Oil Shale News

From: Platts

By: Tamsin Carlisle, tamsin_carlisle@platts.com

The Middle East may have big deposits of shale gas, the unconventional natural gas resource that has transformed North America’s gas market, a senior officer of Partex Oil and Gas said Monday.
The gas increasingly tapped from shale beds in North America and elsewhere occurs in rock formations that are considered the “source rocks” for conventional oil and gas resources, Antonio Costa Silva, Chairman of the Management Commission of Partex, told the Middle East Gas Forum in Abu Dhabi.

“In the Middle East we have plenty of source rocks, so for sure we have plenty of shale resources that can be used for the domestic market,” he said.

From: Bloomberg Businessweek

By:  JAMES MacPHERSON

North Dakota’s booming oil patch is sweeping down to South Dakota, amid speculation that a reservoir similar to the rich Bakken shale formation could contain millions of barrels of crude.

The Associated Press has learned that a flurry of recent leasing activity in South Dakota is tied to hopes for the Tyler Formation. State geologist Ed Murphy in North Dakota said the formation extends from the western part of that state into northwest South Dakota and may hold up to one-third the volume of oil estimated in the prolific Bakken, a formation the U.S. Geological Survey called the largest continuous oil accumulation it had ever assessed.

David LaGesse

For National Geographic News

Published September 28, 2011

The rolling high plains east of Colorado Springs (map) saw plenty of change before the “landmen” came. Ranchland that once stretched three or four miles between homes filled in with residential developments on multi-acre lots, bringing more people and paved roads.

Then, about two years ago, came a rush of real estate negotiators, snapping up leases for potential shale oil drilling. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Rick Davis, 53, whose grandfather started buying ranchland in the early 1900s in Colorado’s eastern El Paso County.   “Turns out that land was right in the center of all the activity.”

From: Cleveland.com

By John Funk, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Ohio’s natural gas and oil reserves are a multibillion-dollar bonanza that could create more than 204,500 jobs in just four years, an industry group said Tuesday

The economic impact study, released on the eve of Gov. John Kasich’s energy summit, attributed the jobs to leasing, royalties, exploration, drilling, production and pipeline construction to produce gas and petroleum from Utica shale, a rock buried more than a mile and a half underground.

From: Hawks Bay Today

Canadian-owned Tag Oil has been quick to allay fears that Hawke’s Bay is about to be inundated with oil rigs following the announcement independent Texan oil giant, Apache Corporation, is funding a $100 million ground mapping programme.

Tag Oil’s New Zealand chief operating officer Drew Cadenhead said seismic testing was unobtrusive. Cables were laid on the ground and a sound transmitted into the earth, and what bounced back was measured by geophones. “It’s just some guys in utes and quads and a bunch of cables.”

From: Daily Finance

By: Travis Hoium

Americans have never shied away from burning oil. We like big vehicles and horsepower; accordingly, cheap gasoline has fueled a reliance on imported petroleum.

Except for a short blip after the oil crises of the 1970s, when fuel-efficient cars became all the rage, oil imports have risen steadily for the past four decades. But only when gas prices also started to rise, leading up to the most recent recession, did we really start to care about how much oil we were importing.

From: Wall Street Journal

By RYAN DEZEMBER And BEN LEFEBVRE

HOUSTON—Moves by Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. signal that eastern Ohio’s newest oil-shale field is so rich that it could trigger a Rust Belt oil revival—and perhaps reverse the fortunes of the battered East Coast refining industry.

If the Utica Shale holds as much oil as some producers and analysts think it does, a new source of relatively cheap domestic oil could boost the razor-thin profit margins of local refineries that must now source oil tied to European benchmark Brent, which is trading at a premium to most crudes that come from the interior of the U.S.

From:  Wall Street Journal

U.S has resources to get off foreign oil dependence
Albanian__Minerals President and CEO Sahit__Muja said “The U.S, energy inidependence is absolutely possible if we invest in innovative technology”.

“Investing in clean energy oil shale, natural gas, coal would create an estimated 20 million new jobs in U.S”.

The USA, the land of the opportunity that has attracted millions of emigrants worldwide has a huge potential to remain the world’s richest and most powerfull country in the planet for thousands of years to come.

CRE Note:  Oils opponents claim that it is not yet commercially viable, however, as the story below describes oil shale is gaining a lot of attention from investors for its great potential.

From: The Star-Ledger

By: Eliot Caroom

Newark-based IDT carved out a niche in the world of telecommunications offering cheap international calls and calling cards, and as its stock awakens from a deep recessionary swoon, the company is looking for another growth opportunity wringing oil from layers of shale rock in Israel and Colorado.