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Last modified
8/16/2009 2:36:02 PM
Creation date
8/8/2007 4:17:53 PM
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Board Meetings
Board Meeting Date
7/11/2007
Description
WSP Section - Intrastate Water Planning - Oil Shale Water Use
Board Meetings - Doc Type
Memo
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<br />x Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and Policy Issues <br /> <br />Oil Shale Technology Prospects <br /> <br />Processes for producing shale oil generally fall into one of two groups: mining fol- <br />lowed by surface retorting and in-situ retorting. <br />Mining and Surface Retorting. Oil shale can be mined using one of twO meth- <br />ods: underground mining using the room-and-pillar method or surface mining. The <br />current state of the art in mining-both room-and-pillar and surface techniques, <br />such as open pit mining-appears to be able to meet the requirements for the com- <br />mercial development of oil shale. <br />The current commercial readiness of surface retorting technology is more ques- <br />tionable. Development of surface retortS that took place during the 1970s and 1980s <br />produced mixed results. Technical viability has been demonstrated, bur significant <br />scale-up problems were encountered in building and designing commercial plants. <br />Since then, major technical advances have occurred bur have not been applied to sur- <br />face retorts. Incorporating such advances and developing a design base for full-scale <br />operations necessitates process testing at large bur still subcommercial scales. <br />Cost information available from projects and design studies performed in the <br />19S0s can be escalated to give a very rough estimate of the anticipated capital costs <br />for mining and surface retorting plants. Using this approach, a first-of-a-kind com- <br />mercial surface retorting complex (mine, retorting plant, upgrading plant, supporting <br />uriliries, and spent shale reclamation) is unlikely to be profitable unless real crude oil <br />prices are at least $70 to $95 per barrel (2005 dollars). <br />In-Situ Retorting. In-situ retorting entails heating oil shale in place, extracting <br />the liquid from the ground, and transporting it to an upgrading or refining facility. <br />Because in-situ retorting does not involve mining or aboveground spent shale dis- <br />posal, it offers an alternative that does not permanently modify land surface topogra- <br />phy and that may be significantly less damaging to the environment. <br />Shell Oil Company has successfully conducted small-scale field tests of an in- <br />situ process based on slow underground heating via thermal conduction. Larger-scale <br />operations are required to establish technical viability, especially with regard to <br />avoiding adverse impacts on groundwater quality. Shell anticipates that, in contrast <br />to the cost estimates for mining and surface retorting, the petroleum products pro- <br />duced by their thermally conductive in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil <br />prices in the mid-$20s per barrel. The company is still developing the process, how- <br />ever, and cost estimates could easily increase as more information is obtained and <br />more detailed designs become available. <br />Development Timeline. Currenrly, no organization with the management, <br />technical, and financial wherewithal to develop oil shale resources has announced its <br />intent to build commercial-scale production facilities. A firm decision to commit <br />funds to such a venture is at least six years away because that is the minimum length <br />of time for scale-up and process confirmation work needed to obtain the technical <br />
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