VIDEO: The Planet’s Biggest Oil Deposit is a Few Miles from Idaho

America has enough oil to fuel the country for hundreds of years.  If we could get it out of the ground.  I’ve been reading about the massive deposit for decades.  Buried beneath Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, it dwarfs anything else on earth.  So why aren’t we pulling it out of the ground?   Because we haven’t figured out an economical approach.  It’s in a wax form in porous rock, and to melt it and get it to pool for extraction would take more energy than the expected return.  Take heart, science often comes up with novel ideas.

Science Builds on Trial and Error

When I was a boy, the United States lost its spot as the globe’s top oil producer, and then we were told we would soon run out.  Fast forward 30 years, and hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, revolutionized extraction.  The United States is again the world’s top supplier.  Necessity is the mother of invention.  Peak oil had been predicted 20 years ago.  I remember listening to a speaker in 2001 who predicted we would be paying 10 dollars a gallon for gasoline before the end of the decade.  He was trying to frighten people and promote wind power.

The Challenge is a Major Hurdle

You can watch a video below on America’s trove of three trillion potential barrels.  Maybe you have a scientifically inclined kid who’ll someday crack the riddle.  When that happens, the price of oil will plummet, and some very bad actors will lose their profit margins (think Iran and Russia).  By the way, Russia has massive reserves in Siberia, but the ground isn’t stable enough for rigs or transport.