US unconventional oil reserves are as large as the entire world’s proven oil reserves

The testimony to Congress by Anu K. Mittal,  director of the US Government Accountability Office’s natural resources and environment office, confirms what Robert Mills recently wrote in an article: We can forget the talk about "peak oil". There is more than enough of "unconventional" oil and gas.


Tapping the vast amounts of oil locked within U.S. oil shale 
formations could go a long way toward satisfying the 
nation’s future oil demands. Oil shale deposits in the Green River Formation
are estimated to contain up to 3 trillion barrels of oil, half of which may be 
recoverable, which is about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.


Socioeconomic benefits. Development of oil shale resources could lead to 
the creation of jobs, increases in wealth, and increases in tax and royalty 
payments to federal and state governments for oil produced on their lands. 
The extent of these benefits, however, is unknown at this time because the 
ultimate size of the industry is uncertain.

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The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks 
that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the 
world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS estimates that the Green 
River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half 
of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and 
economic conditions. The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research 
organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the 
Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint of this 
estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be 
recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s 
proven oil reserves. The thickest and richest oil shale within the Green 
River Formation exists in the Piceance Basin of northwest Colorado 
and the Uintah Basin of northeast Utah.


Testimonies like this show that wasting huge amounts of time and (tax payers´) money on such technologically underdeveloped, ineffective and expensive energy sources as wind and solar power is sheer stupidity.