Energy experts working on oil-shale projects
By Dan Olsen, Craig Daily Press reporter
Saturday, August 5, 2006
http://www.craigdailypress.com/section/frontpage_lead/story/22983
Energy experts said oil shale can meet America's future need for
transportation fuels, but it's going to take a new technology and a
lot of time before it reaches automobile gas tanks.
That was the message given to 75 guests at the Northwest Colorado
Energy Producers Association dinner Thursday evening at The Center of
Craig.
Tracy Boyd, a manager with Shell's Unconventional Resource Energy
(SURE) division, said that the largest countries in the world,
including China and India will double their energy consumption by the
year 2050.
As the world's supply of "easy oil," is depleted, the search for
not-so-easy oil will become more critical, Boyd said.
He hopes that new technology being developed by Shell will lead the
way to tap into oil shale reserves that are estimated to be three
times larger than Saudi Arabia reserves.
According to estimates, 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil may be
found in Northwest Colorado, eastern Utah, and southwestern Wyoming.
Shell is working closely with the Bureau of Land Management to get
permits for exploration because 70 percent of those reserves are
located on federally owned land.
The process still being developed to free the oil from the shale is a
"down-hole heater," technology, and it is a time consuming process.
The "in-situ conversion process," or ICP, entails lowering heaters
down a drill hole and heating the rock to a temperature between 650
and 700 degrees.
After a heating process that takes three to four years, the product
brought to the surface is one-third gas and two-thirds light oil,
which is easily refined into transportation fuels such as diesel, jet
fuel and gasoline.
The secret to heating the shale and allowing the oil to be released,
without effecting ground water supplies, involves a "freeze-wall"
process that contains the heat to the area near the drill hole.
"A 15-foot-thick wall of ice will shield ground water from the ICP
zone," Boyd said. "That will isolate the shale on the inside, and
protect the water on the outside."
Groundwater will be removed from the ICP zone and stored, Boyd said.
It will be replaced when the oil extraction is completed.
The freezing process takes two years before the heating process
begins. That process is expected to take three to four years before
oil can be extracted from the shale.
Although it is a time consuming process, the richest zones of oil
shale may hold 25 gallons of oil per ton of shale, Boyd said.
He said the Piceance Basin area has thicker and richer deposits of oil
shale than other areas, requiring less processing to turn into fuels.
He hopes that some of the extracted gas and oil can be used to power
the heaters and meet energy costs of extracting the oil.
Oil will be transported out of the area by pipeline.
After the presentation, Jeff Comstock, natural resources director for
Moffat County, said that it will be interesting to follow the
experiment, noting that the map displayed by Boyd shows oil reserves
coming into Moffat County.
Former Moffat County Commissioner Marianna Raftopoulos, currently a
consultant for Northwest Colorado Oil and Gas, said she in encouraged
by the way the project is progressing slowly and in a more structured
manner than previous oil shale projects.
"I think it's an absolutely feasible project," she said. "We need to
produce energy from the oil shale in the Rocky Mountain region."
Shell has applied for three, 160-acre oil shale leases from the BLM in
Colorado. Boyd said Chevron is applying for leases, as well.
--
"Science is the record of dead religions." -- Oscar Wilde
"There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to
whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is
impossible." -- Jack Vance
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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