The Future of Oil: Oil Shale
Oil shale rock in Utah. Image: ostseis.anl.gov.
As levels of crude in conventional wells around the world continue to drop, governments and oil companies alike are searching for the “next generation” of petroleum resources. Perhaps the most promising non-conventional petroleum resource is tar sands, examined and discussed here at the Zone in last Tuesday’s post. Another source of petroleum that could become increasingly important over the next ten years, especially in the United States, is oil shale.
Oil shale is in the news today, as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other prominent news outlets reported on the Bush Administration’s finalizing of guidelines to allow for oil shale excavation in the Western U.S. Yesterday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced the official opening of almost 3 million acres of public land, located in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, to future oil shale mining. The opening of the lands follows a two-year government ban on oil shale excavation that Congress allowed to expire two months ago along with the ban on offshore oil drilling.
The term “oil shale” refers to sedimentary rocks that contain deposits of kerogen, a fossil fuel that can be processed to make synthetic crude oil or “shale oil.” Oil shales are usually removed from the surface or dug up from underground, crushed into smaller pieces, and put through process called retorting, in which the rock is heated to extremely high temperatures (650-700ºF), to separate the kerogen from other materials in the rock in liquid form. The kerogen, in the form of shale oil, is then refined into other petroleum products.
Although today’s announcement about opening oil shale lands is just a preliminary step, environmental groups have already raised objection. Their first objection appears to be the sudden announcement of the new guidelines that eliminated any opportunity for public debate or opposition. From the New York Times:
“The Bush administration is maintaining an unlawful position by amending these resource management plans without providing the public with an opportunity to have their decisions administratively appealed,” said Melissa Thrailkill, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are considering all our options. That includes legal action in federal court.”
Environmental activists also oppose oil shale mining because of the environmentally destructive nature of oil shale processing. The tremendous heat used to separate the petroleum in the shale from other minerals requires huge amounts of energy. Large quantities of water are also required for processing shale (several barrels of water are needed to produce one barrel of shale oil), and water is in short supply in the arid region designated by the Bureau of Land Management’s announcement. Furthermore, the production of shale oil emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas–several times more than does the processing of conventional crude oil.
The Green River Formation oil shale deposits. Image:ostseis.anl.gov
For now, the relatively high expense and difficult processing of oil shale keeps it from becoming a major source of commercially-produced oil. In the U.S., the mining and processing of oil shales has slowed to a crawl, thanks to the current deep dive in oil prices. When the current global recession ends and oil prices shoot back up, however, the search for new sources of oil (especially in the U.S.) will resume with increased vigor. According to the government website ostseis.anl.gov, the three-state Green River Formation contains 800 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil in the form of oil shale deposits. With that enormous potential resource, an emergence of oil shale as the dominant domestic source of oil in the U.S. could very well take place in the next decade.
Tags: Bureau of Land Management, Bush Administration, Colorado, crude oil, Green River Formation, oil exploration, oil shale, President Bush, unconventional oil, Utah, Wyoming
