Sunday, June 15, 2008

Fuel crisis? What fuel crisis!

60 Minutes tonight - second story should be interesting...

It's about shale oil.

Full transcript available Monday.

I remember as a teenager visited Newnes Glow Worm Tunnel. Newnes is a shale oil ghost town near Lithgow in NSW. The most interesting thing about the place, to me, was the brick lined tar pits.

I saw a little of the 60 Minutes programme, and the little I saw was about the pollution from the refining of shale, ponds of poison which killed the ducks.

4 comments:

stackja1945 said...

Between 1939 and 1952 National Oil Proprietary Limited extracted oil from shale at their Glen Davis works in the Capertee Valley approximately 120 miles west of Sydney.
Viability of the shale mine and oil works were always questionable and they closed after a short and troubled life.

Skeeter said...

Stacks, I remember Glen Davis and shale "oil" being discussed as an alternative to petroleum when I was in high school in the 1940s.
Then as now, it was always decided that shale was too expensive for the present market, but it would eventually become viable when the price of crude became as high as the costs of extracting shale oil.
That is still some time in the future.
We should not be wishing for such parity to happen in our lifetimes.

kae said...

Hi Skeets and Stacks
I've been to Newnes Glow Worm Tunnel, which I think is near Glen Davis? I remember going there as a teenager with Mum and Dad and Brother. The tar pits were most interesting.

Newnes Glow Worm Tunnel, shale oil ghost town.

Anonymous said...

Hi there, all in the same area. The mates I went with to Newnes were never interesting in glow worms, just drinking at the Newnes Pub. That's before the pub got moved after a flood. Nice area. Years since I been there.