D.C. Watch

Oil Shale Anyone?

Byron Merrell, an oil shale entrepreneur of Oil-Tech is claiming to have designed, tested and validated a breakthrough method of economically producing oil from shale rock with minimal environmental impact. He is not the first to attempt this, Shell and Exxon Mobil have their eyes set on this mountainous resource, which could hold more oil than Saudi Arabia. The most popular undertaking thus far has been an initiative by the Shell Oil Company called the Mahogany Research Project and Exxon’s Colony II Project in Garfield County, Colorado, where 2,000 people eventually lost their jobs when Exxon pulled out of the project in 1982. Until now, the economics of this process was in question, but with increasing price of crude oil (cost/barrel of oil touching $70), renewed interest in this technology might mean every oil corporation on this planet would want a piece of this Rocky Mountain Rock.

Oil-Tech, Inc. a Utah based private corporation has built a large-scale plant to demonstration the effectiveness of this process. According to Oil-Tech’s website, the impact on our environement is minimum. Here is the excerpt.

Environment Impact  

 

The retort is a sealed unit that is electrically heated, vacuum purged and environmentally friendly, with no toxic output. Propane/methane gas, the cleanest burning gas known to the energy industry, is a byproduct of the process that may either be flared off or used to support the cogeneration efforts.

 

The raw spent shale has been tested by the State of Utah and found to be non-polluting. The State thus granted permission to store spent materials on the surface. The State is also interested in using the spent shale to fill old abandoned Gilsonite mines.

 

Minimal water is required for the process. Unlike most other designs, the retort does not require water for its operation. The mining operations and spent shale operations will require a small amount of water for activities such as dust control and cleaning equipment.

 

 

 

 

But like in any resource consuming process, oil from shale would impact the environment in more ways than one. For starters, the demonstration plant using electrical heaters would not be economically feasible for larger scale plants, hence requiring conventional boilers consuming large volumes of water.

- The raw material will be mined from Utah and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain, which would directly impact the landscape and the fragile ecosystem it supports

- The mining process itself would generate air pollutants, mine runoffs etc, we all know about that

- Shale heated in boilers would stress water supply

My intent here is not to reduce this technology into an obtuse idea or to just be critical for the sake of it, by suggesting that innovation with no eco-sustainability aspect built-in needs extra scrutiny, I simply caution those in power to know where and when to draw the line.

Footnote: Oil-Tech, Inc. is a small privately held C-Corporation, located within the State of Utah, that has recently made significant breakthroughs in the economical production of oil from shale rock. A large demonstration unit has been built to showcase the effectiveness of the process, with its operation having been successfully validated by an independent engineering firm. We are currently developing Oil-Tech as a technology company whose revenue will come from joint ventures with mining and other energy based consortiums, licensing and leasing fees along with production royalties from shale and coal mining companies utilizing our retort technology.
 

Photo Courtesy: Oil-Tech & Wikipedia

 

Posted by Moderator on May 23rd, 2006 filed in Alternative Fuel, Exxon, News, Oil Tech, Shale, Shell 2 Comments »