The "Nonsense On A Stick" Campaign hit a new low this week. John Neely Kennedy has been attacking Senator Landrieu for her vote on a bill dealing with oil shale last week. Well, it turns out that Mr. Kennedy is cribbing his oil shale platform from Wikipedia:
John Kennedy and Wikipedia on Oil Shale: A Comparison
John N. Kennedy: July 28, 2008 Eric Asher Show, WIST 690AM
"Oil shale is nothing but rock with a, an organic material in it called kerogen."
"Oil shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen..."
"And, uh, when a, when a chemical process is applied to the rock containing the kerogen, I don't wanna get too technical but the process is called, uh, pyrolysis, when that's applied to it, the kerogen turns into oil."
"The chemical process of pyrolysis can convert the kerogen in oil shale into synthetic crude oil..."
"Uh, this is, uh, uh, a well established source of energy, Estonia and China have well established oil shale industries."
"Estonia and China have well-established oil shale industries...
"Brazil, Germany, Israel, Russia all use it."
...and Brazil, Germany, Israel and Russia also utilize oil shale."
So John Neely Kennedy is going around bashing Senator Mary Landrieu for her vote against selling oil shale leases in the West all because a fellow Senator asked her to do so. A couple of questions to consider about this:
1. What is oil shale?
2. And why is the Bush Administration pushing this a mere 6 months before the end of their term?
Since the 19th century, we in the West have been trying to extract oil from the vast oil shale riches that lie under our feet. It is no easy task, and past efforts have failed miserably. Commercial oil shale development would require not only immense financial investments but also an undetermined quantity of (scarce) water from the Colorado River basin and the construction of several multibillion-dollar power plants.
Sometimes it seems that we are getting close to overcoming these barriers. But each time we near a boom, we bust. The last bust, the infamous "Black Sunday" of 1982, left Western communities holding the bill long after the speculators, Beltway boosters and energy companies had taken off.
This time, though, the technologies that companies such as Shell Oil are developing are far more promising. Thanks in part to a research and development program that Congress created in 2005, energy companies are starting to devise a way to heat the rock that holds the oil and force the oil up and out of the ground. Still, that oil would not come easily. It would take around one ton of rock to produce enough fuel to last the average car two weeks.
Furthermore, energy companies are still years away -- 2015 at the earliest -- from knowing whether this technology can cost-effectively produce oil on a commercial scale.
Unfortunately, the [Bush] Administration's approach carries none of the Western wisdom acquired over the past century. In a frenzied attempt to move a failed agenda in its last days, the Bureau of Land Management is trying to organize a fire sale of commercial oil shale leases on public land.
This sale would be a tragic case of putting the cart before the horse.
Ah, I love a good metaphor ... John Neely Kennedy, putting the cart before the horse, yet again. To sum up, we've been here before in terms of oil shale development. It's gone bust every single time. The right approach, as exemplified by Senator Landrieu, is to line our ducks up in a row and work hand in hand with the oil companies on this issue.
Hell, even the oil companies think we ought to take it slow:
Even energy companies, including Chevron, have said we need to proceed more cautiously on oil shale. With more than 30,000 acres of public land at their disposal to conduct research, development and demonstration projects (in addition to 200,000 undeveloped acres of private oil shale lands they own in Colorado and Utah), they already have more land than they can develop in the foreseeable future.
John Neely Kennedy ... Louisiana's best example of putting the cart before the horse.
