e125.

For an introduction to shale oil, see Walter Youngquist, “Shale Oil—The Elusive Energy”, Colorado School of Mines, 1998. For comments on the potential scale of production, see, e.g., Chris Nelder, “Peak Oil Media Guide”, The Oil Drum, 13 July 2008; or Rich Turcotte, “Still Dealing with Peak Oil Denying Nonsense”, Peak Oil Matters, 22 November 2010. See also Randy Udall at the Aspen Environment Forum, March 2008, video available at http://tinyurl.com/6d2d3s .

From the 6 minute mark Udall comments—with tongue firmly in cheek—that: “Shell has spent $200m to produce 1,700 barrels of shale oil in the last decade. At that rate of production the shale oil that we have here in Colorado will last six million years. This is something that gives me great optimism for the future.” (cited in Shaun Chamberlin (2009), The Transition Timeline).

Editor’s note: David Fleming’s former colleague Dr. Roger W. Bentley offers the following comment:

Fleming was writing before the rapid expansion in the United States of production of ‘light-tight’ oil, which is relatively light flowable oil, but trapped in very low permeability shale or similar rock, from which it cannot be extracted unless the rock is fractured. The latter is usually done hydraulically (‘fracking’), and using proppants to keep the fractures open against the pressure of the overburden. Production of this ‘light-tight’ oil has indeed been a ‘game-changer’ in the United States.

But as the International Energy Agency’s “Resources to Reserves 2013” (available at www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/Resources2013.pdf ) shows, compared to the perhaps originally 2,000 to 3,000 billion barrels of global recoverable conventional oil, and the about 1,000 billion barrels of potentially recoverable shale oil (i.e., oil from kerogen in rock), the global endowment of recoverable ‘light-tight’ oil is perhaps 250 billion barrels (i.e., only about 8 years’ worth of global oil consumption), and there have been significant difficulties in extracting much of this oil outside the United States, in part due to the geology of this oil in non-US regions.

David Fleming
Dr David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was a cultural historian and economist, based in London, England. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of peak oil's approach and invented the influential TEQs scheme, designed to address this and climate change. He was also a pioneer of post-growth economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement and the New Economics Foundation, as well as a Chairman of the Soil Association. His wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, 'Lean Logic' and 'Surviving the Future', published posthumously in 2016. These in turn inspired the 2020 launches of both BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's feature film about Fleming's perspective and legacy - 'The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?' - and Sterling College's unique 'Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time' online courses. For more information on all of the above, including Lean Logic, click the little globe below!

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