Oil shale

Serious Information

Oil shale is a sedimentary rock containing a high proportion of organic matter (kerogen) which can be converted to synthetic oil or gas by processingis. A group of fine black to dark brown shales rich enough in kerogen to yield petroleum upon distillation. Kerogen in oil shale can be converted to oil through a chemical process "pyrolysis". The USA Energy Information Administration estimates world supply of oil shale at 2.9 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, 750 billion barrels of which are in the USA. The term "oil shale" is a misnomer. It does not contain oil nor is it commonly shale. The organic material kerogen, and the "shale" is usually a relatively hard rock, called marl. Properly processed, kerogen can be converted into a substance somewhat similar to petroleum. However, it has not gone through an "oil window" of heat (nature’s way of producing oil) and therefore, to be changed to an oil-like substance, it must be heated to high temperature. By this process the organic material is converted into a liquid, which must be further processed to produce an oil which is said to be better than the lowest grade of oil produced from conventional oil deposits, but of lower quality than upper grades of conventional oil.

Oil shale is a common natural resource found on all of the inhabited continents. Deposits in central and eastern areas of the USA underlie an area of about a quarter million square miles. However, as with oil shale deposits throughout the world, these deposits are generally thin and irregular, yielding very little oil. Some Western deposits have produced nearly one hundred gallons of crude shale oil per ton of rock. These deposits provide the USA with roughly 3 quarters of the world’s estimated supply of recoverable oil shale resources. The first recorded use of shale oil occurred in Switzerland and Austria in the early 1300s. The Ute Indians were also aware of an oil shale resource as they described “a rock that burns” to settlers. While several other countries, (notably Brazil, China, Estonia, and Jordan) make use of oil shale resources, no oil shale venture in the USA has been a commercial success in over a hundred years. The principal reason for this lack of success is the abundant supply of low cost fossil fuels. In the USA, experiments in production of shale oil have been conducted since 1850. When the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, it quickly led to the end of the fledgling domestic oil shale industry, as liquid petroleum was much more economical to produce.

The vast extent of USA oil shale resources, amounting to 2 trillion barrels, has been known for a century. In 1912, the President, by Executive Order, established the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves. This office has overseen the USA strategic interests in oil shale since that time. The huge resource base has stimulated several prior commercial attempts to produce oil from oil shale, but attempts have failed primarily because of the historically modest cost of petroleum with which it competed. With the expected future decline in petroleum production, historic market forces are poised to change and this change will improve the economic viability of oil shale.

The history of Western USA oil shale development is characterized by sudden booms brought about by energy crises, followed by equally sudden busts when a less expensive alternative became available. In 1915, it was reported the USA may be running out of petroleum and the first oil shale boom was on. The boom went bust in the late 20s when West Texas oil fields were discovered and developed. applications.

There are two main methods of extracting oil from shale - surface mining and in-situ. "In-situ" methods are used when the overburden is too thick for strip mining.

Pyrolysis usually means the chemical decomposition of organic materials by heating in the absence of oxygen or any other reagents, except possibly steam.

During pyrolysis oil shale is heated to 445 - 500 °C in absence of air and the kerogen is converted to oil and separated out, in a process called "retorting".

Estonia, Russia, Brazil, and China mine oil shale, however production is down due to economic and environmental factors.

Shell and a number of other companies have been investing heavily in a range of "unconventional" schemes including oil shale, coal bed methane and gas-to-liquids, as well as oil sands. Such projects promise to increase the world's energy supplies, but their production is itself energy-intensive and expensive. That is not so much a financial problem in a world of $70-a-barrel oil, but these alternative fuels produce far more greenhouse gases.

There is no shortage of oil shale, much of it in the US and Canada, but it must be dug out by strip mining and heated to 450-500°C before being enriched with hydrogen from steam to separate the oil. The resulting sludge, which has increased in volume by 30%, must then be disposed of. The process is said to emit four times as much CO2 as traditional oil production. It also requires large amounts of water.

In Colorado, USA, Shell is testing a process to unlock very large oil shale deposits by conversion in the ground, using electric heaters to warm the rock formation to release light oil and gas. It is also working at coal-to-methane, where natural gas is extracted by depressurising coal seams, and has invested billions in various gas-to-liquids schemes, where natural gas is converted into a more easily transported form.

For the present Survey, the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO) has reported a proved amount in place of 32.4 billion tonnes of oil shale, with proved recoverable reserves of oil put at 1 725 million tonnes. Additional reserves of shale oil are huge: in excess of 35 billion tonnes. In 1995 SPP/CPM signed a joint venture agreement with the Canadian company Suncor Energy Inc. to commence development of one of the oil shale deposits, the Stuart Deposit. Located near Gladstone, it has a total in-situ shale oil resource of 2.6 billion barrels and the capacity to produce more than 200 000 b/d. Suncor had had the role of operator of the Stuart project, but in April 2001, SPP/CPM purchased Suncor’s interest.

Fushun, a city in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, is known as the Chinese "Capital of Coal". Within the Fushun coalfield the West Open Pit mine is the largest operation and is where, in addition to coal, oil shale from the Eocene Jijuntun Formation is mined.

Sizeable deposits of oil shale have been discovered in various parts of Israel, with the principal resources located in the north of the Negev desert.

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world’s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming.

Many a broker will warn that companies may buy a plot of Oil shale territory then use this as a ruse to boast of vast profit potential to get money from eager investing. Many companies have tried to join the oil sand industry in the past and collapsed. Oil shale is more likely now to suffer from this.

The USA government has a Oil Shale Program in the Dept. of Energy.

Kerogens are chemical compounds which make up a portion of an organic matter in sedimentary rocks. They are insoluble in normal organic solvents because of their huge molecular weight (upwards of 1,000). The soluble portion is known as bitumen. Each kerogen molecule is formed by random combination of numerous monomers.

Marls are calcium carbonate or lime rich muds or mudstones containing variable amounts of clays and calcite or aragonite. The term is often used to describe lacustrine (lake) sediments, but is also used for marine deposits. The term marl is used in North American geology, while the term seekreide is used in Europe.

Tar sands are a mixture of bitumen, sand, water and clay. Technically, bitumen is neither oil nor tar, but a semisolid, form of oil which will not flow toward producing wells under normal conditions, making it difficult and expensive to produce. Tar sands are mined to extract oil-like bitumen which is turned to synthetic crude oil or refined directly to petroleum products by refineries. Conventional oil is extracted by drilling wells into the ground whereas tar sand deposits are mined using strip mining techniques, or persuaded to flow into producing wells by in situ techniques which reduce the bitumen's viscosity with steam (and / or solvents). On average bitumen contains 83% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 1% oxygen, 0.36% nitrogen and 4.8% sulphur.

http://www.oilsandsdiscovery.com/ The Oil Sands Discovery Centre is located in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada

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