Shale Oil Production Processes 1st Edition

What an important book & where do I start? First the criticisms, this book is the most repetitive book I have ever read. It could of been written with one third to a half less content. The other criticism is that Author, Dr Speight, is optimistic about the future of shale oil, even though his objective analysis would leave any reasonable thinking human being to conclude that shale oil is s***, in terms of economics, chemistry, geology, the environment, full cost accounting, the amount of resources required etc.The positives of this book is that it's outline is set up in a logical manner. Each chapter covers all the main topics with sub-chapters going into specific areas. This book goes into very good detail, including the technicals such as the specifications of shale oil (kerogen) & comparing it to conventional oil & even some grades of coal. Different technologies, owned & patented by different oil companies is described as well. Dr Speight goes into the chemistry, locations, general geology, infrastructure, processes & refining & environmental impacts as well.For those who are not familiar with the oil story, global conventional crude oil production + condensates, have been on an undulating plateau since 2004. There is a high probability that around 2014, this oil production will start to go into irreversible decline. What makes this topic (shale oil) one of the most relevant & paramount in the future is because "madmen & economists", amongst others, want to start exploiting this resource. Apparently, we have discovered more shale oil than conventional oil on the planet, thus far & that will not change. This is scarey, because once you understand everything that is involved in producing shale oil & that our modern civilisation can not continue in its present form without fossil fuels, particularly oil, this makes for a doomed scenario. Once shale oil production starts to go into full swing sometime in the future, that is the beginning of the end of our planet as we know it. It means that in this world, oil is extremely expensive, we are stepping up the damaging of the environment by more than a notch, we are not able to produce the amount of food we are capable of producing today, people with authority are lying to us (not that they are not currently lying to us), economies are in worse shape than they are today, a massive amount of resources are dedicated solely to this industry etc. The law of entropy is kicking in, in a big way. This is like a cancer that is spreading & we do not have a coherent conversation at the highest levels about our future in regards to energy. Mr J.H. Kunstler is right, there is too much delusional thinking about energy & what technology is capable of doing. I believe that people mix up energy & technology, using it interchangeably, they are not the same thing!Make no mistake about it, human civilisation is at the cross roads. I highly recommend that you read this book to fully understand what it is going to take to tap into this pathetic resource. The cost is going to be high, I would argue, too high. Thank you Dr Speight for your contribution in this area, much appreciated. I am shocked that I am the first to review this book. This book may be obscure to the general public, however its content is the most relevant to our future.

The title of the book is "Shale Oil" and the book starts describing in detail "Oil Shale". Only the portion I can access,looking inside it all talks about "Oil Shale", which is different from "Shale Oil". A new reader in this area will not be able to identify the difference between the two and read this book, not knowing that they are technically two different subjects. I understand, like so many others misnomers in oil industry, this is also confusing. However, recently experts in this area started referring to "Shale Oil" as "Tight Oil" or even some others named it "Shale Crude" in order to distinguish between "Shale Oil" and "Oil Shale".