Posted on 09/02/2013 9:28:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Baltic tiger of Estonia is the world’s first country to meet all its power needs from shale, with enough left over for neighbours and fuel exports for the shipping industry.
“We are the most energy independent country in the European Union, and we will not compromise our energy security. We have a large neighbour,” said Juhan Parts, the economy minister.
It is the same story wherever you go across Eastern Europe: the fuel debate comes down to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Gazprom’s stranglehold on gas supplies. Global warming inevitably plays second fiddle. “Estonia is not rich enough to experiment with immature technologies,” said Mr Parts.
“Even if we had to invest in new power plants today, shale would still be cheapest. Russian gas costs 1.8 times as much; onshore wind 2 times as much; and offshore wind 2.5 times as much.”
“I am a right-wing person and I am not a supporter of the war on fossils. We must look after the competitiveness of our industries. We must respect European environmental regulations of course but I am sceptical about these climate issues.”
Oil shale is a combustible rock containing kerogen, and releases oil when heated. It is different from the shale oil and gas in America’s Marcellus or Barnett fields, or Britain’s Bowland Basin, obtained by hydraulic fracking deep underground. The word order is reversed, a source of confusion....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Ping.
From what I recall, they burn it like coal and spread the remains for roadbed.
The Estonians and the Finns are the last of the widely dispersed Finnic peoples who spread over all of what is now northern Russia. The Rus peoples absorbed these over the years, the latest being the Karelians.
The company has bought a small chunk of Utah, claiming 2.6bn barrels of recoverable oil. It is a first step in cracking the prize of US oil shale, theoretically worth over $200 trillion at today’s spot price. “So long as oil it stays above $80 a barrel, this will be profitable,” said Mr Parts.
Estonia seems like a great little country.
Juhan Parts, “I am a right-wing person and I am not a supporter of the war on fossils. We must look after the competitiveness of our industries. We must respect European environmental regulations of course but I am sceptical about these climate issues.” Hell I’d vote for this dude to be President of the US. What? He is not a US citizen? Is that a requirement?
Estonia has been producing oil shale since 1916.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=EN
Estonia also separate liquids from the shale.
http://news.yahoo.com/estonia-eager-teach-world-oil-shale-132531454.html
Why?
It’s all nonsense.
An interesting and informative comment following the article itself:
Comparing oil shale to oil is a complete misrepresentation of the energy issue. It does indeed take energy to get oil out of oil shale, but there is actually more energy in one ton of rich oil shale than in one ton of rock in the richest oilfields in the world. Most oil in conventional reservoirs does require less effort to get the oil out. But the increasing share of unconventional oil is coming from formations that require much more effort to get the product out.
Shale oil as a technical term has, for more than one hundred years, referred to the oil produced by retorting oil shale. None of the commenters who point to Eesti Energia as a state company acknowledge that the largest producer of oil from oil shale in Estonia is private company Viru Keemia Grupp.
A dissertation that wears its politics on its title as Dr. Holmberg’s does should certainly be taken with a grain of salt. Companies working on extraction of oil shale suggest a range of prices from $40-80/barrel for a reasonable return. I would suggest they have a careful eye on the economic return, and are balancing the return with that from the other unconventional resources being developed these days. Shell recently put up for sale unconventional oil properties in Colorado, but kept its oil shale leases.
Energy return on investment for shale oil is consistently calculated to be >2:1, and for some processes as high as 12:1. It is distinctly greater than for ethanol from corn. Neither Steve Andrews nor Randy Udall (unfortunately recently deceased) have ever presented an EROEI for the Captain Crunch or Baked Potato Energy processes. Their analogy was fatuous nonsense, even if Randy was fun to be around. No one serious about oil shale portrays it as a wonder fuel, just as a viable option.
All thermal power plants use very large amounts of water to condense steam, but this water is released as vapor, which is uncontaminated. The oil generation process will use some water, but the amounts can be quite low. A one million barrel a day oil shale industry would use less than one percent of Colorado’s total water use. Most of the water used here goes to agriculture. Biofuels use 10-100 times more water than shale oil from oil shale.
Anyone interested in up-to-date technical information about oil shale worldwide might wish to take a look at the Proceedings of the 26th-31st Oil Shale Symposia at
http://www.costar-mines.org/oi...
Jeremy Boak, Director
Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research
Colorado School of Mines
Golden CO
Viewpoints are mine, not positions of the Colorado School of Mines
Nor stupid enough.
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