Posted on 09/03/2005 6:46:32 AM PDT by narby
When oil prices last touched record highs - actually, after adjusting for inflation we're not there yet, but given the effects of Hurricane Katrina, we probably will be soon - politicians' response was more hype than hope. Oil shale in Colorado! Tar sands in Alberta! OPEC be damned!
Remember the Carter-era Synfuels Corp. debacle? It was a response to the '70s energy shortages, closed down in 1985 after accomplishing essentially nothing at great expense, which is pretty much a description of what usually happens when the government tries to take over something that the private sector can do better. Private actors are, after all, spending their own money.
Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.
Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
Wow.
They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.
And we've hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O'Connor said, it's counterintuitive.
But ice is impermeable to water. So around the perimeter of the productive site, you drill lots more shafts, only 8 to 12 feet apart, put in piping, and pump refrigerants through it. The water in the ground around the shafts freezes, and eventually forms a 20- to 30-foot ice barrier around the site.
Next you take the water out of the ground inside the ice wall, turn up the heat, and then sit back and harvest the oil until it stops coming in useful quantities. When production drops, it falls off rather quickly.
That's an advantage over ordinary wells, which very gradually get less productive as they age.
Then you pump the water back in. (Well, not necessarily the same water, which has moved on to other uses.) It's hot down there so the water flashes into steam, picking up loose chemicals in the process. Collect the steam, strip the gunk out of it, repeat until the water comes out clean. Then you can turn off the heaters and the chillers and move on to the next plot (even saving one or two of the sides of the ice wall, if you want to be thrifty about it).
Most of the best territory for this astonishing process is on land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. Shell has applied for a research and development lease on 160 acres of BLM land, which could be approved by February. That project would be on a large enough scale so design of a commercial facility could begin.
The 2005 energy bill altered some provisions of the 1920 Minerals Leasing Act that were a deterrent to large-scale development, and also laid out a 30-month timetable for establishing federal regulations governing commercial leasing.
Shell has been deliberately low-key about their R&D, wanting to avoid the hype, and the disappointment, that surrounded the last oil-shale boom. But O'Connor said the results have been sufficiently encouraging they are gradually getting more open. Starting next week, they will be holding public hearings in northwest Colorado.
I'll say it again. Wow.
Thanks for the update/correction.
Can you tell me if France or the Japanese have had their own versions of TMI?
And, since you seem to be a student of the technology, do you also see an uptick in nukes here?
Thanks
France, no, but the Japanese had far worse a few years ago, not at a power reactor, but at a reprocessing facility where lax procedures caused an excursion, killed at least one worker as I recall, and caused some very bad localized contamination. The French came close only once to my knowledge when they had a rupture from some head penatrations. No injuries or such but the plant was down for an extended period as I recall.
BTW. TMI is the only "disaster" in history were no one was killed and no one was injured.
A number of utilities and OEMs have banded into consortiums and issued "letters" to the NRC saying they intend to build new plants at existing sites but with no firm dates or schedules. Honestly, I don't see it happening here in the near term unless natural gas prices go through the roof and stay there or CO2 reductions get severe. China is the near term prospect for US reactor suppliers.
More people died in Ted Kennedy's back seat than died at TMI.
But, of course, the One-Worlders and their hand-wringing handmaidens in the establishment media have an interest in bringing the U.S. down closer to the Third World to make the "merger" a bit easier.
An energy self-sufficient United States is NOT on their agenda/
"What is really needed is for the government to ask for bids on a million barrels of shale oil, promising to buy from the lowest bidder. That will help industry get started producing the stuff big-time."
Isn't the current price of oil incentive enough?
"I don't see anywhere in the article how much energy it takes to heat/cool such large formations. That will really detract from the economic attraction of this process."
The article says 3 or 3.5 more energy output than energy input.
Except for a few spots of course. Upper West Side. Beacon Hill. Aspin. Martha's Vinyard.
They get to keep their stuff, but us tradesmen and wage earners have way too much stuff, in their opinion. Fact is, they don't give a rat's ass about the poor. The poor are easy to control. It's the broad middle class that is the threat to their "lifestyles"
Save the SUV's!
I'll have to read this later.
He said wind is "unreliable" ;O).
He doesn't realize that demand is also unreliable and the net effect/affect is the same.
It'll still never happen. Greenies will stop it.
Amen, Ditto, AMEN!!!
South Africa is not in squalor because Apartheid fell apart, it's becase because Apartheid told the blacks that they weren't worth anything, and when the inevitable happened, there was a generation of lost South Africans that were ignorant about economics.
The best thing to do to Africa right now would be to just let Africa alone and let them figure out economics sooner or later.
Freedom for me but not for thee.
Profitable at price of $30 a BBL... there you, Middle East in terms of oil need for the US just became obsolete....
bump
All worth Jack Schytt if we don't get any refineries.
Bush already signed approval for a new refinery as part of the energy bill.. yes we need more, but reality is the era of Greenies stranglholding energy is over.
We buy about 10% of our refined products from other nations.. which means if we aren't depending on foreign crude, and simply refined product, we can get that from other nations that won't need middle east oil either...
The Shale reserves are larger than ALL the oil reserves in the middle east combined if memory serves. America domestically will never need to depend on off continent crude or refined product again if the leaders properly handle this situation.
The middle east can go to provide India and China, until its depleated, and let them deal with the hornets nest over there in the next 100 years... and trust me, they won't be so generous socially or fiscally as the US has been to that area for the last 100 years.
" It'll still never happen. Greenies will stop it."
I am afraid you are probably right.
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