Industrialized Cyclist Notepad

Said spokesman Martin Skrtel, speaking at Shell’s headquarters in Den Hague, “It was always just a really stupid, non-starter of an idea. You’d have to be a scientific illiterate to believe that cooking “oil shale” to create crude oil could have a positive energy balance. Still, we thought we could buy off enough legislators to create, how should we say, a conducive fiscal atmosphere that would make the scheme a profit-maker for us. But now we have abandoned even those plans…”

Ha ha that was satire. What they really said was different:

A month after Royal Dutch Shell’s U.S. subsidiary said it would pursue its oil shale research project in Colorado while selling off other oil and gas assets, the company has reversed its decision.

“There’s been a shift in our oil shale project,” spokeswoman Carolyn Tucker said Tuesday.

“The energy market has evolved since Shell first started its oil shale research project in 1981. We plan to exit our Colorado oil shale research project in order to focus on other opportunities and producing assets in our broad global portfolio,” she said in an email.

“Our current focus is to work with staff and contractors as we safely and methodically stop research activities at the site,” she said.

The announcement regarding the closure of Shell’s oil shale research and development work comes as the company announces plans to put its assets on the market across the United States, including oil and gas assets in northwestern and southeastern Colorado.

Shell on Aug. 1 reported a 60 percent drop in second-quarter results — largely due to a $2 billion write-down of its North American shale assets due to “the latest insights from exploration and appraisal drilling results and production information.”

via Shell pulling out of Colorado oil shale research project – Denver Business Journal.