Basic Oil Shale Facts - Western Resource Advocates

Basic Oil Shale Facts - Western Resource Advocates:

Oil Shale

The more that's understood about oil shale, the less realistic its various development schemes appear. As the current public debate over oil shale's future prospects grows louder, many of the pertinent facts about oil shale have fallen by the wayside. Below are some of the basic facts about oil shale that are being overlooked:

• There’s no oil in oil shale.
  Oil shale is a controversial “unconventional” hydrocarbon resource that is poorly understood by the general public.  Contrary to its name, oil shale contains no petroleum but is instead a dense rock that has a waxy substance called kerogen tightly bound within it.  When kerogen is heated to high temperatures, it liquefies, producing compounds that can eventually be refined into synthetic petroleum products.
• Getting liquid from a stone.
  The Achille's heel of oil shale is that it must undergo an energy-intensive conversion process to turn from a solid into a liquid. There are two basic methods to get kerogen out of oil shale.  The first is to mine it through traditional hard rock mining methods, crush the rock, and cook it in a device called a retort that heats it without the presence of oxygen.  The second method, called in situ, is to heat the rock where it lies underground to liquefy the kerogen and pump it to the surface. Both methods are far more energy and water intensive and expensive than traditional drilling methods for crude oil and thus does compete economically with crude oil. 

• History of oil shale.
  Humans have known about oil shale for thousands of years. Its first use as a commercial resource began in the 1830 in France, when it was mined and cooked in small quanitities to produce oil to light oil lamps. Oil shale's usefulness as a fuel source for illumination disappeared with the introduction of cheaper and safer electrical lighting. Efforts to develop oil shale in quantities sufficient for use as a transportation fuel have come and gone over the last one-hundred years, succumbing to technological insufficiency, unprofitability, and unsolvable environmental side effects.
• Oil shale in the US.
  Oil shale is unevenly distributed around the world.  The United States possesses roughly 70% of world oil shale deposits, with the vast majority located in the Green River shale regions in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. 
  Interest in developing these western oil shale deposits has led to a number of booms and subsequent busts, often spurred on by incentives and prodding from the federal government.  The first came between 1916 and 1920, when a land rush by prospectors and speculators led to a boom in interest in oil shale. Without adequate technology, and the emergence of a flourishing crude oil industry, this first wave of US oil shale development crashed.
  Fears over domestic energy supplies sparked small oil shale booms in the 1950’s due to Cold War energy concerns, and again in the 1970’s as a result of the Arab oil embargo.  But by 1980, the federal government had assembled a pot of subsidies, price supports, loans, and other incentives luring major oil companies to make substantial investments in the Piceance Basin area of western Colorado.  This boom would be short lived.  On May 2, 1982 -- “Black Sunday” -- ExxonMobil pulled out of oil shale due to falling oil prices and vanishing federal subsidies.  The economy of western Colorado collapsed and the entire state of Colorado entered an economic slump as a result.
• Reemergence of oil shale
  Oil shale has returned to the world stage due to rising oil prices and concerns about national energy independence.  What has not changed is the lack of a technology capable of turning oil shale rocks into transportation fuels in a commercially viable manner.  The George W. Bush Administration provided incentives to lure the oil industry back into oil shale with low royalty rates, access to federal lands, and relaxed regulations.  But this time the traditional technological hurdles are being compounded by:
  1. questions about oil shale’s high carbon footprint and climate change consequences
  2. it’s high energy usage
  3. the large amount of water it would consume in a very dry part of the nation
  4. concerns over its potentially devastating environmental, social and economic consequences in western shale-bearing lands.

Tar Sands

• Turning pavement into fuel?
  Utah's tar sands deposits have been used since the 1930's as a paving material for roads in Utah and surrounding states. Similar to oil shale, Utah's tar sands have a history of failed attempts to commercially extract liquid fuels from these bitumen-impregnated sandstone rocks. Paving has been this resource's most profitable use so far.
• Utah is not Alberta
  Tar sands deposits in Alberta Canada are being exploited on a commercial scale. Thenegative environmental and social consequences of this tar sands boom are profound, but industry has figured out the technological solutions to make the industry profitable --when crude oil prices are high enough. The monetary success witnessed in Alberta will not be able to be mirrored in Utah, home to the United States' largest tar sands deposits. In Alberta, a thin layer of water binds the tar to the surrounding sands, allowing an energy and water-intense steaming process to readily separate the two. Utah tar sands, in sharp contrast,have no such layer of water binding the tar to the sands and will require discovering a new and different technology to make developing this resource economical.
  Utah tar sands is also harder to mine that its Alberta counterpart. Whereas Alberta's tar sands are softer and more pliable, making them easy to scoop up with shovels and haul to a processing facility, the denser and harder Utah tar sands must be mined used hardrock mining techniques that greatly increase the cost and effort required to remove it from the ground. Utah tar sands will have higher mining costs, higher development costs, less economies of scale, and more financial risk involved than seen in Alberta.
• Not much fuel in a barrel of tar sands
  Tar sands were at one point crude oil, but because of hydrocarbon-eating bacteria and other environmental degredation, much of the material that could have been turned into a fuel is gone. The bulk of what remains is a thick gooey substance called bitumen that cannot be burned to produce energy. In a barrrel of conventional light crude oil, roughly 10% out of each barrel is tar. With tar sands, over 2/3rds of each barrel is tar, with only about 1/3 being compounds that could be refined into any sort of fuel, and only a fraction of that can be turned into gasoline that can power your car.

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What are shale oil, shale gas and oil shale?

What are shale oil, shale gas and oil shale?:

What are shale oil, shale gas and oil shale?

2012 оны 9 сарын 24

S.Batkhuyag. President Monationenergy (NGO), Doctor Of Science, Professor

G.Yondongombo. Executive Director Monationenergy (NGO), PhD

Oil shale is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon resources on earth. Massive deposits are found in a number of countries around the globe, including Australia, Brazil, China, Estonia, Israel, Jordan, and the United States. Preliminary geologic surveys and evidence from oil shale outcrops indicate that Mongolia may also have oil shale resources of a size and quality that are commercially viable. Today, only China and Estonia produce oil shale commercially. With the high price of oil, decline in world conventional oil reserves, and increasing competition for oil resources worldwide, many countries and oil companies are turning their attention to this significant source of oil as the next generation of petroleum supply. Mongolia may be favourably positioned to benefit from the development of oil shale.

The United States is recognized as having the largest oil shale deposits in the world, the richest of which are located in a reasonably small area of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, collectively referred to as the Green River Basin. Estimates of the total resource that could be conceivably recovered, exceeds 2 trillion barrels (277 billion tons) -- eight times the size of Saudi Arabia’s reserves. In recent years, interest in development of the U.S. oil shale resource has increased significantly. Major oil companies, such as Shell, Exxon, and Total, along with numerous independent energy companies are developing new technologies. Through the Energy Policy Act of 2005 the U.S. government opened lands for oil shale research and development leases, for both subsurface (insitu) and surface production technologies. In 2008 the U.S. Department of the Interior finalized Rules and Regulations for the potential leasing of approximately 2 million acres in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Though they have been challenged on legal grounds, the regulations have set the stage for eventual commercial development.

Mongolia, like the United States, may have an opportunity to develop its potential oil shale resources. This is a resource of significant national importance, the development of which could provide Mongolia with energy security in addition to export market opportunities and secure high paying employment, including engineering and technical jobs, for many people. As with the United States, Mongolia requires all types of energy resources, both conventional and unconventional petroleum, to meet their respective needs. Often the distinction between certain resources are obscured or misunderstood.
 In the United States and elsewhere in the world a great deal of attention has been given to shale oil and shale gas production. These resources should not be confused with oil shale, as will be explained later. A host of European countries are looking at the development of shale gas as a means to secure a measure of independence from natural gas imports. The United States has found more than 100 years’ supply of shale gas in the Marcellus and Barnett formations. Using similar technological advances, shale oil reserves such as the Bakken and Niobrara reservoirs are producing substantial quantities of oil.

None of these resources has the size nor production potential of oil shale. The potential for oil shale production is tremendous worldwide and for detractors and skeptics, it should be noted that it was not long ago that shale gas and shale oil were thought to be both technically and economically unproductive.

Aside from the fact that we are discussing oil and gas, as mentioned, this is where the comparison between shale oil/shale gas and oil shale ends. In recent trade journals and newspaper articles there has been confusion regarding the difference between oil shale and shale oil. In certain articles the terms are used incorrectly and often interchangeably, further confusing their distinction. There is a world of difference between the two resources; comparing them is not unlike confusing oil with coal, both of which are hydrocarbons, but strikingly different in composition and methods of production and synthesis.

By definition, oil shale is a petroleum precursor, which is organic matter in the rock called kerogen. By applying heat, it can be transformed into oil and gas. Shale oil, or “tight oil” is a conventional crude oil created naturally and trapped in shale deposits -- requiring modern drilling and recovery technologies to produce. Shale gas is similarly produced from shale deposits. Advances in drilling and secondary recovery technology in the past decade have allowed companies to produce conventional oil and gas from heretofore uneconomic shale formations.

Oil shale (kerogen) deposits are entirely different from shale oil deposits. They have not sustained the time and temperature required to turn the kerogen to crude oil. Only applied heat will convert oil shale to crude oil. What mother earth failed to accomplish with time, can be obtained by the application of man-made heat.

The oil shale production process involves only the application of heat. Unlike shale oil production, there is no requirement for elaborate long-reach horizontal drilling or fracturing of the rocks to allow flow paths through which the oil and gas will be produced. There is no water or chemical reagents used to facilitate the fracturing of the reservoir in the production of oil shale. In fact, subsurface water is produced and can be cleaned and used for other purposes.

 The crude oil produced from oil shale is high in light ends and is a source of quality products such as diesel, jet fuel, motor gasoline and natural gas liquids. Like China and other neighbouring countries, Mongolia is blessed with this resource and if produced in a responsible way, it can be a major part of the energy portfolio of the country.

Further information on oil shale can be found through the National Oil Shale Association at
            www.oilshaleassociation.com