Shell's Ingenious Approach To Oil Shale Is Pretty Slick

Rocky Mountain News ^ | Saturday, September 3, 2005 | Linda Seebach

[carlr]

Apologies offered.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

by the way..what's the cost of uninhabited land in Colorado?? (not that I'd be interested in leasing it to oil companies)..:)

[Mount Athos]

no worries I do it myself, trying to swear less

[Blood of Tyrants]

Nooooo! We must SAVE the land for the spotted snot fly and the narrow leaf shitweed!

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Great news! Until the environuts do everything in their power to stop the spoiling of the "unspoiled Colorado wilderness."

[Eagle Eye]

I'm predicting that Katrina will deal a crippling blow to enviroweenies as well as 99% of anyti-military sentiment.

[okie01]

Alright, but it took them ten months to get 1,500 barrels of oil. That is not enough.

It was a small-scale test -- a lab experiment to determine economics and feasibility.

[Tanniker Smith]

Forget it. Go with corn. It's the new oil.

[Maceman]

Alright, but it took them ten months to get 1,500 barrels of oil. That is not enough.

But this was only a small test plot, 20 x 30 ft. And they turned off the heaters after getting that 1,500 barrels, because all they wanted to do was prove that the technology works.

I don't doubt that a large full-scale production effort will yield much, much more.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

"Great news! Until the environuts do everything in their power to stop the spoiling of the "unspoiled Colorado wilderness.""

Screw them..if the people of Colorado say yes, then yes it is..the enviro-weenies can walk to work if they don't want to buy the gas that comes out of the wells..

[Brilliant]

Is it easily expandable? That is the question. Or are they going to have to drill one million holes, each one producing 1,500 barrels in 10 months?

[Mr_Moonlight]

bookmarked for later reading/research

[Enchante]

"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."

That's roughly an area 32 miles x 32 miles, (of course it's certainly not in any perfect square!!) in one of the most desolate parts of the continent (I have been on all sides of that corner of Colorado/Wyoming/Utah.... only right along the Green River itself is there anything to write home about). Can't you just wait to see how environmentalists will suddenly wax poetic about how these scrubby, barren wastelands are suddenly the most precious wilderness in North America????

[oceanagirl]

The Energy Returned on Energy Invested ("ERoEI") of shale oil is reported to be quite low, say 3:2 to 2:1, similar to that of tar sands. That means that a producer would get 3 barrels of oil out and processed by using 2. When the price of energy goes up, so does the price of producing and refining the shale oil. There is a saying: "Shale oil. Fuel of the future and always will be."

"Shale oil" isn't even real oil. It's a substance called kerogen, which is an oil precursor. It requires considerable, energy-intensive processing to turn it into usable products, like gasoline, diesel and heating oil. It also has required considerable amounts of water to process, which is in very short supply in the intermountain west, unlike northern Alberta.

I'll be thrilled if shale oil can be made to work, but I'm not betting the farm on it.

[Marine_Uncle]

"Forget it. Go with corn. It's the new oil."
So are you suggesting somehow one can crack all the fractions, e.g. benzene, naptha, etc., desiel/jet/heating fuels, upward to various classes of gasoline etc., from corn oil?

If not, don't we still need petro oil, to provide us with the literally thousands of fractions that are then used for making hundreds of thousands of end products, e.g. pharmeceuticals, plastics obviously of thousands of types, lubricants of all varieties along with the chemicals that they require to perform in a given way........blah blah blah, endlessly. Will corn oil provide all those end products we depend on and industry cannot exists without?

[IMRight]

I've heard that there are substantial deposits of shale oil here in the US - but economicaly, it's been unfeasable to drill for it.

"Economical" is a function of BOTH cost of production AND the price you can sell it for.

In this case, the biggest variable is "what can we expect to sell it for over the next "x" year?". Up until now, the oil companies have been operating under the assumption that, over the long term, they'll be unable to sell oil above that price.

[msf92497]

Fight for an Energy-Independant USA...NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SAJ]

Hey, c'mon. This was just a lab study. First, you see if the theory is verifiable (check), then, you put your PGs and physicists to work to figure the optimum energy in/out ratio and most efficient spacing of the shafts (bet your bucket they're working on that right this second), then you get financing in place (no problem, Shell is super-flush now), then you lease the land.

Then, first phase, you target something on the order of 1/2 of estimated possible production. And ramp up from there. Call it 2-3 years on a ''crash'' basis, 5 on a ''normal'' basis.

Once the process is started, it's self-propagating, assuming only that new shafts are added on a systematic basis.

What I can't figure out (doubtless Shell have figured it, of course) is how to capture the liquid fractions. Why won't they just seep away?

Any thoughts, folks?

[MplsSteve]

That is a pretty damned good idea.

[stboz]

Got fertilizer? No?

How 'bout natural gas....we need that to make fertilizer.

No gas? Uh, Houston, we have a problem.

Drill now. Build now.

We need supplies and refining capacity NOW.