Oil at $30 per berral, lets do it and put OPEC out of business cause we have more oil.
http://ww2.scripps.com/cgi-bin/archives ... CNUM=20000
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.
http://energy.senate.gov/hearings/testi ... it_id=4139
[quote]Hearing/Meeting: Oil Shale and Oil Sands Resources Hearing
Full Committee Hearing
Date & Time Tuesday, April 12 200510:00 AM Dirksen 366
Witness Mr. Steve Mut , , Shell Oil Company
Testimony
TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN MUT CEO, SHELL UNCONVENTIONAL RESOURCES ENERGY
Before the SENATE ENERGY & NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE Washington, DC
Relating to Potential Development of U.S. Oil Shale Resources April 12, 2005 Good morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: My name is Stephen Mut. I am CEO of the Shell Unconventional Resources unit of Shell Exploration and Production Company. I am delighted to appear before you today to describe Shell’s initiative to develop and advance, hopefully to commercial success, a unique and innovative technology which we are increasingly optimistic can open up the vast oil shale resources in the Western United States. This technology, once thoroughly proven technically, will allow Shell to produce clean transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel as well as clean burning natural gas from oil shale in an economically viable and very environmentally sensitive fashion. Because the oil shale resource in the United States is extensive, this technology holds promise for significantly increasing U.S. domestic energy production.
For decades, energy companies have been trying, without success, to unlock the large domestic oil shale resources of northwestern Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming. Oil shale can be found in large parts of the Green River Basin and is over 1,000 feet thick in many areas. According to DOE estimates, the Basin contains approximately 1 trillion recoverable barrels of hydrocarbons locked up in the shale. It is easy to see why there have been so many attempts to unlock this potentially enormous resource in the past.
Some 23 years ago, Shell commenced laboratory and field research on a promising in ground conversion and recovery process. This technology is called the In-situ Conversion Process, or ICP. In 1996, Shell successfully carried out its first small field-test on its privately owned Mahogany property in Rio Blanco County, Colorado some 200 miles west Denver. Since then, Shell has carried out four additional related field tests at nearby sites. The most recent test was carried out over the past several months and has produced in excess of 1,200 barrels of light oil plus associated gas from a very small test plot using the ICP technology. We are pleased with these results not only because oil and gas was produced, but also because it was produced in quantity, quality and on schedule as predicted by our computer modeling. With this successful test, Shell is now ready to begin work on the final tests that will be required to prove the technology to the point where there is sufficient certainty so as to make a decision to proceed to commercial development.
Most of the petroleum products we consume today are derived from conventional oil fields that produce oil and gas that have been naturally matured in the subsurface by being subjected to heat and pressure over very long periods of time. In general terms, the In-situ Conversion Process (ICP) accelerates this natural process of oil and gas maturation by literally tens of millions of years. This is accomplished by slow sub-surface heating of petroleum source rock containing kerogen, the precursor to oil and gas. This acceleration of natural processes is achieved by drilling holes into the resource, inserting electric resistance heaters into those heater holes and heating the subsurface to around 650F over a 3 to 4 year period.
During this time, very dense oil and gas is expelled from the kerogen and undergoes a series of changes. These changes include the shearing of lighter components from the dense carbon compounds, concentration of available hydrogen into these lighter compounds, and changing of phase of those lighter more hydrogen rich compounds from liquid to gas. In gaseous phase, these lighter fractions are now far more mobile and can move in the subsurface through existing or induced fractures to conventional producing wells from which they are brought to the surface. The process results in the production of about 65 to 70% of the original “carbonâ€