Word: shales
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...experts sketch this scenario: long before resources run out, scarcities would force price boosts. The expense would prod industrialists and consumers to substitute one material for another, develop recycling techniques to use existing supplies more efficiently, and redouble efforts to find ways of using materials-for example, oil-bearing shale-that were previously uneconomic or technically impossible to exploit. Before long, commercial harnassing of thermonuclear fusion could make available limitless quantities of low-cost energy, which could in turn be used to unlock new raw materials from the earth...
...Easy Job. The trouble is that much of this treasure is not recoverable with today's technology at today's prices. The Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Colorado, for example, hold billions of barrels of oil imprisoned in shale. Estimates of the price that would have to be charged for oil crushed and burned out of that rock run as high as $5 a barrel v. $3.25 for crude oil pumped out of U.S. wells, and roughly $2 for Middle Eastern crude. In addition, the shale-extraction process piles up mountains of ash that would create environmental hazards...
What about other sources of power? When many estimate that there are over 300 years of fossil fuels left-coal, shale, oil, natural gas-and that geothermal, fusion, solar, magneto-hydrodynamics and other clean power technologies are just around the corner, why the rush for fission? These other power technologies haven't been given a chance. The AEC spends 83 per cent of its research dollar on fission power. Con Edison spent more on advertising last year than on all research. In fact, over ten times as much is spent on advertising for electricity as is spent on research into...
...potential oil sources, although admittedly uncertain and still in the far future. Some experts envision a North American energy market that would tap Canada's vast, undeveloped supplies. When the world's oil wells are fully depleted, there will still be immense reserves locked away in tar sands and shale. By then, nuclear energy will help to supply the "highenergy society." All this does not mean that Alaskan oil is unnecessary to the U.S. It does mean that it can be developed gradually and with suitable environmental controls. Its impact should be judged primarily in relation to the needs...