U.S. Backs Squeezing Oil From a Stone - Los Angeles Times

I will put my bang for bucks in "Fuel Cell" technology. General motors (GM) that has been sinking my find a relief in this new tech.

U.S. Backs Squeezing Oil From a Stone - Los Angeles Times: "Tucked into a ravine and hidden
behind ridges standing like stony sentinels is the site of Shell Oil Co.'s ultra-experimental, highly anticipated 30-year project to unlock oil from vast underground beds of rock.

Here, on this sweeping plateau in western Colorado, the Bush administration has fixed its hopes for the next big energy boom: oil shale, which the U.S. Department of the Interior praises as an 'energy resource with staggering potential.' Members of Congress have described the region as the Saudi Arabia of oil shale."
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Oil shale is immature rock that, left alone, would require millions of years of natural heating to produce oil. Modern techniques greatly accelerate that process by cooking underground rock. But some experts warn that the process could use more energy than it yields, and conservationists and many local residents point to the massive amounts of water it will consume and to the disturbances to land, wildlife habitat and the lives of rural people.