Posted on 09/03/2005 6:46:32 AM PDT by narby
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.
I believe the point is not that the newly released petroleum will "leak", the point is that in order to make the heat required to "cook" the petroleum out in the first place, you're going to have to run a lot of generators on the surface, or some other pollution-producing (or at least carbon-dioxide-producing) method. Even using electrical heating just relocates the pollution to the original electrical plant.
Postulating only that the energy out/in ratio is favourable, which it appears to be if this report is correct, you should either A) describe a different scheme to produce an equivalent or greater amount of net energy w/fewer putatively negative externalities, or B) go on over to the envirowhackos formally, because NO producing scheme that will provide the energy we (will) require is satisfactory to that bunch.
Excellent point!
You'll love this - it's a classic!
9/1/2005 Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), a dangerous embarrassment
WOW
It is going to be very interesting to see if Shell actually goes into production with this type of thing. It will greatly change the whole energy balance for the US if they are able to change this from experimental into commercial.
"The US has THREE TIMES the amount of oil in this oil shale as the entire middle east."
If that is true....and $30/barrel makes this realistic...then....good heavens.
For the first time in the history of the world post-petroleum, a capitalistic/democratic country will control the world's oil supply.
This is enough to make neocons enter Nirvanah....paleocons also for that matter.
This is truly unbeleivable.
To Saudi, Mexico, Russia, Venezueala....I hope we can give you the one finger salute. Go crawl back under the rock from whence you came.
An intersting angle with the enviros, though, has gotta be: who do you want to produce oil? Russians? Mexico? Look, it's gonna happen. More production is on its way. Do you want to have it done here where you have a fighting chance to reglate? OR do you want it elsewhere?
I know the enviros aren't big on realism....but this is a good line of reasoning whichif framed properly could win over the public.
Did I miss the part about how much energy is required for the associated ground heating and cooling, vs. the energy potential retrieved?
In many African countries, the last vestiges of civilization are what's left of the colonial era. As these disappear (factories, transportation infrastructure, education), they're not being replaced. Most of African is returning to what it was 200 years ago.
If you like that, fine. But don't call it civilization.
"Nigeria (and the rest of West Africa). The Phillippines. Western Europe."
Wow, how long have I been sleeping? The Phillipinnes are now an Islamic Republic!!!
And all of Western Europe? Is it all just one big Islamic Republic of Western Europe now?
And Western Africa? I thought Islam had been a major presence there for centuries. Did they get driven out and then take over again?
What year is it? Can I collect my pension now?
OK, First, the Nuclear waste "problem" has already been solved. The final $$$ needed to certify the technology is included in the Senate Energy Bill that the President signed. It's called Pyroprocessing, an electro-magnetic slurry system, waste separating system that separates highly-radioactive spent fuel (reusable fuel) from low-radioactive (actual waste) uranium. It is portable enough to be built on site. It cannot separate plutonium from uranium, so their are no weapons grade fuel issues. It's 96% efficient at last reporting - current production plants are about 6% efficient. Hence, alot of people are trying to stop it, because we won't need their products or pet projects.
"The electrometallurgical treatment process is a revolutionary approach to the disposition of spent nuclear fuels. The process uses an electrorefining technique to separate uranium, inert materials, and (fission products + transuranic elements) from spent nuclear fuel, greatly reducing the volume of high-level waste and placing disposal costs within the range of practicality. The process is being developed for application to all constituents of the DOE-owned spent nuclear fuel inventory. The flow sheet outlines the treatment process."
Go to here and read about the future:
http://www.era.anl.gov/spentfuel/emt.html
Want "America First?", here it is.
This project should be put on a wartime footing and given war time urgency. What's at stake is the survival of the republican party, amongst other things.
bookmark
Not! What's at stake is the survival of the republican party, small business! I run four differnet companies, and my fuel expenses are running more than $1200 PER WEEK higher! That could buy me a nice new car, or allow me to spend more in restaurants, etc... (trickle down, you know!)...
"We consume over 20 million barrels per day. It would take a long time before oil shale can put a serious dent in crude prices." - T
Really? What is the price elasticity of supply, I thought it would be higher?
The LEAST which is needed is to put these future projects on wartime footings. Obviously more needs to be done to resolve the present mess, it's simply not entirely obvious as to what.
Over a trillion barrels produceable at $30.00 a barrel.
In a decade we should be a net exporter of oil.
So9
I think 30% is probably closer. France has the highest percentage --- ~ 70%. BTW. There are twice as many Nuke plants in the US as in France.
Their [Japanese] plants are cookie cutter designs, making it easy to THOROUGHLY train their people in their safe operation.
Not true. Japan has both PWRs and BWRs as well as a few "others". France standardized on PWRs based on the Westinghouse PWR design, which was licensed to Framatome (The Franco-America Atomic Energy agency) by Westinghouse back in the 1960s (when the Frogs realized that their home-grown designs were failures.) But they are by no means "cookie cutter." They represent several generations of evolution. The same is true of the Japanese plants, both the PWRs, (licensed by Westinghouse to Mitisubishi Heavy) and BWRs (licensed by GE to Toshiba).
Bottom line. Neither Japan or France is any more "standardized" than the US, and from a "safety/regulatory" standpoint, I'd put the US adversarial regulatory regime way ahead of either France's government run utility or Japan's "cronie capitalist" back-scratching technocracy.
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