No Lynn---most of us who live in "shale oil country" are quite aware of the huge amounts of water and energy required to separate oil from rock.

The process requires water, and the issue NOT discussed yet is that the power to heat the rock will use vast amounts of electricity in the West, which is mostly from coal- and gas-fired energy -- two significant consumers of water. In Utah, the average coal-fired power plant uses about 800 gallons of water for each kilowatt hour of electricity -- the amount of power used in a month for a Utah home. The news media often reports how agriculture is pitted against power companies over water rights, with the Payson gas-fired plant a few years ago generating some news about water allocation between locals and the plant. The bottom line is that oil shale will take water away from some current allocation -- with Utah's population booming, it may be that we'll need to drastically cut water to homes or curb food production. Either way you look at it, the future is very grim for Utah -- higher electricity costs to serve the oil shale industry and reduced water allocation, or higher oil prices. Take your poison.

I don't know about the process of liberating hydrocarbons from shale, but the oil sands process does use a lot of water and a lot of power. And it has a massive physical and environmental footprint. That includes power plants, pipelines, power lines, roads, process plants, tailings ponds...I imagine oil shale will be similar. I don't mind, but all the nimbys' are going to have to suck it up if the drill here drill now crowd gets their way. The problem is that some are on both sides of this fence.

Water doesn't disappear when used.

Some time ago I seem to recall a news item that listed the oil refinery as the largest water user in the Salt Lake Area. On google I found one answer to my question about how much water was required for refining oil. The answer was 1851 gallons of water to refine 1 barrel of oil. I suspect that that would be the case no matter where you get the oil.

It seems to me that our efforts should be directed toward the real culprit of the oil problems. The lack of free market for oil and other forms of energy.
Perhaps the oil corporations need to be limited in operation to a single state and in that way forced to deal in a competive manner.

Anonymous 7:30, water may not "disappear when used", but if it is turned into a toxic sludge, or it is evaporated in high-temp industrial processes, then it might as well have disappeared.

Shouldn't the question be "does the energy input justify the energy output?" How much does it cost per BTU?

Los Alamos nat'l lab says it will end up taking 100 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil from shale. Has anyone else read this?

I recently saw an interesting comparison of the amount of energy available per ton of various products.

Baked potatoes contain more energy by weight than oil shale. Captain Crunch cereal contains about four times as much.

But seriously, ALL proposed methods for wrestling tiny amounts of oil from huge amounts of rock involve first putting huge amounts of energy into the rock. In situ extraction methods involve multi-gigawatt coal-fired power plants spending a couple of years heating the rock thousands of feet below the surface to nearly 700 degrees F in order to get the oil moving. Sorry folks, but that's just plain dumb.

Finally, some folks are opening their eyes and ears. It takes a lot of energy to make shale into oil, so it may or may not be a good idea.

Now... take your learning mode to the library, and check on how much energy it takes to create hydrogen, and quit pretending that hydrogen cars are the answer.

Then, look at how much it costs to generate electricity, and realize that electric cars are not the answer since electricity is NOT a source of power. Add in the nightmare of tens of millions of batteries of either lithium or simply lead acid, and give up hoping for an electric car.

Now, turn your attention to drilling our own resources, and remember that no one trusts the government or big business, unless their mantra matches your agenda, such as when you don't want to drill, and you can find a business that declares drilling a waste since it only provides X amount of oil. You believe them when they say that, but will diss them on any other topic. Government and business are all liars, all of the time.

What exactly is the downside to drilling for more crude?

John;
Electricity is not a SOURCE of energy, it is a FORM of energy that can be generated by hydro, geothermal, wind, coal, nuclear...I don't understand your animosity towards the electric car. Drilling for more crude will continue. But we will eventually run out. The main question is, what will we be willing to sacrifice in the years leading up to our change? ANWR? Our national forests? Our national parks?
People will draw that line in different places. But drilling for crude will not find us a way out of our energy problem. It just postpones the day, but not indefinitely. Rather, for a rather short period of time.