 2010 at 5:24am

Shale is now and the future. It is cost effective, getting more efficient and safer as time goes by, and will provide the US with a cheap source of power for just about everything.
But where exactly is Washington in all this? Absent so far.