The “crush and melt” process is ‘80s technology. The current in situ processes are far more efficient and avoids the issue of spent oil shale disposal.
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But its not being done except perhaps experimentally.
Piceance, et cetera, still have over 300 times the oil of DJ Basin.
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This is great news if true. I posted a report that the DJ basin is now estimated to have about 4 billion barrels of oil. So you think Piceance has 120 billion barrels of oil. That’s fabulous. However, I’d be happier if you’d post some articles that corroborated your view.
(I’m assuming you’re not talking about oil shale—which is a rock and has to be melted. Its not shale oil which is fracked.)
Here: An estimated 1.5 trillion bbl of oil in place lies in Western Colorado’s Piceance basin oil shale, the US Geological Survey said in the first comprehensive assessment published since 1989. The amount represents a 50% jump from the previous 1 trillion bbl of oil in place estimate because about twice as many oil yield data points were used, it added in a new report.
Even at the previous 1 trillion bbl estimate, the Piceance represented the largest oil shale deposit in the world.
Here: How large is this resource? In the Piceance Basin, an area of 1,100 square miles, the oil shale is over 1 million barrels per acre, or roughly 750 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If you extend outward to Wyoming and to Utah, it is 1.3 trillion. This is why you hear shale next to trillions, not billions or millions, of barrels.
There's gas, too: The Piceance could end up being the biggest natural gas field in North America," said Fred Julander, owner of Denver-based Julander Energy and a long-time observer of Colorado's natural-gas sector. Julander estimates the basin's total gas accumulation could be as much as 100 tcf ...