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by nytesky 882 days ago
How does it compare to the energy ratio of US fracking? It’s a similar process of using heated water (though not steam so maybe a greater volume of water) to break the oil from shale.

It uses a ton of water. I think more than oil sands so, if the oil sands displace some fracking it is a global net positive to have that substation.

About a decade ago I realized we are going to extract all the oil, no matter what. All we can do is try to slow the rate to give nature time to heal and maybe develop counter measures to pollution.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/25/climate/frack...

2 comments

Producing oil from "tight" formations through fracking will not be displaced by oil sands production. It's just cheaper to run with much lower upfront cost. Hard to find numbers here, but scroll down to figure 5 here https://energynow.ca/2023/02/canadian-upstream-oil-sector-su...

Also: this page is really interesting generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_formation

> we are going to extract all the oil, no matter what

4C warming is going to be toasty. Mind you, timescales matter; we don't have to extract all the oil now, this century, despite what drillers demand.