Funny- a few days after the Bakken Shale 'bonanza' story broke there
was a very similar story in the NYT about the Marcellus Shale area of
PA and NY and the natural gas and oil bonanza just waiting to be
tapped into there. Never is there any inclusion of ERoEI assessment
of these deposits, etc., just a lot of big numbers and a 'happy days
are here again' boosterism. Hype to get desperate land-owners to
sign over perpetual mineral rights to their land? And if the US
consumes an average of 20 million barrels of oil per day, 4.3 billion
barrels will last us 215 days. Sure, someone (hmm, I wonder who...)
will make a bundle of money off the oil, but as far as amounts it
really doesn't seem like all that much.