Heavy crude and unconventional gas are the most cost efficient alternate energy sources

A study by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which examined all of the alternate energy resources from solar to nuclear to ocean to wind, concluded that the government could get the best return from its research and development dollars by backing heavy-oil and unconventional-gas development. Each of the resources requires improvements in technology or environmental considerations, and economic constraints must be addressed by the government if industry is to proceed to expand energy-reserve developments from these sources. Two of the main considerations for heavy crude are the environmental problems surrounding the use of steam to lighten the crude to allow it to flow, and the amount of crude used to provide the stream - which is about a third of the crude produced in a reservoir. The three unconventional gas formations that offer immediate production potential are tight sands, Devonian-shale deposits which are already producing, and coal-seam gas which will take some time to develop. Devonian-shale gas production is the result of well stimulation by either explosives or hydraulic fracturing. Tight gas sands are also stimulated by hydraulic fracturing on a massive scale. The expectation for tight sands may be optimistic. To date, the commercial successes in tight gas more » formations have been in relatively continuous blanket-type sands (representative of the tight sands in general), which are notably discontinuous. So there are geological and reservoir characteristics which impose some limits on the amount of commercial gas that can be recovered from tight sands in the United States. Similarly for Devonian shale, the gas that has been recovered has occurred primarily in well-connected fracture porosity. Improved fracturing techniques would better stimulate production. « less