oil shale / tar sands

The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future

by Michael Levi  · 28 Apr 2013

gleaming tower in Dallas or Houston but in a grungy part of downtown Newark, where he now does business as founder and chairman of American Shale Oil. “When I was on those gas lines,” he recalls, “people were speaking about the enormous shale resources in Colorado. That was a dream worth pursuing

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. But it wasn’t my time.” Nor, it turned out, was it time for oil shale. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter would all make the legendary resource, estimated to match the holdings of Saudi Arabia, central to their plans

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was going to take some of the dessert too.” In January of that year, IDT, still controlled by Jonas, took a majority stake in EGL Oil Shale, a small firm that had recently won a research and development lease for a tract of Colorado land owned by the federal government. It was

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of the country, and the same resource, that had defeated the U.S. oil industry nearly thirty years before. In May, the company became American Shale Oil, or AMSO, and a year later it entered into a joint venture with the French oil giant TOTAL. Howard Jonas was optimistic about AMSO, but

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was in Alaska; in the early 1990s, it was mostly offshore. Today boosters talk about prospects ranging from tight oil (often referred to as shale oil) to deepwater drilling to new Alaskan crude to oil shale to enhanced recovery of oil from old fields 54 • THE POWER SURGE using carbon dioxide; they also highlight

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geology means that tight oil is found all over the United States. To date, the most common source has been shale, which explains why tight oil is often confusingly referred to as shale oil. About four hundred million years ago, mud and organic matter settled across bottoms of large water basins covering much of

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target of industry interest for so long: the oil there is cheap to produce. Long before rising crude prices made it profitable to extract oil locked in shale rock or buried thousands of feet beneath the sea, the economics of ANWR already worked. Back in 2000, when people still expected oil to

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, at least not for a long time. Still, the prospect of a big boost in enhanced oil recovery remains a genuine possibility. Combined with crude oil from shale, Alaska, and the deep offshore, the further gains to U.S. output could be truly massive, easily exceeding five million barrels a day. S

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of Denver, though, a small club of oil developers, Howard Jonas among them, are betting that there’s one more trump card to be played: oil shale. If you drive through northwest Colorado, you can literally see this holy grail of American oil without stepping out of your car; massive expanses of

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shale whiten the stunning cliffs near towns like Rifle. Many Americans can recall oil shale from the 1970s, when it was touted as the answer to dependence on foreign oil, a bigger potential source of oil than Saudi Arabia itself

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and enough to last the world a hundred years. Then, as oil prices crashed, oil shale seemed to vanish. 62 • THE POWER SURGE Roger Day remembers the moment well. A tall, lanky man with a kind smile, Day earned a degree

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in mechanical engineering from Michigan Tech before trekking out to California to mine rare earths. In early 1982, he moved to Rifle to join the oil shale rush; soon after, the industry collapsed. Six months after he bought his new home, its value had been slashed by more than half. Day spent

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had bid for and won a federal research and development lease (one of only three; the others went to Chevron and Shell) to go after oil shale and they wanted Day to come onboard. The team quickly took shape. Day would be the chief operating officer. Alan Burnham, a careerlong employee of

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field in Kazakhstan. The trio had few illusions about what they were up against. When I described their efforts as the second attempt to commercialize oil shale after the failed experience of three decades before, they quickly corrected me: it was the fifth. Developers had found their hopes dashed first in the

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middle of the nineteenth century, then in the years after each of the two world wars, and finally in the early 1980s. Oil shale is forebidding. Having broken so many hearts so many times over, it still scares most suitors away. “I know that when something has a bad

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, even if things have totally changed.” That change is what a few investors are betting on. Modern oil prices and new technology could eventually make oil shale economically viable. In 2005, Jim Bartis at the RAND Corporation led a team to study the ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ON THE HORIZON • 63 issue. They estimated

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oil shale could become profitable at an oil price between $80 and $110 a barrel, with costs eventually falling over time as the industry gained experience.31 (

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at the prospect of turning coal into liquid fuel; they concluded it could work with prices around sixty to seventy dollars per barrel.)32 But oil shale would take a lot of time to develop at a commercial scale; the RAND teams estimated it would be at least twenty years before production

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down a two-thousand-foot drill hole, the high-tech equipment had broken. It will take time, and a lot of trial and error, before oil shale had any chance of yielding big results. Were it to do that, the consequences would be far from universally embraced. If

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oil shale is the biggest American oil resource, it’s probably also the most controversial. Oil shale production, at least historically, is not a pretty business. The traditional approach has involved mining massive amounts of

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it before drawing it out of the ground, avoiding most of the toxic mess and reducing water demand. (One company, American Soda, wants to produce oil shale and baking soda at the same time.) Yet there are challenges here too: safeguards need to be put in place to make sure that now

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will be catastrophic for climate change. Some voice similar skepticism about natural gas. As far as they are concerned, Howard Jonas’s dreams for Colorado oil shale, and everyone else’s big plans for U.S. oil and gas, are incompatible with a safe future for the planet. 4 “G AM E

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oil pouring in.”6 The sentiment made instinctive sense, and not only when it came to the tar sands. Americans were rapidly tapping into ever bigger pools of petroleum. The outer continental shelf, Alaska, tight oil, oil shale; each source of oil raised alarms when juxtaposed with increasing concerns “GAME OVER” • 83 about climate

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concentrations of CO2 by about 60 parts per million beyond where they are today, blasting right through 450 and making 550 nearly unavoidable.22 Colorado oil shale contains even more. Even tight oil and offshore oil and Alaskan oil, each providing a smaller increment when considered alone, add up. Nonetheless, the logic

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years to extract all the fuel from the Canadian oil sands at the current pace, and it would take even longer to tap out Colorado oil shale if it were developed at the same rate. The future course of climate change will be determined long before that. This means the sheer volumes

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have come in for acute criticism on this front, and many fear U.S. oil shale could have similar problems too. Former Vice President Al Gore claimed for several years that “gasoline made “GAME OVER” • 97 from the tar sands gives a Toyota Prius the same impact on climate as a Hummer using gasoline

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massive 60 percent of the world’s total.81 (The United States made up about 2 percent if you don’t count decades-from-commercial oil shale.) Those five countries, along with the next five down the list, also feature strong state intervention in their economies, which makes manipulation easier. When it

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groups (like API and the Chamber of Commerce) that were actively lobbying against every climate or oil-saving bill. Blocking developments such as the Canadian oil sands, or shale gas in the United States, didn’t require coalitions with industry and oil supporters or sixty votes within the U.S. Senate. To be

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gallon; a measure of the efficiency of a vehicle GLOSSARY • 215 Natural gas liquids (NGLs) Oil sands Oil shale OPEC Peak oil Rare earth metals Renewable energy Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Shale Shale gas Shale oil Shock Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) Tight oil Zero carbon energy Liquids that are produced concurrently with natural gas

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, most prominently ethane, butane, and propane Oil-bearing sands found primarily in the Canadian province of Alberta; also referred to as tar sands Rock that can in part be

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of electricity be generated from renewable sources according to a set schedule Dense rock that often bears oil or gas Natural gas extracted from shale rock See tight oil In economics, a sudden change; in this book, most often a change in energy prices U.S. government-controlled reserves of already produced

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, May 31, 2012, http://sharonherald.com/ local/x1647290588/Farmer-regrets-drilling. 3. Ohio Department of Natural Resources, “Oil and Natural Gas Well and Shale Development Resources,” Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, July 16, 2012, http://www.ohiodnr.com/portals/11/oil/pdf/ utica.pdf; “Chesapeake Energy Corporation Discloses Initial Horizontal

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Case for Gas Drilling to Kids,” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 19, 2011. CH AP TER 3 1. Howard Jonas, “A Letter from Our CEO,” American Shale Oil LLC, June 2010, http://amso.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/df3154f7-b520470b-b1c7-d6544c01067c.pdf. 2. Rich Miller, Asjylyn Loder, and Jim Polson, “Americans

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.eia.gov/ dnav/pet/hist/Leaf Handler.ashx?n=PET&s=RWTC&f=A. Adjusted for inflation. 7. Steven G. Grape, Technology-Based Oil and Natural Gas Plays: Shale Shock! Could There Be Billions in the Bakken? (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Energy Information Administration, November 2006). 8. U.S. Energy Information

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of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas Division, 2011, https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/annualprod.pdf. 10. Railroad Commission of Texas, “Texas Eagle Ford Shale Oil Production, 2004 through April 2012,” July 19, 2012, http://www.rrc.state. tx.us/eagleford/EagleFordOilProduction.pdf. 11. Edward L. Morse, Eric G. Lee, Daniel

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, “Reducing Imported Oil.” 30. Kuuskraa et al., “Improving Domestic Energy Security.” 31. James T. Bartis, Tom LaTourrette, Lloyd Dixon, D. J. Peterson, and Gary Cecchine, Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and Policy Issues (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2005). Figures were converted from 2005 dollars to 2012 dollars by

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and Policy Issues (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2008). Figures were converted from 2007 dollars to 2012 dollars by using CPI. 33. Bartis et al., Oil Shale Development in the United States. 34. Ibid. 35. Quoted in David Ignatius, “An Economic Boom Ahead?” Washington Post, May 4, 2012. NOTES FOR PAGES 65

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American Power (New York: Penguin Press, 2012). CH AP TER 4 1. Chris Tackett, “It Begins. 70 Arrested at White House on Day 1 of Tar Sands Action,” Treehugger.com, August 20, 2011, http://www.treehugger. com/corporate-responsibility/it-begins-70-arrested-at-white-house-onday-1-of

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-tar-sands-action-updated.html. 2. Brad Johnson, “Keystone XL Tar Sands Action Day Four: Montanans Sit In,” Climate Progress, August 23, 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/ climate/2011/08/23/301862/keystone-xl

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-tar-sands-action-day-fourmontanans-sit-in/. 3. Ibid. 4. Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, “Crude Oil: Forecast, Markets and Pipelines,” Calgary, Alberta, June 2011. 5. James

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,” June 3, 2011, http://www.columbia. edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110603_SilenceIsDeadly.pdf. 6. DemocracyNow, “Over 160 Arrested in Ongoing Civil Disobedience against Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline,” August 23, 2011, http:// www.democracynow.org/2011/8/23/over_160_arrested_in_ongoing_ civil#transcript. 7. Neil C. Swart and Andrew

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Alcoa, 206 alternative energy. See renewable energy AltraBiofuels, 5–6 Amazon rainforest, 91 American Chemistry Council, 28 American Petroleum Institute (API), 73, 205, 207 American Shale Oil (AMSO), 51, 63–64 American Soda, 63 Angell, Norman, 183 Antarctica, 92 Arab-Israeli War (1973), 7, 76. See also Oil Shock (1973) Argentina, 32

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, 49, 192 oil and, 74–75, 127, 192 renewable energy and, 147, 162–163, 166, 191–192 Economides, Michael, 41 Edelstein, Paul, 129–130 EGL Oil Shale company, 51, 62 el-Badri, Abdallah Salem, 69 electric cars, 5, 114, 116, 118–119, 132, 135, 141–142, 200 electricity. See also power plants

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, 54–56, 61–63, 73, 80, 82–83, 93–94, 96–97 oil sands, 52, 54, 81–83, 93–94, 96–97, 175, 188, 207 oil shale, 61–64 Oil Shock (1973), 7–8, 50–51, 64, 112, 131 Oklahoma, 180 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 7, 13, 66–69, 90

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energy sources and, 152, 160, 168 Promised Land, 174–175 propane, 56 Prudhoe Bay (Alaska), 8 Qatar, 28, 31–32, 39–41 RA ND Corporation shale oil study, 62–63 rare-earth metals, 111, 132–135, 190 Reagan, Ronald, 11–13 Reilly, William, 14 renewable energy Bloomberg New Energy Finance report on

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, 32 Schulz, Mark, 116, 118 Senkaku Islands, 132 September 11, 2001 terrorist att acks, 15–16, 125 shale gas. See under natural gas shale oil. See tight oil Shell Oil, 27, 39–41, 63, 206 Siberian permafrost, 91–92 Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, 109 Sieminski, Adam, 52 Sierra Club, 83 Silicon Valley

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, Warren, 20–22, 43–44, 46 Tesla Motors, 118 Texas carbon emissions in, 146 electricity usage in, 143–144, 151 ethanol and, 120 oil production in, 52, 180 shale gas in, 42 tight oil in, 55–56 wind power in, 144, 146, 154 Th ree Mile Island (Pennsylvania), 15 tight gas. See

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

by Daniel Yergin  · 14 May 2011  · 1,373pp  · 300,577 words

particular unconventional petroleum resource—Canadian oil sands—also happens to be strategically placed on the doorsteps of the United States. For many years, oil sands—sometimes called tar sands—had seemed, at best, almost beyond the fringe of practicality and were generally dismissed as of little significance. Yet over the last few

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have long been recognized but for which recovery on a commercial scale had seemed impossible. Those breakthroughs are yet to happen with what is called oil shale. Oil shale contains high concentrations of the immature precursor to petroleum, kerogen. The kerogen has not yet gone through all the millions of years in Mother Nature

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’s pressure cooker that would turn it into what would be regarded as oil. The estimates for the oil shale resource are enormous: 8 trillion barrels, of which 6 trillion are in the United States, much of it concentrated in the Rocky Mountains. During the

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’s children for generations to come may make of them. The horseless vehicle’s threatened dethronement has been definitely averted.” But then early hopes for oil shale were completely buried by its high costs, lack of appropriate technology, and an abundance of conventional oil. At the end of the oil crisis decade

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instituted an $88 billion program that would cost many tens of billions of dollars to develop those “synfuels” as the way to ensure energy independence. Oil shale was at the top of the list. Petroleum companies announced major projects. But within a couple of years, the projects were abruptly terminated. The

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oil shale campaign was done in by the rising surplus of petroleum in the world market, the falling price, and the way in which the costs for developing oil shale were skyrocketing—even without any commercial production having begun.25 Yet today

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a few hardy companies, large and small, are at work on oil shale again. They are still trying to find new and more economic approaches for speeding up nature’s time machine and turning kerogen into a commercial

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big new source of oil, something that was not even expected a few years ago. This new resource is often confusingly called “shale oil,” which can be totally mixed up with “oil shale,” which it is not. Thus, both for clarity’s sake and because it is found in other kinds of rocks as

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well, it is becoming better known as tight oil. People have recognized for a long time that additional oil was locked inside shale and other types of rock. But there was no way to get this oil out—at least not in commercial volumes. The key

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cabinet and announce that he was now putting most of his energy chips, and billions of dollars, into synfuels—liquids made either from coal or oil shale—as the way out of the energy crisis. Confidence was not restored. In November 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Carter’s

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source of 40 percent of world electricity—is challenged about other emissions. Two of the most important innovations that are particularly important to energy security—oil sands, and shale gas, and tight oil—encounter determined opposition. Some seek changes in how these supplies are produced; some do not want them produced at all

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Callendar, Guy Stewart Callendar Effect CalPERS (California State retirement fund) Caltex joint venture Cameron, David Canada acid rain in nuclear power in oil of oil sands of shale gas in tight oil of Cancún meeting (2010) CANDU reactor CAOP, see Central Asian Oil Pipeline cap-and-trade system Cape Wind capital-intensive industry

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in glaciers in global supply chains and Iran’s relations with Libya’s relations with LNG for natural gas for oil shortage in oil supplies for renewables in shale gas in Ukraine’s relations with Western in World War I, European Climate Exchange European Community European Union (EU) biofuels and climate change

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of North Africa LNG suppliers in North America blackouts in cyberattack in energy efficiency in as gas market LNG in natural gas in oil in oil sands in shale gas in wind power in North American Free Trade Agreement Northern Alliance North Field North Korea North Sea: natural gas of oil of North

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(IOC) international national (INOCs) international vs. national Iran and Iraq and mergers and, see mergers, oil-industry national (NOC) in Nigeria offshore production and oil shale campaign and shale gas and Tengiz oil field and in Venezuela see also specific companies oil crisis (1975) “Oil Dot-com” (Morse) oil embargo (1967) oil embargo

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and reversed Midas touch and Soviet Union and Strait of Hormuz and surge in (2004) terrorism and Venezuelan general strike and whether they matter oil sands (tar sands) oil shale oil shock, second Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund oil spills oil trading Oily Rocks Oklahoma oil in Okonjo-Iweala, Ngozi Oman Omar, Mullah “On

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Venezuela, S.A. peak oil theory Pearl Street station Pearson, Gerald Pelosi, Nancy Pemex Pennsylvania coal mining in nuclear accident in (1979) nuclear power in oil in shale gas in pension funds Perella, Joseph Peres, Shimon Pérez, Carlos Andrés Pérez Alfonso, Juan Pablo Perkins, Tom Perot, Ross Perry, Rick Persia, Persians see

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Senate, U.S. climate change and Seoul September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Ahmadinejad’s views on globalization and Iraq War and Sessions, Jeff shale gas shale oil (tight oil) Shanghai Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation Sharp Sharp, Philip Shearer, Gordon Shell Oil Shell Transport and Trading Sherman Antitrust Act Shevardnadze, Eduard Shia in Iran

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and horizontal drilling information (IT) Iran and Kashagan field and natural gas and nuclear energy and oil and advances in oil sands peak oil and renewables and seismic shale gas and smog reduction and Soviet lack of tanker size and unconventional supply and Venezuela’s use of World War II and see

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- Thani, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al- Thatcher, Margaret 3–D seismic mapping Three Gorges Dam project Three Mile Island nuclear accident (1979) tidal power tight oil (shale oil) Time Timor Sea Titusville, Pa. TNK TNK-BP Tokyo Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Top Runner program Toronto Conference (1988) Total (formerly CFP) TotalFina

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in nuclear navy of nuclear power in nuclear weapons of oil consumption in oil discoveries in oil exports of oil imports of oil sands and oil shale in peak production predicted for price controls in R&D in renewables in shale gas in Southeast in Southwest in Soviet collapse and in space

The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters

by Gregory Zuckerman  · 5 Nov 2013  · 483pp  · 143,123 words

geology or drilling—manage to tap massive energy deposits dismissed by the largest energy powers? ExxonMobil’s corporate headquarters are directly above a huge shale formation, but the oil giant disregarded the area, even as George Mitchell worked on coaxing historic amounts of gas from rock in the region. Why did a

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nearby layers. That’s why George Mitchell became intrigued about the idea of going farther down, into shale. Like other forms of petroleum, oil and natural gas in shale formed from the accumulated remains and excrement of plankton, algae, and other organisms that lived in large bodies of water, hundreds of millions

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hungry teenager would rather storm the kitchen than wait patiently at the dinner table, operators would have preferred to go straight to the shale than wait for its oil and gas to rise closer to the surface. Fervor for this rock usually led to bitter disappointment, however. The first commercial natural gas

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, in the early nineteenth century. But energy companies quickly moved away from this rock. It just didn’t seem possible to easily extract oil or gas from shale. Sure, shale had a lot of pores, allowing it to store oil and gas. But the rock was too tight and compressed. In other words

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necessary pathways for it to flow to a “wellbore,” or a hole drilled into the ground to create a well. Much of the oil and gas in shale eventually makes its way to shallower rock formations near the surface through natural fractures in the rock. But because shale is so compressed, this

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process can take millions of years. Geologists knew oil and gas remained in shale formations around the country and around the world, but it seemed much too expensive to try to go get it. The rock had

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such low permeability that it just didn’t seem worth the time, cost, and effort. Whatever oil or gas shale held, it sure didn’t seem to want to give it up. “In the field the stance was that it wasn’t economical, the

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down—as much as two miles below the surface—adding to the difficulty and cost. Besides, it also wasn’t clear how much oil and gas remained in shale, since so much of it had already flowed up to the surface. Most experts were dubious that there was enough pore space in

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shale to contain very much oil and gas. “It was foreign to everyone’s thinking that there could be that much gas in this rock,” says Dan Steward, a Mitchell

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example, interest has waxed and waned in areas of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming jam-packed with so-called oil shale, an organic-rich rock that’s a distant cousin of shale oil, despite the similar name. Oil shale holds high concentrations of kerogen, a precursor to oil that some liken to teenage crude because it

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, making it easy to find. During World War I, National Geographic predicted that “no man who owns a motor-car will fail to rejoice” because oil shale surely would provide the “supplies of gasoline which can meet any demand.”3 But fervor for this rock has petered out time and time again

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, the mandatory retirement age for Chevron’s managers. Galvin became aware that his slated replacement, Peter Robertson, wasn’t nearly as sure that shale would produce much oil or gas. Galvin could see Chevron was losing patience with the group. Time was ticking away on their efforts. Galvin loved what he was

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pore spaces of shale rock were so small and oil molecules so much bigger than gas molecules” that it didn’t seem possible that oil could flock from shale rock, he says. “We decided the prize of finding billions of barrels of oil” was worth examining whether that hypothesis was valid. That

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excited about an area in Wyoming called the Powder River Basin, a field he was convinced could produce more than five billion barrels of oil from the Niobrara Shale formation. It was a “Bakken look-alike,” McClendon says. McClendon was smitten. At that point, less than 10 percent of Chesapeake’s production

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a ton of gas, he thought. One day it hit Papa hard—a glut of natural gas was imminent, no matter what the peak-oil believers thought. Shale drilling was for real. He was gripped by fear—he ran a gas company and prices were sure to tumble. He had to find

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decline, and U.S. oil fields had been written off as a hopeless cause. Shale gas seemed promising for only a few companies, like Chesapeake; shale oil from places like the Bakken wasn’t on anyone’s radar. As Husseini finished, one of the dinner guests, Jason Selch, raised a hand to

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than $3 billion. All that borrowed money seemed well spent. • • • Indications were growing that significant amounts of natural gas might come from U.S. shale formations. Oil from shale still seemed like a waste of time, though, no matter what Hamm and Continental were doing up in North Dakota. After all, the

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making progress in the Bakken, but an industry member cautioned Papa that the formation was a one-of-a-kind “freak discovery,” and that other shale oil regions in the country were unlikely to be very productive. Papa bit his lip, unwilling to share that his staff was scouring the country for

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shale oil formations that seemed similar to the Bakken. He hated divulging what he and his company were doing. He knew McClendon was bragging about how Chesapeake

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Ford formation in South Texas. They focused on a section that was about sixty-five hundred square miles that they thought might have the most oil. The shale seemed to have a thickness almost triple that of the Bakken’s best sections, another reason they thought they might have something special. As

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cubic feet by the end of 2009, suggesting that Chesapeake could score big profits by pumping its existing fields and also adding new oil and gas fields. Some shale formations were profitable with gas as low as four dollars per thousand cubic feet. Could anyone really expect McClendon to ignore all these

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unlikely to have much impact on global oil supplies, especially since there wasn’t clear evidence of an imminent rise in U.S. shale oil production. It all made oil a safer bet, Ward argued. Drilling the Bakken seemed too expensive to Ward, who had turned down the chance to enter some of

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was dealing with more pressing issues than Wall Street critics. A pipeline called the Keystone XL promised to add over 800,000 barrels of Canadian tar-sands crude each day to U.S. energy supplies, potentially lowering prices still further. “We’re going to be drowned with Canadian crude,” Mickey Thompson, the

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was proof that the Bakken wasn’t a freak, one-off formation and fresh evidence that the country was beginning to pump enough oil and natural gas from shale to shake up the world’s energy order. By then, the big boys of the oil and gas world had taken belated notice

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2009, SandRidge Energy paid $1.6 billion in April 2010 to buy another oil company called Arena Resources. Rivals were enamored with drilling in dense, shale oil formations, as they tried to catch up to Continental and EOG, but Ward was buying more inexpensive, traditional U.S. oil wells, viewing them as

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of the company to Bill Thomas, his senior exploration executive and the one who had been the company’s biggest proponent of trying to get oil from shale. Papa prepared to retire at the end of 2013. “We’re having a positive impact on the U.S. economy and reducing U.S

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2012 and accounted for about 25 percent of the nation’s total gas production. In addition, Mitchell’s techniques were partly responsible for oil pouring out of various shale formations in the country, a surge that increased the likelihood that the United States might achieve energy independence in the years ahead. Late

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received a glimpse into the future of the shale revolution. For more than a decade, headstrong wildcatters worked to discover techniques to extract oil and gas from shale and other challenging bedrock in the United States. Now the focus is shifting to whether energy can be pumped from shale deposits around the

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shale gas, the sixth largest such reserve in the world, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. There’s also a serious amount of shale oil buried in Mexican rocks, helped by the fact that the Eagle Ford formation that’s proved so prolific in South Texas extends well into northern

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gas reserves in the world at 1,115 trillion cubic feet, according to the Energy Information Administration, as well as the third largest reserves of shale oil in the world. In 2012, China’s state council opened the gates to limited foreign investment in local shale plays, and the government has been

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gas was in the Marcellus Shale, in front of the home of a fracking fan in the region. Wall Street Journal / Joe Shoulak Significant oil-and-gas shale formations in the United States. Courtesy of USRA (usrigactivity.com) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I had the privilege of spending over one hundred hours with George Mitchell

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nation—those who work in the energy industry and others impacted by it. They took the time to lend their perspective, explain the difference between shale oil and oil shale, or just point a lost reporter to a local motel. My publisher, Adrian Zackheim, had boundless enthusiasm for this book, while my editor

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, Money and Power (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1991). 4. Solomon and Johnson, “Lone Star Legend.” 5. Gary Peach, “Estonia Eager to Teach World About Oil Shale,” Associated Press, June 1, 2013. 6. Robert Johnson and Allanna Sullivan, “Mitchell Energy Picks William Stevens to Be Its President, Operations Chief,” Wall Street Journal

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, 2007. 9. John J. Fialka, “Wildcat Producer Sparks Oil Boom on Montana Plains,” Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2006. 10. Joe Carroll, “Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude,” Bloomberg News, February 6, 2012; Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York

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. 4. Russell Gold, “Oil and Gas Boom Lifts U.S. Economy,” Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2012. 5. Selam Gebrekidan, “100 Years After Boom, Shale Makes Texas Oil Hot Again,” Reuters, May 3, 2011. 6. Stephen Moore, “How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia,” Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2011. 7. Josh Harkinson

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Bounds, “Coal No Longer King but Still Important,” Financial Times, April 21, 2013. 6. Taos Turner and Daniel Gilbert, “Chevron, YPF Sign $1.5 Billion Shale-Oil Deal,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2013. 7. Elizabeth Muller, “China Must Exploit Its Shale Gas,” New York Times, April 12, 2013; Edward Wong, “Pollution

Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence

by Robert Bryce  · 16 Mar 2011  · 415pp  · 103,231 words

rise, more people will work to figure out how to find and produce more of it. That means that “difficult” oil like that located in oil shale and tar sands, which is virtually worthless when oil sells for less than about $40 per barrel, becomes more viable when the price of oil is, say

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OF LIES expensive and will take years to build, and its output will be unlikely to add much new supply. As for other alternatives, like shale oil, they, too, are constrained by pricing and capital. So here’s the punch line: Even with the continued growth that’s possible from biofuels, CTL

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Fuels Corporation. Launched in 1980, the agency provided money and loan guarantees to entrepreneurs who wanted to produce motor fuel from coal and oil 102 GUSHER OF LIES shale. Congress supported the program, wrote energy analyst Vito Stagliano in his 2001 book, A Policy of Discontent, “even as one uneconomic project followed

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the year that non-OPEC oil would peak, it has pushed that peak date back by a few years, thanks to new production from Canadian tar sands.7 For its part, Herold has moved back some of the projected peaks for the large oil companies as those companies have found new reserves

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6 billion cubic feet per day by 2024. Even if Canada is able to forestall a major decrease in its natural gas production, the booming tar sands operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan have a huge hunger for gas, which they use to heat the sands to leach out the oil. Some forecasts

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that would be carried by the proposed Mackenzie Delta pipeline, which could bring Canadian gas southward from the Beaufort Sea, may be diverted into the tar sands operations.5 The crimps in the Canadian gas market have left the U.S. with few options. New LNG-receiving terminals are being built in

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In 1975, Gerald Ford asked Congress for funding to get CTL plants going. He set a goal of 1 million barrels of synthetic fuel and shale oil production per day by 1985.11 In his book A Policy of Discontent, Vito Stagliano wrote that coal-toliquids has “served as the opiates of

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-gallon cost basis, are far more expensive than conventional gasoline. Or consider the history of the federal efforts to create synthetic fuel from coal or oil shale, a history that extends back to World War II. The biggest push in this sector was the 1980s-era Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which, like all

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rural Canada and rural Alaska, or in association with large-scale mining operations like the ones under way in Canada that are extracting petroleum from tar sands. Hyperion says its unit is about the size of a hot tub and could be fit onto the back of a semitrailer truck. The company

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unconventional oil. In the case of Venezuela, that estimate is counting that country’s deposits of extra-heavy crude. In Canada, the higher estimates include tar sands. 12. John Roberts, “Oil and the Iraq War of 2003,” International Research Center for Energy and Economic Development, 2003, 2. 13. Michael R. Gordon and

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Arabia, 49, 55, 56 Set America Free, 47–48, 49, 53, 120–121, 176, 223 Set America Free Manifesto, 72, 120, 121, 299–301 (document) Shale oil, 66 Shamir, Yitzhak, 58–59 Shell, 61 Shellenberger, Michael, 228 Sierra Club, and global warming, 274, 275 Simmons, Matthew, 35 Simon, Julian, 287 Singer, S

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith  · 22 Sep 2010  · 421pp  · 120,332 words

to tap. Future production will increasingly come from new discoveries that are smaller, deeper, and riskier; the remnants of depleted giants; and unconventional sources like tar sands. It seems probable that the world will eventually begin regulating carbon emissions one way or another, at least by a token amount. For all of

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who finds boreal wetlands and green pine forest attractive. It was northern Alberta, not Noril’sk. Beneath me sprawled the open sores of the Athabasca Tar Sands, economic engine of Fort McMurray and almost one-half of the Canadian oil industry. Though they are more commonly called “oil sands,” what they hold

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an extraordinarily invasive, consumptive, and environmentally damaging process. At present, the most common way to do it is strip mining, with about two tons of tar sand needed to obtain a single barrel of oil. Gigantic trucks and shovels scrape the stuff off the surface. Then it is crushed and dumped onto

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gas), creating synthetic crude oil. The waste liquid and dirt are sent to tailings ponds; the yellow blocks of sulfur are simply stacked up.417 Tar sands are an environmentalist’s nightmare. The extraction process gobbles enormous quantities of energy and water. Migratory birds land in the tailings ponds and die.418

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square kilometer has been certifiably restored and returned to the public.420 These and other problems have environmental organizations yowling against any further increase in tar sands production. They face a difficult battle. Short of being outlawed, it’s hard to imagine how the growth of this industry will ever stop. The

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oil reserves the tar sands contain are estimated at an astonishing 175 billion barrels which, if correct and recoverable, is the second-largest oil endowment on Earth after Saudi Arabia

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construction of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a long-anticipated 1,220-kilometer pipeline that will carry Arctic gas from the Mackenzie Delta area to the tar sands and other North American markets. 422 History tells us that Canada’s adherence to international climate-change treaties crumbles before market forces like these: The

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tar sands are the biggest reason why Canada not only failed to meet her pledged reduction in carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol (to -6% below

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them +27% instead.423 So far, about 530 square kilometers have been strip-mined, an area not much greater than the city of Edmonton. But tar sands underlie a staggering 140,000 square kilometers of Alberta, nearly one-fourth of the province and about the size of Bangladesh. Of this large area

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soon will. Energy companies are no fools. By early 2009 the government of Canada had already leased more than seventy-nine thousand square kilometers in tar sands contracts. Future production is anticipated to rise from 1.3 million barrels per day today, to 3.5 million by 2018, to 6 million barrels

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United States is arguably stronger now than at any other time in their history. It will clench even tighter if oil production from the Alberta Tar Sands (and possibly water exports someday) rises as projected. Despite memberships in the EU, Sweden and Finland feel greater cultural and economic kinship to Iceland and

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exist until the early 1980s—are now up to a hundred thousand people apiece. Canada’s Fort McMurray is the fat tick of the Alberta Tar Sands, feeding on bitumen and water like Las Vegas feeds on gamblers. Its population boom, closing in on a hundred thousand within the decade, is probably

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-soaked dirt is thought to hold 175 billion barrels of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia and 50% more than Iraq. Despite devastating environmental damages, tar sands development is fast proceeding and by 2040 is projected to produce ten times more oil than Alaska’s North Slope does today. Cities are key

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gold and silver, culminating in rushes to California in 1849 and to Nevada a decade later. These metal rushes populated the American West just as tar sands and natural gas are doing today in Alberta and West Siberia, and as offshore finds might one day populate port towns along the shores of

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Health, Part A, 71 (2008): 1244-1254. 104 Unconventional oil is much more difficult to extract and includes materials that are often excavated, like oil shales and tar sands, and high-viscosity oils. 105 Based on their analysis of eight hundred oil fields, including all fifty-four “supergiants” containing five billion or more barrels

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,” www.barentsobserver.com. 417 Some producers skip the upgrading step to produce lower-grade bitumen. The described process is used by Syncrude, Canada’s largest tar sands producer. B. M. Testa, “Tar on Tap,” Mechanical Engineering (December 2008): 30-34. 418 In 2008 a flock of about five hundred mallard ducks died

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carbon emissions to -6% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Instead by 2009 her emissions grew +27% and will rise again in 2010 if Alberta tar sands development intensifies. “Canada’s northern goal,” in The World in 2010, special supplement to The Economist (2009): 53-54. Syncrude and Suncor, two of the

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largest tar sands operators, are the third- and sixth-largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Canada. M. J. Pasqualetti, “The Alberta Oil Sands from Both Sides of the

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. foreign policy; and water resources; and winter roads; and World War II, Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Alaskan Federation of Natives albedo effect Alberta Tar Sands Alcamo, Joseph Algeria Alley, Richard B. Alsdorf, Doug Altiplano Plateau Amazon basin American Geophysical Union American Indians Amur Oblast Annan, Kofi Annin, Peter Antarctica Anuka

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shipping; and UNCLOS Argentina Arrhenius, Svante Asia. See specific countries Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Asian Development Bank Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Athabasca Tar Sands Australia Azeez, Adulkadir Azerbaijan Baffin Island Baikal-Amur Mainline Railroad Baku oil fields Ban Ki-Moon Bangladesh Banks Island Barents Sea Barlow, Maude Barnaby, Wendy

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ethanol production; as global force; and global warming; and hydrogen fuel cells; and nuclear power; and satellites; and smart power grids; and solar power; and tar sand extraction; and urbanization; and water resources; and wind power terrorism Thailand Thatcher, Margaret thermal expansion of water thermohaline circulation Thompson, Lonnie Three Mile Island Tibet

Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices

by Robert McNally  · 17 Jan 2017  · 436pp  · 114,278 words

Saudi Arabia) permanently lost control of oil prices and is that a good or bad thing? Can U.S. shale oil replace Saudi Arabia as the guarantor of price stability? If not, how should we think about coping with much wider

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on new oil supplies takes many years, as it often requires exploring for and developing new fields. (U.S. shale oil, which is discussed later in this book, is an exception to that rule.) Current estimates of elasticity of crude

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Or consider the opposite situation, when oil supply exceeds consumption; say due to large new supplies of U.S. shale oil along with rising Iraqi and Saudi production as happened in 2015. Supply exceeded demand, inventories swelled, and the price

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was first commercialized to replace oil refined from coal. The SFC also intended to develop liquid fuels from oil shale (not today’s famous “shale oil” but instead kerogen-laden rocks), oil sands, and heavy oils. (The SFC failed to commercialize

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would keep on falling and approach exhaustion by 2018.32 Instead, as we shall see later, since 2010 the shale oil boom caused U.S. production to rebound and rise to nearly 1970s peak (see figure 9.3). One of

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jet fuel. A refinery wants to lock in prices for gasoline it will sell in four months. A shale oil producer may seek protection on the price of output from the company’s wells in the next year—and

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discovered giant gushers like Spindletop and the Black Giant—once again sprang a surprise on the world oil market: U.S. shale. If the shale boom has a father, it is veteran oilman George Mitchell, —one of Houston’s largest

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oil wells. As a result, U.S. shale oil (also called “light tight oil,” LTO) soared from less than 0.5 mb/d to over 4.5 mb/d in 2015.41 Shale oil wells ramp up and then fall fast, adding

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extending the plateau and allowing for a gradual decline.42 But in the case of shale oil wells, drillers go right to the EOR stage. Shale oil is not produced from a reservoir, but instead out of the source rock many thousand

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feet below it. As shown in figure 10.3, shale oil production both rises and falls much faster than oil from typical conventional well. A typical shale well in

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a straw in the ground and letting natural pressure push oil out steadily for a long period of time, shale oil production is like wringing a wet sponge: You get a lot of liquid right away, but it dries up

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of its relatively high operating costs, capital intensity, financing needs, and steep decline rates, shale oil is much more responsive or “elastic” to prices. Overall shale oil production was expected to react to price changes within months instead of the years associated

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traditional oil drilling projects. As IEA’s 2013 World Energy Outlook noted, “large initial natural decline rates make [shale oil] production potentially much more responsive to fluctuations in oil prices than conventional fields: a decision to stop drilling translates

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drilling halted.44 Shale’s unique flexibility led OPEC to regard shale oil as a possible swing producer in a way that conventional wells are not. The surprising shale oil boom made for heady times in the United States and other

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time went on their views ranged from extreme anxiety on the part of OPEC members that competed directly with lighter shale oil like Algeria and Nigeria, to a more nuanced view by Saudi Arabia, who saw the upside of another

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potential swing producer. HOW SAUDI ARABIA’S REFUSAL TO SWING WRONG-FOOTED OIL PRICE PREDICTIONS By 2014, the shale oil boom was a major factor in the predictions of future oil supply and prices. Leading oil forecasts that year

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saw oversupply building in coming years, mainly because of new production from outside OPEC—not just the U.S. shale oil boom but also new Canadian Oil Sands projects. The IEA also saw supply coming from new projects in Argentina,

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times that much in new capacity (see figure 10.4). OPEC needed to make room not only for shale and oil sands, but also for new production capacity within its ranks. Therefore by forecasting total OPEC production would fall,

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share to Iraq (and likely Iran, when its oil was back on the market), and supporting high oil prices so shale and oil sands projects could flourish was not in the cards for Riyadh. Whereas consensus forecasts might have

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short of remarkable.” 58 On the supply side, U.S. shale oil production increased faster than most analysts expected as producers were able to access plentiful capital to unlock vast shale oil deposits. The U.S. shale industry continued to surprise officials and

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and maybe beyond,” Muhanna said. Based on the expensive nature and higher responsiveness of shale well drilling to prices of shale oil production, he predicted that crude prices would stay above $90. Further, should the price fall below $90 it

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on the sidelines of an energy conference that if oil prices remained where they were, half of U.S. shale oil production would be lost. (ConocoPhillips’ chief economist, Marianne Kah, disagreed with El-Badri, contending that $80 would

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not threaten the bulk of U.S. shale oil production.67) Ministers took their seats at OPEC’s Vienna headquarters on November 27, 2014, which fell on Thanksgiving

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new investment and that new oil was headed to the market in coming years. In the case of shale oil, the new oil arrived much faster than conventional or standard oil projects, a point we will explore shortly. Thus, Saudi

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the western media, they certainly played some role. Finally, Riyadh declined to swing because it believed U.S. shale oil producers could do most or all of the swinging for them. If oil prices fell enough to make investing in

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. This did not amount to a “war on shale” for two reasons. First, Saudi Arabia does not regard shale oil, a light and low-sulfur crude grade, as a direct competitor for the bulk of its crude grades, crude,

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is a welcome development for world oil markets.79, Saudi officials genuinely wanted shale oil to survive and thrive, in large part because it could adjust relatively quickly—up and down.80 For instance,

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when shale oil suddenly rose by over 3 m/bd after 2010, it helped to offset disruptions from Libya

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Iran and prevent another calamitous oil price spike. In fact, Saudi Oil Minister Naimi mused that the potential for shale oil development worldwide was so encouraging that perhaps the kingdom didn’t need so much capacity. “It is not

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Thus, OPEC’s refusal to cut production on November 27 opened a great experiment to see if U.S. shale oil could replace Saudi Arabia as the price—stabilizing swing supplier of oil to the global market. Saudi officials remained

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declined quickly after first being drilled, so the idea was that supply would decrease soon after prices fell below shale oil investment breakeven levels—the level needed to support drilling of new shale wells. The Saudis believed this breakeven level

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time joined by North Dakota? This was terra incognita for the oil market; no one knew how shale would react to low oil prices, or how quickly. The question was immediately tested when WTI oil prices crashed to $44 in

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late-January, well below the assumed shale investment break-even prices closer to $70.83 Prices quickly rebounded as shale oil company executives began to announce that they were in fact slashing cuts to spending on drilling wells. In February

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“With OPEC ceding control for the first time since the 1980s,” Bloomberg reported in April 2015, “U.S. shale oil has been anointed the world’s new ‘swing producer’ by everyone from ConocoPhillips and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to

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former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.”87 Share prices of shale oil companies, which had plunged in value by 25 percent in the weeks following the November 27 OPEC meeting, recouped

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over half its losses by mid-April.88 All eyes turned to shale: “We have seen that shale oil works very well at $100 per barrel,” EIA head Adam Sieminski said in March, 2015, “[n]ow we

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kb/d higher than the DOE had projected in December, 2014.90 Shale was still working at falling oil prices. Many shale companies had hedged some of their future production in derivatives markets, thus locking in higher prices.91 Furthermore,

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the sector between January and November 2015),92 but good news for drillers who were realizing savings. And finally, shale oil producers were employing new methods and technologies to improve their efficiency and further lower the cost of producing. For

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like the traditional drillers before them—had other reasons besides profits to keep operations going despite falling costs. Many shale oil companies were required to continue drilling to keep their lease. If they stopped drilling, they could lose the lease

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the number of drilling rigs collapsed, the actual production of shale oil proved more resilient than expected.94 By the middle of 2015, it was becoming clear that shale oil would not swing, at least not fast enough to remove

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mortgage crisis were overblown as the scale, complexity, and direct economic impacts were less severe in the case of shale oil debt.101 Whatever the true extent of the risk, crashing oil prices in January and early February 2016 exhibited

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13 percent of production, and only 3 percent of refining capacity (although refining capacity is set to increase).15 Shale oil has further weakened Saudi Arabia’s market power, at least for the time being. But even if down the

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Since the shock OPEC decision not to cut in November 2014, one of the biggest questions in the oil market is: Can shale replace OPEC? We have a partial answer so far: No, at least not in terms of cutting

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be confident in how DUCs will perform, making production estimates elusive. Beyond the question of DUCs, shale oil is likely too decentralized and expensive to play the role of market balancer and price stabilizer, even if production

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could adjust quickly enough. Shale oil production results from thousands of independent firms all responding to their own evaluations of market conditions and the

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agree on collective supply restraint, it would be illegal due to antitrust rules. The future role of shale oil in shaping oil price stability is one of the biggest open questions for the near future, and one that has begun

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to preoccupy energy economists and academics. Shale oil may prove to be a much more flexible (or shorter cycle) form of oil production that, although not

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-adjusting features it has lacked. In this scenario, shale becomes the new swing supplier, especially if global shale oil production expands. Shale oil supply may not swing as fast as wells controlled by the TRC or OPEC, but it could swing

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if it proves big and fast enough to contribute to gluts and price crashes—deterring investment in other non–shale oil projects —but not big and fast enough to prevent booms. The question of shale’s longer-term impact

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cycle of the latter scenario before hopefully settling into the former. Regulation of shale is another huge uncertainty. If shale oil production loses its “social license to operate” and is sharply curtailed or banned in the United States while prevented

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31 The economic, financial, and security stakes remain high today. But even if the United States legalized cooperation among shale oil producers, it’s not clear they could regulate supply as in 1932. Back then, the TRC held cheap

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could order a halt to new shale drilling. But shale oil supply, unlike the old flowing wells in East Texas the TRC used to regulate, is relatively expensive. “Turning off” shale oil is more like shutting down a manufacturing plant than turning

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storage capacity has greatly increased in recent years, although this has mainly been due to rising consumption and the shale oil boom, not necessarily to contend with boom and bust oil prices.41 Another likely response to boom-bust oil

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Thus, hedging is a good coping mechanism for consumers and producers with shorter investment cycles—such as U.S. shale oil companies—but not as relevant for producers considering whether, for example to sink billions into high-cost, risky

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oil import dependence. 77. U.S. Department of the Interior, “Managing Oil and Gas Resources,” 1988, 1.3. 78. Andrews, Oil Shale, 11. 79. Yergin, The Prize, 694. 80. EIA, “Monthly Energy Review,” Table 11.1a. 81. As the Council on

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EIA. 10. In this period the reference is Brent crude oil prices, since the emergence of the U.S. shale oil boom caused the WTI marker to disconnect from global oil markets due to logistical barriers that were largely resolved by

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IEA Oil Reserves”; “U.S. to Release,” Fox News. 34. Leff, et al., “U.S. to Seek”; Shore, “Oil Price Falls.” 35. EIA, “Shale in the United States.” 36. Gold, “The Boom,” 64, 83–84. 37. Ibid., 7–8, 28–29 38. Wang

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prices because at the time (2011–2015) WTI prices were depressed by logistical constraints arising from surge in domestic shale oil production and a ban on crude oil exports. WTI prices were trading around $5 below Brent and had fallen

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a speech in Washington: The U.S. energy scene is witnessing a remarkable evolution. Newly commercial reserves of shale oil or tight oil are transforming the energy industry in America. And that’s great news. It is helping to sustain the

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prices, EIA. See Note 83. 86. “U.S. Shale Operators May Be the New Swing Producers.”World Oil. 87. Doan and Murtaugh, “Shale Oil as World’s Swing Producer.” 88. FRAK Unconventional Oil and Gas Exchange traded fund share price, Bloomberg.

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: A Proposal to Advance Parental Choice in Education. Midland, Mich.: Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 1997, 81. Andrews, Anthony. “Oil Shale: History, Incentives, and Policy.” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2006. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33359.pdf. American

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Brad. “How Far Do Oil Prices Have to Fall to Throttle the US Shale Oil Boom?” Vox.com, December 3, 2014. http://www.vox.com/2014/12/3/7327147/oil-prices-breakeven-shale. Prakken, Joel L. Statement. “The Economic Impact of the Oil Price

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.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-04-21/the-2-trillion-project-to-get-saudi-arabia-s-economy-off-oil. Wang, Herman. “Has US Shale Rendered Spare Capacity Irrelevant?” S&P Global, Platts. September 14, 2015. http://blogs.platts.com/2015

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Already Being Felt on Texas Oil With More Ahead.” Waco Tribune-Herald, November 25, 1956, 10. World Oil. “U.S. Shale Operators May Be the New Swing Producers.” August 19, 2015. http://www.worldoil.com/news/2015/8/19/us

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; U.S. consumption of, from 1949–1973, 106, 107; U.S. demand for, from 1945–1970, 106. See also fuel; shale oil prices, 252n15, 258n101, 263n46, 270n13, 277n68; from 1847–1960, 100; from 1859–1933, 54; from 1859–2007, 168; from 1859

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources

by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy  · 25 Feb 2021  · 565pp  · 134,138 words

the owner of one of the world’s largest networks of oil-storage tanks. When, a few years later in 2015, soaring production of oil from shale rock formations turned the US into a meaningful crude oil exporter for the first time in forty years, the commodity traders were first in line

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prices were above $100 a barrel, but when, in late 2014, they began to fall, the relationship soured. With output rising from the US shale oil industry, the oil price tumbled from a peak of $115 a barrel in 2014 to just $27 in early 2016. Chad simply couldn’t repay its debts

The Locavore's Dilemma

by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu  · 29 May 2012  · 329pp  · 85,471 words

mean reverting to 19th century engine technologies, but simply to a more expensive and inconvenient fuel that would compete with other unconventional sources (from shale oil to Canadian oil sands). Furthermore, because the liquid fraction of petroleum used to power container ships is for the most part the dirtiest and cheapest (so-called

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technologies, coal and petroleum were not very valuable for most of human history. In recent years, in North America alone, the advent of shale gas, increased onshore oil production from shale rock, new recovery techniques that make it economical to extract oil left in old wells, new oil field discoveries in the

The Rare Metals War

by Guillaume Pitron  · 15 Feb 2020  · 249pp  · 66,492 words

the most accessible oilfields are now depleted, and more energy is needed to reach new and harder-to-access reserves. For non-conventional crude (shale oil and oil sands), one barrel will produce five barrels at the most. We are teetering on the absurd! Will our production model still be sound when it

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

plane, the global economy is upping the ante from conventional sources of fossil fuels to even dirtier and more dangerous versions—bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, oil from deepwater drilling, gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), coal from detonated mountains, and so on. Meanwhile, each supercharged natural disaster produces new irony-

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The earth, skinned alive. Science fiction is rife with fantasies of terraforming—humans traveling to lifeless planets and engineering them into earthlike habitats. The Canadian tar sands are the opposite: terra-deforming. Taking a habitable ecosystem, filled with life, and engineering it into a moonscape where almost nothing can live. And if

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Republic and Poland are increasingly relying on and expanding production of extra-dirty lignite coal.49 And the major oil companies are rushing into various tar sands deposits, most notably in Alberta, all with significantly higher carbon footprints than conventional oil. They are also moving into ever deeper and icier waters

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cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines. What unites these increasingly interconnected pockets of resistance is the sheer ambition of the mining and fossil fuel companies: the fact that in

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contours of Blockadia—but no picture would be complete without the astonishing rise of resistance against virtually any piece of infrastructure connected to the Alberta tar sands, whether inside Canada or in the United States. And none more so than TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Part of the broader Keystone

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brought together vegan activists who think meat is murder with cattle farmers whose homes are decorated with deer heads). In fact the direct-action group Tar Sands Blockade first coined the term “Blockadia” in August 2012, while planning what turned into an eighty-six-day tree blockade challenging Keystone’s construction

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the sleeping giant of latent ecological outrage. The 1,177-kilometer pipe would begin near Edmonton, Alberta, and carry 525,000 barrels of mostly diluted tar sands oil per day across roughly one thousand waterways, passing through some of the most pristine temperate rainforest in the world (and highly avalanche-prone mountains

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widespread awareness of the climate crisis, and the understanding that these new extraction projects—which produce far more carbon dioxide, in the case of the tar sands, and more methane, in the case of fracking, than their conventional counterparts—are taking the entire planet in precisely the wrong direction. These activists understand

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created opportunities for people whose voices are traditionally shut out of the dominant conversation to form alliances with those who have significantly more social power. Tar sands pipelines have proven to be a particularly potent silo buster in this regard, and something of a gift to political organizing. Beginning in northern Alberta

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the first country to adopt a nationwide fracking ban.54 Even something as routine as getting heavy machinery up to northern Alberta to keep the tar sands mines and upgraders running has ignited new resistance movements. In keeping with the mammoth scale of everything associated with the largest industrial project on earth

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downstream in Lolo Creek next to the road, my guides scouted locations for an “action camp” they were planning. It would bring together anti–tar sands activists from Alberta, ranchers, and Indigenous tribes all along the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, and locals interested in stopping the big rigs

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plan by Chevron to significantly expand its oil refinery, which could have allowed the plant to process heavier, dirtier crudes such as bitumen from the tar sands. A coalition of environmental justice groups challenged the expansion in the streets and in the courts, arguing that it would further pollute Richmond’s

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has propelled this movement forward in recent years. That is the widespread conviction that today’s extractive activities are significantly higher risk than their predecessors: tar sands oil is unquestionably more disruptive and damaging to local ecosystems than conventional crude. Many believe it to be more dangerous to transport, and once spilled

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of tougher rules for oil-by-rail transport.)66 Similarly, government and industry are pushing the vast expansion of pipelines carrying oil from the Alberta tar sands despite a paucity of reliable, peer-reviewed research assessing whether dilbit, as diluted bitumen is called, is more prone to spill than conventional oil.

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the subject, and almost all were commissioned by the oil industry. However, a recent investigation by Environment Canada contained several disturbing findings, including that diluted tar sands oil sinks in saltwater “when battered by waves and mixed with sediments” (rather than floating on the ocean surface where it can be partially recovered

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are found in the river are “naturally occurring”—this is an oil-rich region after all. To anyone who has witnessed the scale of the tar sands operation, the assurances seem implausible. The government has yet to establish a genuinely independent, comprehensive system for monitoring mining impacts on the surrounding watersheds—in

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leak,’ and so on.” In a separate incident, a team of government scientists with Environment Canada corroborated outside research on widespread contamination of snow around tar sands operations, though the Harper administration did its best to keep the researchers from speaking to the press.70 And there are still no comprehensive studies

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report commissioned by the Alberta Energy Regulator recently found a “marked reluctance to speak out” in the medical community about the health impact of the tar sands, with several interviewees pointing to Dr. O’Connor’s experience. (“Physicians are quite frankly afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and

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to an independent study published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, emissions of potentially toxic pollutants from the tar sands “are two to three orders-of-magnitude larger than those reported” by companies to their regulators. The discrepancy is evident in actual measurements of these

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pollutants in the air near tar sands activities. The study’s coauthor, Frank Wania, an environmental scientist at the University of Toronto, described the official estimates as “inadequate and incomplete” and

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a signing ceremony for the Save the Fraser Declaration, the historic Indigenous people’s declaration pledging to prevent the Northern Gateway pipeline and any other tar sands project of its kind from accessing British Columbia territory. More than 130 First Nations have signed, along with many nonIndigenous endorsers. The ceremony was

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3 barrels of water needed for each barrel of conventional crude. Which is why the tar sands mines and upgrading plants are surrounded by those giant tailings “ponds” visible from space. Fracking for both shale gas and “tight oil” similarly requires far more water than conventional drilling and is much more water-intensive than

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coastlines, are helping to protect all of us. Fossil Free: The Divestment Movement Climate activists are under no illusion that shutting down coal plants, blocking tar sands pipelines, and passing fracking bans will be enough to lower emissions as rapidly and deeply as science demands. There are just too many extraction operations

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drilling in the sensitive Arctic region, as well as in the Amazon rainforest. And activists are similarly beginning to push for a global moratorium on tar sands extraction anywhere in the world, on the grounds that it is sufficiently carbon-intensive to merit transnational action. Another tactic spreading with startling speed is

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—is significantly invested in oil and natural gas.) Brune was also arrested outside the White House in a protest against the construction of Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, breaking the organization’s longtime ban on engaging in civil disobedience. Perhaps most significantly, the Sierra Club has joined the divestment movement. It

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.44 No single event could take the credit, but the company’s various troubles were clearly adding up: its Arctic misadventures, the uncertainty in the tar sands, the persistent political unrest in Nigeria, and the growing chatter about a “carbon bubble” inflating its stock. Reacting to the news, the financial research

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working hand-in-glove with transnational companies—are simply imposing enormous health and safety risks on residents, even when that means overturning local laws. Fracking, tar sands pipelines, coal trains, and export terminals are being proposed in many parts of the world where a clear majority of the population has made its

…

the country’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was registered as a lobbyist for Enbridge, the company behind the hugely controversial Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline. That was a problem because the National Energy Board had directed the agency to assess the security threats to pipeline projects, which was thinly

…

the panel reviewing Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline announced its recommendations. The news that it had greenlighted the federal government to approve the much loathed tar sands project was not, for the most part, greeted with despair. Instead, a great many Canadians remained convinced that the pipeline would never go ahead

…

Native fishing fleet.7 Many other North American treaties contained similar resource-sharing provisions. Treaty 6, for instance, which covers large parts of the Alberta tar sands region, contains clear language stating that “Indians, shall have right to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing throughout the tract surrendered”—in other words

…

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), recently launched another landmark lawsuit, this one taking on Shell and the Canadian government over the approval of a huge tar sands mine expansion. The band is also challenging another Shell project, the proposed Pierre River Mine, which it says “would significantly impact lands, water, wildlife

…

Canadian government on Indigenous sovereignty, as well as its all-out assault on existing environmental protections, particularly for water, to pave the way for rapid tar sands expansion, more mega-mines, and projects like Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline. The attacks came in the form of two omnibus budget bills passed in

…

in, and seek not only consultation with First Nations, but consent from them. Many commented that it would make the construction of controversial projects like tar sands pipelines—rejected by local First Nations—significantly more difficult. 12 * * * SHARING THE SKY The Atmospheric Commons and the Power of Paying Our Debts “The

…

extreme extraction that breaks down those barriers, as its tentacles creep into our most modern cities—with fracking in backyards in Los Angeles and proposed tar sands pipelines running through cities like Toronto. Sydney’s residents had little reason to think about where their drinking water was coming from—but when

…

2030,” Stockholm Environment and Health Administration, p. 12; MAJORITY STATE-OWNED: “Annual Report on Form 20-F,” Statoil, 2013, p. 117, http://www.statoil.com; TAR SANDS: “Oil Sands,” Statoil, http://www.statoil.com; ARCTIC: “Large-Scale Arctic Oil and Gas Drilling Decades Away,” Reuters, November 29, 2013; “Statoil Stepping Up in the Arctic

…

2011. 19. Jamie Henn, “40,000+ Join ‘Forward on Climate” Rally in Washington, DC,” Huffington Post, February 17, 2013; personal email communications with Ramsey Sprague, Tar Sands Blockade, January 22–23, 2014. 20. “Oil Sands Export Ban: BC First Nations Unite to Declare Province-Wide Opposition to Crude Oil Pipeline,” Yinka Dene

…

evidence that dilbit may be more likely to cause other kinds of pipeline failure, such as cracking. Anthony Swift, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, and Elizabeth Shope, “Tar Sands Pipelines Safety Risks,” Natural Resources Defense Council, 2011, p. 3. 68. Vivian Luk, “Diluted Bitumen Sinks When Mixed with Sediments, Federal Report Says,” Globe

…

“Fort Chipewyan Cancer Study Set to Begin,” Fort McMurray Today, February 20, 2013; Michael Toledano, “We Interviewed Dr. John O’Connor, One of the First Tar Sands Whistleblowers,” Vice, March 3, 2014. 72. Peter Moskowitz, “Report Finds Doctors Reluctant to Link Oil Sands with Health Issues,” Al Jazeera America, January 20, 2014

…

diluted bitumen traveling in Enbridge’s pipeline had been extracted with newer “in situ” steam injection technology, rather than mined, it would not qualify as tar sands oil: Todd Heywood, “Enbridge CEO Downplays Long-Term Effects of Spill,” Michigan Messenger, August 12, 2010. MORE THAN A WEEK: McGowan and Song, “The

…

Coast, June 20, 2013. 10. Personal interview with Melachrini Liakou, May 31, 2013. 11. Personal interview with Alexis Bonogofsky, March 27, 2013. 12. Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Vancouver: Greystone, 2010), 44. 13. Personal interview with Jeff King, June 23, 2011. 14. Luiza Ilie, “Romanian

…

Glitter-Covered Banner Got These Protesters Arrested for Staging a Bioterror Hoax,” Mother Jones, December 17, 2013; personal email communication with Moriah Stephenson, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, January 22, 2014; Will Potter, “Two Environmentalists Were Charged with ‘Terrorism Hoax’ for Too Much Glitter on Their Banner,” Vice, December 18, 2013.

…

banning of, 278 biosphere, as self-organizing, complex, adaptive system, 267 Birol, Fatih, 23 birth defects, environmental toxins and, 428, 429–30, 439 bitumen, see tar sands Black Mesa Water Coalition, 398–99, 402 Black Sea, 349 Blake, William, 157 Blazevic, Sara, 355 Blockadia, 293–336, 450–51 abolition and civil rights

…

of environmental protest in, 299, 303 politics of climate change in, 36, 46 pro-mining policies of, 382 S&P rating of, 368 tar sands in, see Alberta tar sands weakening of environmental protections in, 381–82 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, 149 Canadian Auto Workers Union, 122 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 70

…

, 129, 400 Canadian Natural Resources, 281 Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 362 cancer, tar sands linked to, 327 cap-and-trade system, 208, 218, 226–29, 287 cap and dividend, 118 capitalism, 22, 25, 38–39, 47, 61, 88,

…

, 299 Sydney, Australia, 446 Syngenta, 9 Syriza party (Greek), 181–82, 297 Take, The, 123 Tambococha oil field, 410 tarmac, melting of, 1–2 Tar Sands Blockade, 302 tar sands oil (bitumen), 2, 94, 139, 140, 144, 145, 234, 237, 252–53, 254, 310, 349, 352, 358, 446 call for global moratorium on,

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Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together

by Andrew Selee  · 4 Jun 2018  · 359pp  · 97,415 words

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World

by Steve Levine  · 5 Feb 2015  · 304pp  · 88,495 words

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond  · 6 May 2019  · 459pp  · 144,009 words

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 19 Jan 2021  · 486pp  · 139,713 words

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next

by Andrew McAfee  · 30 Sep 2019  · 372pp  · 94,153 words

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times

by Lionel Barber  · 5 Nov 2020

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy

by Frank Vogl  · 14 Jul 2021  · 265pp  · 80,510 words

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams  · 1 Oct 2015  · 357pp  · 95,986 words

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits

by Richard Davies  · 4 Sep 2019  · 412pp  · 128,042 words

To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010

by T M Devine  · 25 Aug 2011

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

by Ernest Scheyder  · 30 Jan 2024  · 355pp  · 133,726 words

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

by Nicolas Niarchos  · 20 Jan 2026  · 654pp  · 170,150 words

Scotland Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe

by Norman Davies  · 27 Sep 2011

Smart Grid Standards

by Takuro Sato  · 17 Nov 2015

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations

by Norman Davies  · 30 Sep 2009  · 1,309pp  · 300,991 words

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System

by James Rickards  · 7 Apr 2014  · 466pp  · 127,728 words

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One

by Meghnad Desai  · 15 Feb 2015  · 270pp  · 73,485 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism

by Sharon Beder  · 1 Jan 1997  · 651pp  · 161,270 words

Data Action: Using Data for Public Good

by Sarah Williams  · 14 Sep 2020

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis  · 21 Jun 2023  · 309pp  · 121,279 words

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History

by Thomas Rid  · 27 Jun 2016  · 509pp  · 132,327 words

Green Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 1993  · 746pp  · 239,969 words

On Thermonuclear War

by Herman Kahn  · 16 Jul 2007  · 1,117pp  · 270,127 words

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

Siege: Trump Under Fire

by Michael Wolff  · 3 Jun 2019  · 359pp  · 113,847 words

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

by Arthur Herman  · 27 Nov 2001  · 510pp  · 163,449 words

When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence

by Stephen D. King  · 17 Jun 2013  · 324pp  · 90,253 words

Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

by Kenneth Rogoff  · 27 Feb 2025  · 330pp  · 127,791 words

Wanderers: A Novel

by Chuck Wendig  · 1 Jul 2019  · 1,028pp  · 267,392 words

Unfinished Business

by Tamim Bayoumi  · 405pp  · 109,114 words

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil  · 14 Jul 2005  · 761pp  · 231,902 words

Uncharted: How to Map the Future

by Margaret Heffernan  · 20 Feb 2020  · 335pp  · 97,468 words

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today

by Linda Yueh  · 15 Mar 2018  · 374pp  · 113,126 words

Does Capitalism Have a Future?

by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, Craig Calhoun, Stephen Hoye and Audible Studios  · 15 Nov 2013  · 238pp  · 73,121 words

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems

by Linda Yueh  · 4 Jun 2018  · 453pp  · 117,893 words

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

by Robert J. Gordon  · 12 Jan 2016  · 1,104pp  · 302,176 words

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017

by Ian Kershaw  · 29 Aug 2018  · 736pp  · 233,366 words

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them

by Nouriel Roubini  · 17 Oct 2022  · 328pp  · 96,678 words

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green

by Henry Sanderson  · 12 Sep 2022  · 292pp  · 87,720 words

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future

by Mervyn King and John Kay  · 5 Mar 2020  · 807pp  · 154,435 words

Germany Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 15 Mar 2015  · 409pp  · 125,611 words

SuperFreakonomics

by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner  · 19 Oct 2009  · 302pp  · 83,116 words

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Peter Petre  · 30 Sep 2012  · 900pp  · 241,741 words

When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures

by Richard D. Lewis  · 1 Jan 1996

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

by Ron Chernow  · 1 Jan 1990  · 1,335pp  · 336,772 words

Quality Investing: Owning the Best Companies for the Long Term

by Torkell T. Eide, Lawrence A. Cunningham and Patrick Hargreaves  · 5 Jan 2016  · 178pp  · 52,637 words

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff

by Fred Pearce  · 30 Sep 2009  · 407pp  · 121,458 words

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building

by Michael Gross  · 18 Dec 2007  · 601pp  · 193,225 words

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World

by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro  · 11 Sep 2017  · 850pp  · 224,533 words

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism

by Richard Brooks  · 23 Apr 2018  · 398pp  · 105,917 words

Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies

by Charles de Ganahl Koch  · 14 Sep 2015  · 261pp  · 74,471 words

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

by Vaclav Smil  · 2 Mar 2021  · 1,324pp  · 159,290 words

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely

by Andrew Craig  · 6 Sep 2015  · 305pp  · 98,072 words

Hedgehogging

by Barton Biggs  · 3 Jan 2005

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

by Judith Stein  · 30 Apr 2010  · 497pp  · 143,175 words

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050

by Matt Savinar  · 2 Jan 2004  · 127pp  · 51,083 words

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

by Ron Chernow  · 1 Jan 1997  · 1,106pp  · 335,322 words

The Art of Corporate Success: The Story of Schlumberger

by Ken Auletta  · 28 Sep 2015  · 161pp  · 52,058 words