Alternative Oil Gathering

[Lyion]

http://ww2.scripps.com/cgi-bin/archives ... CNUM=20000

SHELL'S INGENIOUS APPROACH TO OIL SHALE IS PRETTY SLICK

Date: Saturday, September 3, 2005

Section: Commentary/Editorial

Page: 25B

Source: By Linda Seebach, Rocky Mountain News

Memo: Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News. She can be reached by telephone at (303) 892-2519 or by e-mail at seebach@RockyMountainNews.com.
COLUMN

Edition: Final

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.

[Arlos]

I'd like to see some independent reviews of the actual environmental impact of doing this, as I trust what oil companies say about how clean and safe something is about as far as I could toss the Exxon Valdiz. If they aren't just spinning hype on that, however, this really does have an assload of potential, and could certainly be far more productive than despoiling ANWR. I'd think they'd need to drill the ice wall shafts about 2x as deep as the oil ones, however, to make sure nothing goes UNDER the ice walls.

-Arlos

[KILL]

I sure hope it works.

That would be VERY good news.

[10sun]

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.

This math is faulty.

640 acres to one square mile.

They say one acre yields upwards of 1 million barrels, I assume they are estimating high. So maybe only like 750,000 to 900,000 barrels.

Multiply that by 640 and you come out closer to half a billion barrels.

43,560 is the square footage of one acre.

700 square feet produced approximately 1,500 barrels over 11 months(according to the article).

So we are looking at roughly 2 barrels produced for every 1 square foot every 9 months.

That math produces a result closer to 90,000 barrels of production for every acre every 9 months.

Doing the math it would take 8 years & 4 months to produce the oil they claim to be able to produce from one acre of land.

Maybe I am missing something, but this doesn't sound very feasible.

[araby]

I heard about this on talk radio. The woman reporting was mentioning how she doesn't get why everyone is freaking out about oil, because we can always get more. She said we should be considering that is costs more to drink bottled water than to fuel our cars.

[10sun]

oh, by the way. Our problem is not getting the oil these days, it is refining it.

-Adam

[araby]

Yah people don't want refineries in their back yards I suppose.

[Lueyen]

Part of that same problem is that due to differences in enviromental regulations where fuel is concerned from state to state, shortages in one area can not neccecarily be aleviated easily with surplus from another area even though there are pipelines already in place between various refineries.

[Captain Insano]

my fucking god we have got to follow up on this over the next few years...

If this process works I will take out a fucking huge loan and invest every cent of it and short oil futures all the way to 30 a barrel and wake up a fucking multi multi millionaire someday.