Print this pageAAPG ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
Making the Next Giant Leap in Geosciences
April 10-13, 2011, Houston, Texas, USA
Redefining Jordan’s Oil Shale Resource; Overcoming the Challenges of Subsurface Characterisation and 3-D Modelling on a Country-Wide Level
(1) Exploration Operations, SHELL UIX - JOSCO, Amman, Jordan.
The Maastrichtian oil-shale deposits in Jordan are reported from many shallow outcrops (<50m) that extend in an escarpment belt from the north to the south of the country. Due to their low thermal maturity level (< 0.45 Ro) and exceptionally high organic richness (TOC up to 27 wt% and HI up to 1000 mgHC/gTOC) these oil-shale deposits qualify as a world class unconventional HC resource. Traditionally these shallow deposits, preserved in graben structures confined to tectonically subsided areas, have been investigated by the mining industry for oil-shale surface retorting and processing. The development of In-situ Conversion Process (ICP) technology by Royal Dutch Shell plc allows access to previously unreachable deeper, richer and thicker oil shale resources to be developed from a relatively smaller surface area.
Until recently, however, no detailed information on the spatial distribution of oil-shale deposits across Jordan within an accurate and chronological framework was available to enable correlation of sediment and organic facies units over large distances particularly across different tectonic structures. This paper presents results from an integrated subsurface modeling study that estimates the spatial distribution of deep oil-shale deposits in Jordan as potential exploration targets for ICP technology. To further approximate the vertical and lateral continuity of these oil-shale beds across tectonic and other paleo-topographic structures a 3D model was built that integrates geological information from multiple sources such as water wells, oil-shale exploration wells, petroleum wells, surface geology, regional tectonics, geological cross sections derived from surface geology, regional cross sections derived from seismic and a high-res digital elevation model.
The study’s outcome implies that the oil-shale bearing formation significantly thickens towards the northern central part of the country and apparently extends into Syria potentially proving to be an exceptionally large deposit of several hundred square kilometers reaching up to 400 m in thickness. Towards the south the oil-shale bearing formation on-lapses the paleo-shoreline (Neo-Tethys) that ran from west to east. The observed spatial thickness variations were constructed into a preliminary depositional model implying the basin centre in the northern part of the country as the primary site of oil-shale deposition and qualifying it as a potential target area for ICP prospect exploration.