ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ON THE HORIZON - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 61

CO 2 -EOR business, they'll need to make sure that more power plants
capture their carbon rather than dump it into the atmosphere. Climate
change is largely the subject for the next chapter, but for now what
mat ers is that stopping power plants from emit ing carbon dioxide
is right at the top of the climate agenda.
h ere are, of course, doubters about CO 2 -EOR. Some argue that
all but the most narrowly crat ed rules that might encourage power
plants to capture their carbon dioxide would spur investment in wind,
solar, or nuclear energy instead, leaving the oil industry without a
new carbon dioxide source. Others oppose any legislation that actu-
ally boosts oil production or prolongs the future of coal, believing
such an outcome is unacceptable. And of course, there's the strong
possibility that no such legislation or regulation will exist, at least not
for a long time.
Still, the prospect of a big boost in enhanced oil recovery remains a
genuine possibility. Combined with crude oil from shale, Alaska, and
the deep of shore, the further gains to U.S. output could be truly mas-
sive, easily exceeding i ve million barrels a day.

S et against the long span of history, though, all of these resources

still fall short. Technically recoverable U.S. oil resources (most of
which aren't yet economic to produce) total somewhere around two
hundred billion barrels—a massive number, but still less than thirty
years of U.S. consumption. Even if the United States could crank up
production and, for a time, eliminate imports, it would see its oil output
plummet soon thereat er.
Two hundred miles west of Denver, though, a small club of oil devel-
opers, Howard Jonas among them, are bet ing that there's one more
trump card to be played: oil shale. If you drive through northwest
Colorado, you can literally see this holy grail of American oil without
stepping out of your car; massive expanses of shale whiten the stunning
clif s near towns like Ril e. Many Americans can recall oil shale from
the 1970s, when it was touted as the answer to dependence on foreign
oil, a bigger potential source of oil than Saudi Arabia itself and enough
to last the world a hundred years. h en, as oil prices crashed, oil shale

seemed to vanish.