Near- to Mid-Term Energy Mineral Sources: Bridging the Future to Alternative Energy

Ambrose, William A.¹ (1) The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

With increasingly rising oil prices, energy minerals have become more economically attractive and offer a valuable, alternative energy source for the future. These energy minerals include coal, coalbed methane, uranium, gas hydrates, gas shales, oil shale, tar sands, geothermal energy. The North American energy mineral resource alone is enormous. It includes over a trillion tons of identified coal of which 275 billion tons is technically recoverable, >200 billion tons of oil shale, >250 million pounds of U3O8 producible at $30/lb., approximately 690 Tcf (trillion cubic ft) of coalbed methane, between 467 and 607 Tcf of shale gas, over 3 billion barrels equivalent of tar sands, and 2.4 x 1019 joules of identified and undiscovered convection hydrothermal resources (energy equivalent of 430 billion barrels of oil). The potential North American gas hydrate resource may be many thousands of Tcf. Energy mineral resources are associated with varying degrees of technical, economic and environmental challenges. Increased coal production impacts mining safety, the existing transportation infrastructure and mining impacts on environment. Oil shale production and refining requires energy and large volumes of water. Both coalbed methane and uranium commonly require disposal of water and radioactive material, respectively. Although gas hydrates are not yet economically feasible, they have been produced successfully in permafrost regions of Russia and the northern Canada. However, gas hydrates could become a sustainable source of natural gas within the next 10 to 20 years, thereby adding significant volumes of natural gas to the U.S. resource base.