Forum Archive Index - September 2000

["Jeremy" <jeremy@electrosilk.net>]

> This surely would have huge implications for share prices.  Has anyone
> in this forum seen some sensible estimates of remaining oil resources
> and likelihood of future significant discoveries?  I haven't been

The answer is oil shale.  There are many many times the reserves of
hydrocarbons in oil shale that there ever will be in oil and gas fields.

The only determining factor is cost.  It is more expensive to get gasoline
from oil-shale than from oil.  So far there has not been a major effort to
make the process more economical because it is not worth the effort when
there is a lot of oil still around.

Actually they are continually discovering new oil fields and developing
technology to extract more from existing fields.  Oil as such won't
disappear for quite a while.

There is also coal based gasoline, which was significant was in Germany
during the war.  They developed a process that made synthetic gasoline from
coke.  It is still in occasional use.  All it requires is a bit of a boost
in oil prices and the plants will be springing up all over the place.

As far as investing, I guess that you should look at people who are
developing ways to make oil shale conversion more efficient, or people who
are developing ways to extract more oil from existing reserves.

Jeremy



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