We all know that Americans consumer large sums of oil every day. To date, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.04. So what's the oil industry's big plan? I can tell you this, it probably won't make the environmentalists of the world happy.

Oil shales

The newest idea straight from the industry is something known as oil shale. Oil shale, which contain hydrocarbons that through distillation, yield petroleum.
Oil shale actually is a precursor to oil and the pre-historic organic sediment. This sediment doesn't sit under some desert in the Middle East, but rather right under the United States' own Utah and Colorado. Research shows these sediments hold close to 800 billion barrels of oil, which is three times the size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.

The complaints over the ever rising gas prices have brought a resurgence of
discussion of the oil shale idea. This idea was tested almost 10 years ago but, abandoned when the price of crude oil plunged. Now the prospect
looks more intriguing, but the problem remains that it takes more than
a ton of rocks to make a single barrel of oil using the current
process.

Even digging and removing the oil shale would require a massive,
expensive mining operation. For the United States' oil hungry economy, the process won't be quick enough.

"It's not a quick fix, unfortunately," said Randy Udall, co-founder
of the USA Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a network of
scientists that studies the rise and fall of oil production. "We might
be producing 100,000 barrels 10 years from now."

Shell Oil has a different idea about how to get oil from the shale. The
company is experimenting with what it calls the In situ Conversion
Process, in which a giant section of shale is heated in the ground for
several years, while moisture is blocked out with an ammonia frost
wall.

The heat liquefies the oil, and then it can be sucked out of the
ground, Shell officials say. Yet even this process takes an enormous
amount of energy.

So why don't we just invest into new technologies that require not a single drop of gasoline to run our cars like hydrogen or electric? Or solar energy for our homes? "We could save 10 times more energy simply by improving our automobiles
two miles per gallon," Udall said. "Energy efficiency is a better bang
for the buck."

Hey oil industry, help invest in energy efficiency rather than these quick fixes for the overwhelming demand of oil. Just a thought.

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