Canada and the U.S. are not alone in trying to find out if oil shale is an opportunity to wean off of expensive foreign bought oil - Australia also will be investing in research for their shale-oil in Queensland, according to ABC Queensland. From the article: “It isn’t a question of whether it works, the point of the pilot plant is to make estimates of what size pumps and pieces of equipment that are necessary for a full scale commercial plant and that you need to be able to have the pilot plant in order to be able to test various components of the process,” says Chris Ryan, Chairman of Blue Ensign Technologies, who are negotiating to buy an Australian shale-oil deposit estimted to contain 2 billion barrels of oil.

The Townsville Bulletin has more news regarding some problems with the Queensland shale-oil deposits: AN engineer who wants to extract oil from shale at Julia Creek has appealed for a fair go after checks found he had committed securities fraud in the United States. It seems that there are at least 2 companies interested in researching the shale-oil profitability in that Australian region. The same media outlet also has an article titled Oil shale project ‘worth the risk’, describing the actual risks involved in setting up a license to let a private company discover the profits in extracting shale-oil. “It can be done, it’s just a matter of whether it can be done for the price,” says Geophysicist and managing director of Xtract Oil Ltd Dr John Shirley.

The Record covers an article showing the typical cronyism that revolves around the oil industry as a whole. From the article: In the 31/2 years since Rep. Richard Pombo became chairman of the House Resources Committee, he has emerged as one of the Congress’ loudest cheerleaders for expanding domestic energy supplies. Rep. Pombo was invited by V.P. Cheney to a recent fund-raiser. The Record found that 11% of Pombo’s campaign contributions come from oil-industry donations.

EVWorld has a great two part article covering the history of Canada’s alternative source oil industry, including the tar sands process. This article was reprinted from ASPO-USA’s weekly newsletter. From the article: The critical impediment to freewheeling expansion is the extreme energy requirements to synthesize refinable crude oil from subsurface formations that are saturated with bitumen or degraded oil. This critical impediment is something I hear about often from anti-shale and anti-tar sands advocates who don’t realize that even if you lose energy in extracting from this alternative oil source, you still end up with a better energy store. Using energy that is inefficient to use in cars and industry to create energy stores that are efficient is still a positive gain. I’m not in any rush to start driving an electric car that drives like a rhino jumping backwards in the mud.

The Globe and Mail bites into the oil industry in an article talking about the misunderstood Kyoto agreement, which to me is just another socialist scheme to prevent capitalism from gaining more ground. While the subsidized and regulated oil industry is anything but capitalistic, the Kyoto agreement is just as bad as the regulations and subsidies.

OutlookIndia says that the PM of India believes that the oil subsidies in the country can not continue — an amazing admission by a PM who has been seen as a de-regulator of industries and someone who has shown that he can reduce tariffs and preferential subsidies in order to allow all of India to compete on the world market. Hopefully de-subsidization will occur, allowing more competition within the Indian market. I recently returned from India and I was shocked to hear about regular black-outs in Bangalore and other high-tech hubs. The subsidies of the energy market create preferential treatment for the few at the expense of the many.

The DailyIndia reports that France and Saudi Arabia are teaming up to create a new refinery. It is my belief that the lack of refineries in the U.S. is one of the key reasons for the heavy cost of energy in general. With every level of government requiring special blends and fuels, the heavily paternalized refinery industry is happy to move as slowly as possible to keep profits up. To see more refineries popping up internationally leads me to believe that the U.S. will sink even further into uncompetitiveness as we have for decades.

Discuss this article at the Oil Report forum.

The Boston Herald reports that they have a new oil shale process that they believe will help refine oil shale for retail consumption. Raytheon? A defense industry corporation? I’m sure this has little to do with Bush’s signing in August 2005 of The Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The Raytheon announcement is part of a cooperative between them and CF Technologies. It uses radio frequencies broadcast into the ground to help convert them to an oil that can be more easily extracted. CF Technologies stands for Critical Fluid Technologies and they have had a long standing history of providing services for DefenseLink, the Department of Defense subcontracting group. They’ve also worked with DARPA, LosAlamos Labs, the USAF and NASA. While their face is that of a tiny company, I’d be interested in anyone who can find me some background information on who runs the facility. Drop an e-mail.