Global Resources and Technology Development for Oil Shale Production

Jeremy Boak, Dag Nummedal, and Yuval Bartov
Colorado Energy Research Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

Global interest in unconventional hydrocarbon resources, driven by oil price and energy security concerns, is driving investigation of oil shale resources comprising >3 trillion barrels (>2X historic global production). The largest known oil shale resources in the world occur in Eocene lake sediments in the western United States. Colorado oil shale resources are thick (~300 m) and very rich, with areal energy density up to 1.3 million barrels per acre, compared to coal (500,000 bbls/acre) and oil sands (100,000 bbls/acre) and to commonly thinner, less energy dense conventional oil reservoirs. China has recently increased its estimate of oil shale resources in lacustrine or shallow marine basins by ~20X. Similar basins in other countries that preserved organic material well and were buried only to shallow depths, have potential for similarly rich oil shale. Countries in Africa and the Middle East have the potential to change their energy balance by tapping this previously marginal resource. Jordan and Morocco already have active programs investigating development of marine oil shale resources.

Current shale oil production is limited to surface processing of mined reserves. New technology for production and impact mitigation suggest the time may have arrived for shale oil development, but production >1,000,000 BOPD lies well in the future. Private companies propose testing in situ (subsurface) conversion of kerogen into light oil using electrical heaters (Shell), conductively propped rock fractures (ExxonMobil), CO₂ injection (Chevron) or closed loop fluid heating (EGL Resources). Large scale shale oil production may release >200,000,000 tons annually of CO₂ apart from the burning of the resultant fuel. The future for commercial oil shale will depend on development of CO₂ capture and sequestration technology to ensure zero emissions from the production sites.

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