How many times have you heard that there is an immense amount of oil shale, from which we can extract lots and lots of oil?   I’ve heard this claim dozens of times, yet the people uttering this claim never know anything at all about what it takes to make oil out of oil shale.

Consider this not-so-good news from the Rocky Mountain Institute:

Mr. Bush said in a statement on June 18 that the Green River Basin likely holds 800 billion barrels of oil and that “if it can be recovered it would equal more than a century’s worth of currently projected imports.”

While there is little debate about the President’s estimate, the challenges and risks of pursuing “unconventional oil” are significant. It’s hard to get, extremely costly, dangerous to the environment, and difficult to use.

If these reasons aren’t enough, oil shale holds less energy per pound than a pile of municipal trash or cow manure. In fact, oil shale has roughly the same amount of energy per pound as a baked potato, according to a report (PDF) from the Community Office for Resource Efficiency. And, like a potato, oil shale must also be cooked before it can be used.

RMI gives oil shale a big thumbs-down due to the difficulty of extracting usable energy from the shale and because of massive potential damage to the environment that would be caused by the extraction process:

Our energy challenges demand more than new ways to boil rocks.  We need to give businesses incentives to pursue fresh paths that will break our addiction to oil.  We need to encourage wide adoption of proven technologies that use energy more efficiently and expand our nation’s ability to harness renewable sources of energy.