[joe1347]

Possibly this is a naive question since I am still new to this area - but doesn't the debate regarding shale oil boil down (so to speak) to the ability to cost effectively produce a "transporation" fuel? Is it possible to instead treat shale oil similarly to coal and just burn it near the mine to directly produce electricity? Possibly this eliminates the economics issues associated with producing transportation fuel but the shale oil still provides "usefull" energy. Or am I way off base and you can't burn rocks even if they have some oil in them?

[go5star]

Possibly this is a naive question since I am still new to this area - but doesn't the debate regarding shale oil boil down (so to speak) to the ability to cost effectively produce a "transporation" fuel? Is it possible to instead treat shale oil similarly to coal and just burn it near the mine to directly produce electricity? Possibly this eliminates the economics issues associated with producing transportation fuel but the shale oil still provides "usefull" energy. Or am I way off base and you can't burn rocks even if they have some oil in them?

You are right on and way off at the same time. You are right, one can burn shale. However you are also very wrong one cannot burn oil shale effectively, it is even worse for the environment than coal. Search google for Estonia oil shale and you'll see the EU forcing Estonia to phase out its shale fired electrical plants. Please read all of my posts to see that you CAN cost effectively produce shale and do so with minimized environmental effects.

[sicophiliac]

Go5star

A couple of questions

Forgive my ignorance but you say you use coal gasification instead of burning coal to produce the heat needed to extract the oil from the shale rock. How do you get the energy to gasify the coal ? Does that not require burning coal to gasify other coal so you can use it for the oil shale conversion and perhaps later converting to liquid fuels. Maybe I just dont understand the whole process.

Also if your in the experimental stages of this right now when do you plan to have commercially viable production plants going ? How many and what target dates. By the way you guys wouldnt happen to be hiring anybody right now to run these plants would you?

[go5star]

Go5star

A couple of questions

Forgive my ignorance but you say you use coal gasification instead of burning coal to produce the heat needed to extract the oil from the shale rock. How do you get the energy to gasify the coal ? Does that not require burning coal to gasify other coal so you can use it for the oil shale conversion and perhaps later converting to liquid fuels. Maybe I just dont understand the whole process.

Also if your in the experimental stages of this right now when do you plan to have commercially viable production plants going ? How many and what target dates. By the way you guys wouldnt happen to be hiring anybody right now to run these plants would you?

You're not ignorant just curious and interested and I appreciate it. Here are two links that discuss coal gasification. http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/powersys ... works.html and http://www.shepherd-express.com/6_30_05/cover.htm Both of these links cover much of what is important to our process including the ability to use the hydrogen syngas for other uses other than electricity. As for the question about the burning of coal, some of it is burned but a small fraction of what a coal burning plant would burn. Only a small amount of heat is necessary to start the chemical gasification reaction going when under the coal is under high pressure and mixed with oxygen. The CO2 from even the small amounts of coal being burned for the heat/chemical reaction processes can be captured. We have a major university that has proven the concept but we are first looking to probably build a small pilot plant that can run 24/7 for 4-6 months so we can work out many of the possible bugs before having our investors spend 500 million on a full-size plant. It will probably take 6 months to build the pilot, another 6 months to test out and from there 3 years to build a full size plant. Our initial plan is for 4 plants but anticipate that once the pilot shows further proof of concept it will quickly take off from there. We are looking not only at the obvious huge deposits in the US but also Thailand, China, and other locations. I'll let you know as we progress.

[wildsparrow]

I take it from the "economy/capitalism/consumerism...must die" comment that you are a Pol Pot anarchist that believes the human race should all revert back to an agrarian society?

I take great offence at being implicated or aligned Pol Pot in any way, shape or form. How you think that is reasonable given what little you know of me is beyond me.

Perhaps a little bitterness did get into my post.

I simply tend to think that there is a lot that is immoral and selfish about the way most of us Westerners live now, and that just becuase we can get the oil to keep fuelling this lifestyle, that does not mean it's ok to keep living it.

[go5star]

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/ ... e_WWW.html

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/ ... y_WWW.html

Here we go boys & girls, hope you all are ready. The next rush is on.

[go5star]

:!:

Here's the most important part from that Rand study :

Currently, no organization with the management,
technical, and financial wherewithal to develop oil shale resources has announced its
intent to build commercial-scale production facilities. A firm decision to commit
funds to such a venture is at least six years away because that is the minimum length
of time for scale-up and process confirmation work needed to obtain the technical
Summary xi
and environmental data required for the design and permitting of a first-of-a-kind
commercial operation. At least an additional six to eight years will be required to
permit, design, construct, shake down, and confirm performance of that initial commercial
operation. Consequently, at least 12 and possibly more years will elapse
before oil shale development will reach the production growth phase. Under high
growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is
probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably
more than 30 years into the future.

It's good that you have optimism about your new project, but the time for all this was 30 years ago, when all were warned the first time. I also find it highly questionable that NO ONE in almost 40 years of work has found a way to make this an effective process. It makes absolutely ZERO sense to use more energy to develop oil resources than they would eventually produce in the end. This seems to be a recurring theme with shale oil. First it was, it'll be viable when oil is $8 a barrel, and then $20 a barrlel, then $ 40 a barrel. This argument is getting real old, and it's because people are too stupid to understand the concepts of thermodynamics (entropy especially).

3 mbd isn't going to do a damn bit of good in 30 years when we will need 30 mbd in about 10 years. Good luck with your project. Make sure they don't pay you in dollars.

Congratulations, you just bought into a study/paper that would not have received anything more than a D in any college across the nation. Believe the Rand study do you? I guess you believe it when they say that oil will be $50.00 a barrel in 2025. Or perhaps you believe it when they use calculations that they don't disclose regarding the costs of Shell Oil's new process. Our projected breakeven isn't $70.00 as Rand suggests but is around $13.00 per barrel. I'm glad that you are big enough to understand big words such as thermodynamics and entropy. Do you understand big words such as plastic, fertilizer, filters? Then you'll know that coal doesn't do real great making such things.. Perhaps you'll know that solar and wind don't do crap for making 99.99 percent of cars, boats, trains, tractors, farm equipment, generators or anything else go. You obviously haven't read my earlier posts explaining our project. You obviously know everything there is to know about energy in all its forms and its prospects. I used to build/sell computers and at the time and a megabyte of memory was $50.00. Now a megabyte of memory equivalent is only 10 cents. In 1991 nobody would have predicted such a drop and would have argued that there theoretical limits to the progress to be made. So genius, if you can extract 5+ barrels of oil from $31.00 worth of coal and $10 worth of shale is that an energy negative process? What if from that same process you also produce 2357 kilowatt hours of electricity? Golly not only that but you get CO2 that you can sell to pump into oil wells nearby to increase production as well as sulfur. Wow, you now have 4 tons of spent shale that has been processed cleanly enough for use as road base, aggregrate or cement extender. Bummer, only $650.00 worth of saleable product from $31.00 in coal. Of course there are related shale mining costs and plant costs and we only net $400M+ per plant out of $800M+ of revenue but yes those are dollars. Keep living in the 70's but I think most people have noticed things have changed since then.

[sicophiliac]

Go5star thanks for the links, they helped explain the process quite a bit. I guess I was more or less under estimating the potential of the technology. Looks pretty good efficiency wise considering a small amount of coal or energy is needed to set off the gasification process which produces the syngas which then too can be burned to exploit more energy. You guys just figured out a clever way to simply use that thermal energy to extract oil shale while you were at it. The website stated that the costs for this type of technology would be a bit higher then your standard coal plant but I think the versitility and efficiency of it would more then offset that in the long term. I mean it could be an all in one energy production facility... producing electricity.. liquid fuels from the syngas and or just the oil from the oil shale. Consolidation potential like that would hint that over all costs of production could easily be very low once all the bugs get worked out. I guess for all intents and purposes the EROEI factor would simply be the energy envolved in mining the coal,shale and powering the plant VS the energy the plant produces in various forms. Id assume the ratio would be pretty good since coal seems to be so cheap and readily available as an energy source already.. not factoring in the maximum efficiency benifits of utalizing it through the gasification process. I certianly hope the best for your company and your investment venture in this area.

[go5star]

This seems to be a recurring theme with shale oil. First it was, it'll be viable when oil is $8 a barrel, and then $20 a barrlel, then $ 40 a barrel. This argument is getting real old, and it's because people are too stupid to understand the concepts of thermodynamics (entropy especially).

Deffeyes said the same thing in"Beyond Oil" What people don't understand is that the mining, processing, and distribution infrastructure is built with cheap petroleum that is always a day early, so shale will never catch up. Ever. I see the same thermodynamic problems with biofuels.

It amazes me that intelligent people really believe that some day these alternatives will be cheap, that we only have to wait for that ripe moment. Sorry but it will never come. It will always be too expensive to mine.

What amazes me is that pseudo intelligent people are willing to make final judgements based on someone elses reasoning. It amazes me that people can also come into a thread, read one or two posts and think they know everything there is to know about the thread. So tell me PSTARR how $650.00 worth of saleable product from $45.00 worth of material is uneconomic. Even factoring in plant costs, depreciation, operating costs, labor etc. etc. we net $400M from $800M in revenue. Yup, those are just plain crappy economics. As for mining costs, we have met with numerous mining companies and know that our estimated mining costs are $2.50 cents a ton. Green River shale yields about 1 barrel per ton. Our costs of production without royalty to the inventor is approximately $13.00 per barrel. I know you'll be disappointed when the world doesn't crumble down around you so you can loot your local WalMart but if we have anything to do with it the world will continue without anarchy.

[go5star]

Wrong again, Mr. Authority PStarr. Haven't asked for a dime from anyone on this forum. Period.

I find it convenient that you didn't answer a single question that I posed to you, instead your only defense is you think I should be paying for advertising.

What exactly am I selling PStar? What exactly are you selling other than FUD? You have yet to try and dispute any portion of our process but yet you rely on others to spout your authority. Those others rely on facts and figures from the 70's and 80's. Did you read the Rand report? Did you read the last Rand report from 1980 done for the Office of Technology Assessment?

I thought you said WalMart doesn't target your demographic but a DVD in the bargain bin would have been my first guess for your purchase at WalMart.

[Graeme]

Technology shows promise in extracting oil from shale economically

Shale reserves, estimated at more than two trillion barrels in the U.S., are a potential source of oil that now may be economically unlocked thanks to technology developed by Raytheon Company and its partner, CF Technologies.

Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) business' radio frequency (RF) energy combined with critical fluid (CF)technology shows promise for efficiently extracting oil from shale.

Combining RF and CF technologies provides a revolutionary way for recovering oil from shale reserves worldwide, according to John Moses, president of CF Technologies. Based on laboratory results and analysis, the oil produced is a light product, comparable to kerosene that can be produced by the unique process with high extraction efficiency.

dcmilitary

[vampyregirl]

Shale oil research is nothing new but only recently has it become economically worthwhile.
back in the 1920s Shale research was conducted in the western United States but not only was the cost of production to high but major fields discovered in Venezuela made Shale exploration unneccesary. Later in the 1970s Exxon conducted Shale research and experimentation in the same area but it was abandoned when it was determined production costs would be to high. It wouldn't be profitable.
Today that has changed. problem is with existing technology such as the in Situ method it takes time to extract. Shale oil can't be extracted fast enough in suffecient quanity to meet demand. That may change in a few years. Shale reserves are estimated at more than two trillion barrels worldwide. A huge resource. Once a breakthrough is acheived we could have an abundant supply.
That being said i disagree with analysts who say oil prices will drop to 1990s levels. Production costs are higher with nonconventional oil therefore we will never see the prices go down.

[zoidberg]

Shale oil research is nothing new but only recently has it become economically worthwhile.
back in the 1920s Shale research was conducted in the western United States but not only was the cost of production to high but major fields discovered in Venezuela made Shale exploration unneccesary. Later in the 1970s Exxon conducted Shale research and experimentation in the same area but it was abandoned when it was determined production costs would be to high. It wouldn't be profitable.
Today that has changed. problem is with existing technology such as the in Situ method it takes time to extract. Shale oil can't be extracted fast enough in suffecient quanity to meet demand. That may change in a few years. Shale reserves are estimated at more than two trillion barrels worldwide. A huge resource. Once a breakthrough is acheived we could have an abundant supply.
That being said i disagree with analysts who say oil prices will drop to 1990s levels. Production costs are higher with nonconventional oil therefore we will never see the prices go down.

Ha! In situ involves freezing a section "a freeze wall" and the heating another chunk for 2-3 years to 650 to 700 degrees F.

Can you imagine the energy requirements for that, even supposing the EROI is positive? The upfront energy costs are huge. How feasible is it to divert that much electrical energy to the extraction process for that long? I dont know how large the area to make it economically feasible is, but I'm guessing its huge. Secondly wheres the nuke plant(plants) necessary being built in the area? Nowhere as far as I know. Those things take a long time to get built, therefore I say oil shale production isnt on the medium term horizon.

In conclusion while it may be economical at current electrical rates to extract oil shale, that would change dramatically when you consider what would happen to rates when the process is started or constructing nuke plants is taken into consideration.

Oil shale is nothing more than propaganda for the sheeple, a con game for energy companies looking for investors(ie suckers), and a pipe dream for American patriots.

[Oil-Finder]

Ha! In situ involves freezing a section "a freeze wall" and the heating another chunk for 2-3 years to 650 to 700 degrees F.

Can you imagine the energy requirements for that, even supposing the EROI is positive? The upfront energy costs are huge. How feasible is it to divert that much electrical energy to the extraction process for that long? I dont know how large the area to make it economically feasible is, but I'm guessing its huge. Secondly wheres the nuke plant(plants) necessary being built in the area? Nowhere as far as I know. Those things take a long time to get built, therefore I say oil shale production isnt on the medium term horizon.

In conclusion while it may be economical at current electrical rates to extract oil shale, that would change dramatically when you consider what would happen to rates when the process is started or constructing nuke plants is taken into consideration.

Oil shale is nothing more than propaganda for the sheeple, a con game for energy companies looking for investors(ie suckers), and a pipe dream for American patriots.

According to Shell, whose shale in-situ process is farthest along among all the companies doing western shale research, they intend to use natural gas extracted from the shale to power electrical power plants used to freeze the walls. Thus, they won't need to pay market rates for electricity, since they will be generating their own.

They also say the EROEI of their process will be between 3:1 and 7:1, depending on the scale of the project, and that the process is feasible as long as oil is $30/barrel and up.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazin ... /index.htm

[dinopello]

According to Shell, whose shale in-situ process is farthest along among all the companies doing western shale research, they intend to use natural gas extracted from the shale to power electrical power plants used to freeze the walls.

Why don't they just sell the natural gas ?

[Blacksmith]

Having worked on oil shale, all is not as it seems. Unless you have carrier beds or fractures you will not be able to extract the gas from the shale.

[Oil-Finder]

Why don't they just sell the natural gas ?

Because it would be more convenient for them to use it to power their power plant.