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.
Understand your replies.
But the fact is that these are still FINITE energy supplies.
The history of the industrial world has been to find it, use it -- in ever-increasing quantities -- then HOPE you can find MORE of it!
It's a bit like building highways: The statistic is that for every NEW LANE OF HIGHWAY constructed, A FULL LANE AND ONE THIRD OF ADDITIONAL VEHICLES ARE PRODUCED TO ATTEMPT TO USE IT.
We could pave the ENTIRE PLANET and STILL be 30% behind.
The energy ratio is 3.5/1. We should use nuclear to provide the energy put into the rock. It's cleaner, abundant, and it can't fuel your car while gasoline can.
There's also plenty of wind energy up there too. I don't know if this process requires energy 24/7. But if it doesn't, power it from the wind on top of the shale via wind.
Wind energy is lousy at powering your house (because it quits), and you can't use it in your car either.
That is a safe bet. They aren't prejudiced, they attack everything.
Now think about that for a minute. Where are the people going to live that drive on the freeways? In their cars?
The statistic only demonstrates that freeways aren't being built as fast as they're needed. Freeways don't breed more people to drive on them.
There are a finite number of people that could possibly drive the cars to fill your freeways, and at some point there are enough lanes to handle them.
This is one of the stupid arguments sold by people who want to build trains and lock people into high density cities because of political agendas. It makes no sense.
And the enviros will fight this fanatically, the more so as it shows itself more practical.
This is nothing new in the oil business--with the exception of the ice barriers.
Back in the late 60s I was developing and writing insurance for what they called 'hot-oil units' in West Texas. These were work-over units in areas where the easy oil had been pumped. They put superheated stuff (glycerin or something that started with a g)down the drillshaft to heat the surrounding rock and slowly accumulate recoverable oil.
The only problem was that the units were subject to fire. It was a costly process at the time, but useful when crude prices were high.
Your "alternative" sources of energy will be developed and come on line as they become cheaper/more efficient to use than oil. If the government mandates conversion then the price per btu will make energy a pure luxury that most of can afford in only tiny quantities. What will the enviros and "alternative" folks do as the general population has to commence heating and cooking with wood, at least so long as there are trees to cut?
What's wrong with buying time? It's economical, and it allows us to develop technology. Eventually we'll only have solar, hydro, geothermal, bio, and tidal sources. The holy grail is fusion. But we have enough hydrocarbons and fissionable elements to last us hundreds of years. So we already have a great deal of "alternate" sources available. We should use whatever is most economical as technology progresses.
I think $2.50 would do it. The problem with this technology is it costs $35/bbl, while the middle east can produce for $4 (yes, they ARE raping us right now). I'm sure Shell's reluctant to pursue this because they could be drowned in Saudi oil at cheap prices at any time.
We need to find a way to stabilize prices and supply, then drain middle east oil until it's scarce enough that it costs them $35/bbl.
I'd go for invading the middle east, taking their oil, and putting their population on food stamps and required birth control. If the left is going to accuse us of such a thing, we may as well really do it.
Interesting. You never know what kind of technical experts you'll find on FR.
I imagine very few hydro-carbons will be released. It appears Shell has created a fractionating tower in situ, and by doing so will capture all the hydro-Cs as they rise.
this, plus montana's plan to cleanly turn coal into oil (which they claim becomes cost effective in the 30's per barrel too) could eliminate our foreign oil dependence completely over time (10-15 years? maybe quicker?)
Great! Let's get going. Get the Communist Enviromental Protection Agency out of here and shut up those Senators like Mr.Nelson in Fla. They are the enemy within and they have to go before the economy and private industry can get going. This is not Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, This Is America!
You are using government planning to illustrate what you think are problems with freemarket capitalism.
The history of freemarket capitalism is that of the use of a resource until something else can accomplish the job cheaplier(my favorite illegitimate word)then that new approach displaces the old now depleted or too expensive (same thing)resource. A society with freemarket capitalism does not simply use up resources then crash into the wall. It is continually refining uses and developing new ones. That is how competing entrepreneurs survive. It surprises me how many conservatives do not understand this basic concept, this engine that has powered America to the top of the World in 200 years.
We are not doing this right now in this country because IT COSTS MORE THAN THE OIL we are buying right now and into the ever rising price future.
Interesting that you failed to specifically mention NUCLEAR? Still afraid of another TMI (where fewer died than in Teddy's back seat)?
The refinery shortage (thank the NIMBYs and ecofreaks) IS a big part of the problem as well as the wildly diverse local CLEAN AIR regs which require the refiners to produce multiple blends.
The current OIL PRODUCTION level is around 84 million barrels per day. Current world DEMAND is 87 million barrels per day -- and rising (thanks to the Chinese and others swapping their bikes and motorbikes for CARS).
We have at least a 3 million barrel per day shortfall.
The oil being taken from the ground today is from strikes discovered over 30 years ago: Very few NEW oil deposits are being found. ONE oil geologist (I THINK his name is Fox) has raised the prospect that geological forces are producing NEW oil and gas all the time and it is either forming NEW deposits or migrating thru fractures in the rock to the existing fields. That makes some sense but has yet to be confirmed by his peers. Even if true, it's hard to imagine that those replacement stocks can keep up with the growing demand.
What all this means is that we're headed toward ever-higher prices. That's the bad news.
The GOOD NEWS is that those higher prices are pushing us back toward some modicum of ENERGY SANITY where we will have no choice but to get on with NUCLEAR for stationary energy production. The Japanese SAFELY produce most of their power with nukes. Their plants are cookie cutter designs, making it easy to THOROUGHLY train their people in their safe operation. Even our good friends the French produce 80% of their juice with nukes!! And if THEY can do it, we sure as hell can.
One of the reasons electric rates in Georgia have remained some of the lowest in the nation is our half dozen or so NUCLEAR PLANTS. Many OTHER states NOT using nukes have switched from dirtier coal-fired plants to NATURAL GAS (NG)! It is absolutely NUTS to be burning a perfect – and finite -- mobile power fuel for a stationary application!
Even so, many power producers are using PEAKING PLANTS to cope with the summer air-conditioner demand. Those are generally jet engines strapped to a slab and coupled to an AC generator. They come up to speed and on line quickly when demand peaks. Those jet turbines burn FOSSIL FUEL (often NG).
What the move to nukes will do is free up the FOSSIL FUELS we DO have for MOBILE power applications (our vehicles). ANY internal combustion engine can be converted to run on NG or propane once a new tank is installed and (this is WHY the US hasn’t moved on this earlier) a CONSUMER SUPPLY INFRASTRUCTURE (GAS STATIONS!) is in place. NG also burns a hell of a lot cleaner and is easier on an IC engine than gasoline.
A few years ago, it was projected that there was around a 1,000 year supply of NG available under the GULF OF MEXICO at then current consumption. That was in the days when most major generating plants were coal fired. Even so, once we can get the nukes on line, that NG will become available for MOBILE applications. We need to get the nukes on line safely, of course, but 12 to 15 years to permit a new plant is just crazy! The technology proposed in the application is probably OBSOLETE by the time the thing is off the ground, adding countless millions to the project to bring it up with all the retrofits.
The concern about nuclear waste disposal is very real – but it is one we can and will solve. We MUST. If we are to maintain our living standard here, we have no choice. Even my bride – who is VERY vocal with her concerns on this topic – becomes silent when I ask her to imagine the lights going out and the A/C shutting down and remind her that the A/C here is almost certainly coming from a NUCLEAR PLANT up the road! The ladies LOVE their home A/C in August. So do I.
And, not incidentally, these current higher energy prices will put new legs under the quest for ALTERNATIVE fuel sources. We’re learning more and more about the physics of these new systems every day. I’m confident that our grandkids will be sitting behind the wheels of vehicles powered by systems we cannot even envision today. That has been the history of mankind – especially in the West -- throughout history.
And we can tell the Saudis and Venezuelans to DRINK the oil they have left – because we no longer need it!
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