Magic Ponies and Unicorns
We have known for decades that there is lots of kerogen – pre oil – in the Green River formation in the western US. There have been attempts to convert the kerogen into a usable/affordable energy source and they all have failed. Over at the Agonist Steve Hynd reports that magic ponies and unicorns never die.
Quite a few rightwing commentators are making waves today about a Government Accountability Office statement which says (PDF) that:
The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions. The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.
Keep in mind this is not the “tight” oil they are getting from the Balkan formation via fracking or the oil sands in Canada. It is 3 trillion barrels of oil that no one could afford. The first thing we have to look at is “energy return on investment” EROI – how much energy you have to spend compared to how much energy you get. This alone makes Green River formation kerogens uneconomical.
In addition since it’s kerogen and not oil the EROI to refine it is less:
Since it takes as much or more energy to extract and refine the kerogen it is not economic.
And then there is the water. The Green River formation is located in an area that already has water shortages. Even if we ignore the probable ground water contamination issues it will still require 5 to 10 barrels of water for each barrel of oil.
We have known of this resource for decades and Royal Dutch Shell snd Chevron have made attempts to exploit this resource with no economic success.
There are environmetal concerns as well but since it will never be economical that doesn’t concern me very much.
This is entirely political. One third of the Green River formation is on private land and when that is developed economically we can talk about government interference.
Share This
I used to know the guys at the USGS in Wyoming, and remember well (and had the literature) for the Rifle, Colorado project wherein they were going to detonate a nuclear bomb underground and then truck the shattered shale out with dump trucks.
I even had oil shale samples, which I dutifully crushed up with mortar and pestle, put in a test tube and heated over a bunsen burner until the oil precipitated on the glass sides of the tube. “Peaceful uses of atomic energy” the literature said.
Thankfully, it was stopped.
Shale oil from oil shale still runs up against two realities: you have to mine the rock in vast quantities, and you get the oil out of it (not very good crude, BTW) by heating or chemicals.
Bad enough that we’re ripping through the Powder River Basin in Wyoming at the speed of sound for coal. Shale Oil has been a pipe dream for a long time. Hopefully, it will remain that way.