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US shale is immune to an oil price crash in 2017 : Comments
By Tsvetana Paraskova, published 18/5/2017Oil production in the Lower 48 excluding the Gulf of Mexico is expected to rise until the end of the year even if the price of oil plunges to US$40.
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$30.00 bbl, sounds like good economic news for the west and the Saudi's who've replaced their sole reliance on crude with significant and grow refinery capacity. If only we were as smart and just value added all we export also. And doable with the right affordable energy supply. No that's not coal, hydro nor anything linked to the diabolically dumb energy wasting national grid!
Just very local micro grids, country co-ops, thorium and with that, genuine competition for market share.
Thorium also enables I believe, the Edmonton 1.8 trillion bbl to be fully developed and exploited, given something a small as a shipping container sized reactor, could provide sufficient heat at the very bottom of that reserve, to enable the industry to extract all of it as thin warm liquid, rather than tar.
Imagine the Middle East and Russia, (OPEC) without a western customer economy to bless themselves with, and possible, with walkaway safe molten salt thorium reactors that enable extraction of fuel from boundless seawater? What price oil then?
I mean with the thorium reactor, all the mass produced costs are upfront. Why the security guard out front would cost more than the fuel and the reactor once fueled could be welded shut for 100 years?
And enough time to completely deplete the massive North American reserve! However if we're still relying on oil or gas for our principle energy supplies for 9+ billion people, on the basis of carried forward as far as foreseeable, sovereign risk, we won't have to worry about winter heat! Or coastal real estate?
As for commuting to work, what about thorium powered fast ferries? Or smokey diesel ones? The new Venice of the South, the Gold coast, may be a prime candidate? Ditto Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth Brisbane and Darwin.
Islands in the sun could take on a whole new perspective?
Not for nothing is it writ large, there are none so blind as those who will not see!
Alan B.