Word: shales
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most serious attempt ever made in the decades-old dream of wresting energy from northwestern Colorado's rugged Piceance Basin, which contains possibly 1.2 trillion bbl. of oil. The fuel is trapped in a form of limestone that geologists call marl, which is commonly known as shale. Colony's 8,800 acres alone are estimated to contain at least 500 million bbl. of oil, a month-long supply for the entire U.S. at the current levels of consumption. The project's facilities include a huge retort for cooking a compound called kerogen, contained in shale, and extracting...
...deciding to get into the Colony development, oil was shooting toward $40 per bbl. and experts were predicting $50 oil by the mid-'80s. What has happened, of course, is that the price of crude has declined an average of $3 per bbl. during the past year. The shale-oil development that made sense economically with $50-per-bbl. oil was not a good business proposition in a world of $33 petroleum...
Exxon's long-term forecasts still anticipate an increase in oil prices, but not as rapid as previously expected. R.P. Larkins, the manager of Exxon U.S.A.'s synthetic-fuels department, said that shale oil is simply too expensive now and that "nothing over the long term would offset our costs." Adds John Lichtblau, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation: "The fact is that from a market point of view, most synfuel projects are not economically viable...
...subsidiary of Exxon, met two weeks ago with Tosco President Morton M. Winston in Los Angeles and told him that Exxon was withdrawing its funding of the project. Tosco exercised its option to sell Exxon its 40% share in Colony. Tosco, with various partners, has been trying to develop shale oil in Colorado for almost 30 years. Along the way, it has become the second largest refiner of gasoline in the U.S., behind Ashland...
Tosco, though, was not big enough to carry the Colony project by itself. Its net worth is only $259 million, and it was hoping that revenues from oil shale would be large enough to make its investment in time, money and faith pay off. Winston, of course, thinks that Exxon acted too hastily. Says he: "Tosco believes that the project would be found satisfactory if full engineering and other assessment work were completed...