The low-hanging fruit with regard to US shale resources may already be spoken for and the majors who came late to the game could be turning back to the large offshore conventional projects they know and execute efficiently. “Rather than continue in shale, which is likely to become a more expensive venture, large production companies will likely turn their attention back to the Gulf of Mexico, Michelle Michot Foss, chief energy economist for the Bureau of Economic Geology’s Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas, told Rigzone. (…) While shale formations undeniably hold considerable reserves, the money required to extract those reserves profitably can be prohibitive, Foss said. Much of the low-hanging fruit in shale has been found, and the cost of production is likely to increase in newer formations to more than the cost of producing offshore.” [Rigzone]

The news is afire with an idea to cover roads with solar panels. The inventors raised lots of crowd-sourced capital, but the economics of building out the technology to a scale that could replace conventional centralized power plants remain questionable. “The Idaho couple are thinking up a way to pave the country’s roadways with solar cells, rather than asphalt or concrete. The so-called Solar Roadways are an edgy idea that the entrepreneurs said could replace much of the need for traditional sources of generating electricity in the U.S., including coal-fired power plants.” [NBC News] Stay tuned to Breaking Energy for our take on this far-fetched idea.

This editorial in The Oregonian rails against wind power and other modern renewable energy sources as inefficient and overly-expensive compared with some of the alternatives. “Unfortunately, too many captains of modern industry live in a virtual world, selling gadgets, services, and even real power while promoting only the virtual.” [The Oregonian]