"Captain Compassion" <res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net> wrote in message
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Getting oil from shale a complex process
Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | October 3, 2005 | PAUL FOY

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEEKER, Colo. -- Out in sagebrush country, Kenneth Brown is standing
over part of the world's most concentrated energy resource, land that
holds up to 1 million barrels of oil per acre. Too bad it's locked up
in layers of rock in some places hundreds of feet underground.

Such is the dilemma presented by the West's oil shale deposits,
believed to contain more than 1 trillion barrels of oil - four times
the holdings of Saudi Arabia, according to government and industry
estimates.

Shell Exploration & Production Co. has been out here for nine years,
trying to bake shale oil from the ground by using heating rods drilled
into layers of rock.

"Things have progressed well in the last two years, which makes us
feel good," said Brown, operations manager for Shell's closely guarded
test in the middle of desolate Rio Blanco County, about 60 miles from
tiny Meeker, the nearest town.

Technological hurdles remain daunting, but that hasn't stopped "people
with gleam in their eyes," said Robert Hirsch, a senior energy adviser
for San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. "I think
Shell has something that could turn out successful. They've been
working on this technology for a long time."

In a report last year, the Energy Department called Shell's technology
the most promising but said it will take a "massive capital
investment" to unlock Western oil shale.

Shell believes it can make its technique economical as long as crude
oil stays above $30 a barrel, but it is five years away from proving
the technology or deciding whether to build a commercial-scale
operation, said Terry O'Connor, a company vice president for external
and regulatory affairs.

Outside Vernal, Utah, officials with Oil-Tech Inc. say they have
perfected an older technology of baking oil from shale in a furnace
and wants government approval to mine 1,600 acres of state land plus
access to 30,000 tons of shale left outside an abandoned mine on
federal land.

"We're ready to go as quick as we can get a mining permit and a few
bucks," said Byron Merrell, a 63-year-old inventor and stockholder in
Oil-Tech.

Oil-Tech and Shell's approaches each has drawbacks, said Jim Bunger,
chief executive of the petroleum research firm James W. Bunger &
Associates. Oil Tech's proposal is unproven and mining would leave
piles of waste.

"I don't think they're as far along as they think they are," he said.

Bunger helped write the Energy Department report issued last year that
said Shell may have a problem with lingering groundwater contamination
at its spent cook sites.

To address the problem, Shell broke ground this month on a larger test
site where it will try to maintain an underground "ice curtain" with
refrigerated pipes around a cook site to repel groundwater and keep
oil from slipping away.

"This is purely an environmental test. We need to have a higher level
of confidence this freeze-wall technology can work on a larger scale,"
O'Connor said.


--
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike

"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net

It's easier to get gas from coal which there is plenty of.