Anyone want 3 trillion barrels of oil?

Where’s this story in the MSM? This would be the one where a geologist from the General Accounting Office happens to mention to a congressional committee that there are 3 trillion barrels of oil – of which half may be recoverable – within the oil shale in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Photo courtesy of Lyndi&Jason, flickr

How much oil is that? More than all the known reserves in the world. Now, oil shale is not the same as crude oil. It’s more expensive to recover, it takes a lot of water resources and it requires horizontal drilling and “fracking” that tends to freak out some friends of ours.

We’ve always known there was a lot of oil shale in the Green River Formation, but not this much. And as technology continues to advance, it becomes increasingly more feasible that the shale can be part of America’s long-term energy strategy.

So then . . . why is this not news today? You don’t suppose the MSM is trying to shield its favorite president from having to explain why he’s not going all-out to find a way to exploit these resources, do you? Nah. It must just be that they’ve got all their people on much more important stories.

(Dan Calabrese is editor-in-chief of the Michigan-based syndicate North Star Writers Group, and the author of the Royal Oak Series of spiritual thrillers, which are available at www.dancalabresebooks.com. Originally posted on The Michigan View.)