JOSCO Oil Shale Development through ICP Technology

T.E. Meijssen¹ and T. Fowler²

¹Jordan Oil Shale Company

Abstract

The world’s demand for oil and gas will grow to at least 2035. The oil and gas industry is exploring for conventional supplies in increasingly hostile environments and unconventionals, such as oil shale. Oil shale is sedimentary rock containing organic matter (kerogen) that yields oil and gas when heated. World oil shale high grade resources are massive, on par conventional oil reserves. Although many pioneering attempts have been made, none has resulted in the large scale production of oil and gas. These attempts generally focused on traditional mining methods and surface retorting. Shell’s approach called In-situ Conversion Process (ICP) is different and is aimed at heating the oil shale by thermal conduction using a closely spaced array of horizontal electric resistance heaters.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90188 ©GEO-2014, 11th Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition, 10-12 March 2014, Manama, Bahrain