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.
Even better, if we use alternative sources of energy in the extraction process that are either unreliable (wind), or unportable (nuclear), then we've effectively traded energy that can't power your car into one that can.
Another energy source would be large base level electric plants that are very efficient, but can't be "throttled" during low/high usage from day to night, and put the energy in during night hours.
Pretty interesting. If they scale it up to produce 1-2 million barrels a day every day it could make a big difference.
One thousand billion barrels in the Green River Basin alone??? Merde!
Thank you so much for this post - learned a lot. Thank goodness for the brilliant and common sense minds that went into figuring this out. Fantastic!
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.
I sincerely HOPE these sorts of schemes DO NOT deflect us from the goal of moving on to the development of alternative energy sources and the internal combustion engine.
File under "Buying Time?"
What is really needed is for the government to ask for bids on a million barrels of shale oil, promising to buy from the lowest bidder. That will help industry get started producing the stuff big-time.
Lacking that, I'm afraid inertia (or worse) on the part of the big oil companies will stymie the effort.
Wonder what they could produce in ANWR with this technology.
Wait until the eviro-whackos invent another weed or mouse, found ONLY in the area of this oil shale.
Hmmmm. no mention of the Endangered Green River Shale Salamander?
But it will harm to seven toed snail darting owl which lives in burrows above all the shale oil deposits. SNIFF.
I agree that the moronic left wants this. But the least common denominator is rising in most of the world. India and China are becoming economic powerhouses, and as the net and the prosperity that allows travel spreads they will become more free too.
Economically, I think the US will maintain, while the least common denominator will rise to meet us.
Excepting Africa. They don't have the culture to pull themselves up by the boot straps, and will mire around in squalor like New Orleans, until someone decides it's ok to re-colonize again. Perhaps after a couple more centuries of African colonialization it will be able to maintain a first world economy the way South Africa did until the left destroyed apartheid.
Agreed, but the usual enviorn-pinko tactic is to absolutely IGNORE any new source as if we already had "alternative energy solutions" available. There is no reason in the world we cannot use what is available and develop better solutions simultaneously other than a political agenda.
I think you're missing the point: shale oils are an alternative fuel source. As that gets used up, decades from now, the price will rise, and yet further alternatives will be exploited. You would profit from reading "The Doomsday Myth: 10,000 years of economic crisis".
What this report does not mention is the amount of hydro-carbons released into the atmosphere in the production of what sounds like a truly massive amount of energy to cook the rock. The enviros will attack this process I'm sure.
I suspect that if Shell simply went to some major consumers (say, the airlines or the states) and offered to sell forward this production at somewhere closer to the cost of production rather than the market rate that they could guarantee themselves some business for quite a while.
Alternative energy sources will come on line when they become economically viable. Which will be when oil becomes more expensive because of scarcity than the alternative.
And when this "more expensive" energy source is required, we will be better able to pay for it, because the entire world is becoming more prosperous.
This is why rushing ahead with alternative energy via government fiat is a stupid idea. Trust the capitalist system. It always works, and government rarely does.
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