Thank you for Dr. Roadifer’s million-dollar question concerning oil shale in today’s issue. However he misses the more complete question:

How to get oil from shale without increasing our national energy requirements? Assuming the Rand Study numbers are correct, we would have to put more energy into the process than contained in the product.

Shell’s answer to this is that a by-product of its 2,000-foot-deep heating rods would also provide natural gas to provide the deficit energy. This prompts the further question: Why not just go for the natural gas at 2,000 feet and avoid the tremendous energy loss of heating that underground mountain of useless marlstone?

And, by the way, the purpose of Shell’s freeze wall is not just to avoid contaminating ground water but, more importantly, it avoids natural ground water from quenching the heating process, which would drive the energy requirements sky high. One has to ask whether the freeze wall, which requires electrical energy to maintain, also extends down to 2,000 feet.

Whether by retorting mountains of useless marlstone to obtain a small fraction of kerosene or by deep heating of that marlstone, no process looks positive for a net national energy gain, so leasing of millions of acres of public land for oil shale is not only premature but is totally illogical and self-defeating.

LARRY SODERBERG
Parachute

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