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Old 05-12-2012, 06:21 PM
 
6,734 posts, read 9,311,519 times
Reputation: 1857

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Quote:
Originally Posted by KUchief25 View Post
This may come as a shock to many oil haters but we use petroleum for many more things in this country other then making gas. Maybe take a look and see what happens in the real world and not the world of green weenies.
People who speak ill of dirty energy aren't necessarily "oil haters".
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Old 05-12-2012, 06:43 PM
 
Location: Ohio
24,624 posts, read 19,046,817 times
Reputation: 21733
Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis1979 View Post
Its shale oil, not crude.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nomander View Post
They don't cite who the "some analysts" are, nor the work to which those projections are from.

I am interested in how they substantiate that quote.
Okay, I just found an assay for the Green River shale.

Uh, it dates to 1986. That is not good, because that would mean the USGS was out there prior to that, maybe mid-to-late 1970s. If I had to guess, I'd say it was in response to the OPEC oil-embargo and a search for alternative oils.

I'm going to dance through this thing real quick-like --- bear in mind, this report is from 1986.

They're showing 12 to 258 L/Mg which works out to 3 to 62 gallons of oil for each ton of shale destroyed.

Here's the organic carbon distribution:

Condensed oil 70.6%

Retorted shale 19.6%

Gases 8.1 %

Of every gallon extracted, a little less than 3/4 is useable. The gases are going to be methane, ethane, butane, propane, hexane etc etc.

Here we go:

Quote:
The average sulfur content in these raw shales is 0.82 wt% and ranges from 0.05 to 2.23%. The average sulfur content in the oils is 0.67 wt% and ranges from 0.31 to 1.93%.
That makes it a sour [high sulfur] oil. Sure, some of it is <0.50% but it's all mixed in together. I seriously doubt they'll spend the money to separate it, because running two and three pipelines would get expensive. They'll just leave it blended like Russian Blend or Brent Blend. That means it'll be expensive for gasoline. Gasoline is already at 30 ppm Sulfur under Tier 2, and when they go to Tier 3 (probably January 2013) that will be reduced to 10 ppm Sulfur. Sulfur redux is expensive (it's the catalysts).

I don't see anything specific on the API, but from the numbers, it looks to be an heavy oil on the lighter end, or an intermediate oil on the heavy end. Most of it would get exported, just like East Texas Sour.

Not really much to get thrilled about.

Assaying..

Mircea
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Old 05-12-2012, 06:57 PM
 
Location: honolulu
1,729 posts, read 1,528,835 times
Reputation: 450
Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit View Post
Y

You OK with that?
they about to destroy the country..... that would only make the rocky's small potatoes
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Old 05-12-2012, 08:18 PM
 
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,620 posts, read 12,683,986 times
Reputation: 20050
Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit View Post
Because you can't drill oil of those shale formations. You either have to dig up the shale and extract the oil from it (as Canada does with their tar sands) or inject steam or some other fluid to force it out.

So far, the injection systems aren't cost effective. And, of course, using steam requires huge amounts of water, which is limited in that area and it's water that can't be recovered.

plus it takes a lot of energy to produce the immense amout of steam required to extract..so one would have to burn a lot of natural gas , coal or oil to create all the heated steam or water needed to do either process.. just adding to the complications of shale oil extraction..
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Old 05-12-2012, 08:55 PM
 
Location: Maryland about 20 miles NW of DC
6,105 posts, read 5,964,724 times
Reputation: 2479
Quote:
Originally Posted by T-310 View Post
How would it be destroyed?

Drill, baby, drill.

We have a cretins who think all oil gushes out of the ground like it did at Spindle Top. In the case of oil shales it does not Oil shale is a rock like any other rock. We once used shale to make roofing tiles and slate boads (the original black boards). Oil Shales are shale with a few percent by weight hydrocarbons in the form we call kerogen. To get it out of the rock we need to grind it up, heat it to high temperature and than wash it with steam to liberate it. Then you have kerogen and you now have to do additional refining, to get it to the point you can feed it into a existing refinery to make a product that you can use. So you will need a lot of energy to run the machines, heat the material and most estimates find you have to use more energy ie BTUs to make one BTUs worth of shale oil. This is also a problem with ethanol production from corn which has that extra step of converting starch to sugar before you feed it to the yeast to make alcohol. The other problem is cost, most studies suggest a shale oil operation needs 250-350 dollar a barrel oil to break even so if 12 dollar a gallon gas is ok with you I think it would be fine with Exxon-Mobil, Chevron Conoco-Phillips. To break this cost barrier to Oil Shale production the AEC did a nuclear test at Rifle CO where a atomic bomb was exploded in a oil shale formation , the oil and gas freed by this procedure was highly radioactive, or too hot to handle!

As for drill baby drill! I sugest you get hand drill and drill a hole in your head to relieve the pressur. You will feel a whole lot better.
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Old 05-13-2012, 12:55 AM
 
29,409 posts, read 21,918,854 times
Reputation: 5455
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea View Post
Okay, I just found an assay for the Green River shale.

Uh, it dates to 1986. That is not good, because that would mean the USGS was out there prior to that, maybe mid-to-late 1970s. If I had to guess, I'd say it was in response to the OPEC oil-embargo and a search for alternative oils.

I'm going to dance through this thing real quick-like --- bear in mind, this report is from 1986.

They're showing 12 to 258 L/Mg which works out to 3 to 62 gallons of oil for each ton of shale destroyed.

Here's the organic carbon distribution:

Condensed oil 70.6%

Retorted shale 19.6%

Gases 8.1 %

Of every gallon extracted, a little less than 3/4 is useable. The gases are going to be methane, ethane, butane, propane, hexane etc etc.

Here we go:



That makes it a sour [high sulfur] oil. Sure, some of it is <0.50% but it's all mixed in together. I seriously doubt they'll spend the money to separate it, because running two and three pipelines would get expensive. They'll just leave it blended like Russian Blend or Brent Blend. That means it'll be expensive for gasoline. Gasoline is already at 30 ppm Sulfur under Tier 2, and when they go to Tier 3 (probably January 2013) that will be reduced to 10 ppm Sulfur. Sulfur redux is expensive (it's the catalysts).

I don't see anything specific on the API, but from the numbers, it looks to be an heavy oil on the lighter end, or an intermediate oil on the heavy end. Most of it would get exported, just like East Texas Sour.

Not really much to get thrilled about.

Assaying..

Mircea
If the price of oil remains high and the demand too it will be worth the venture to get after the shale to the big boys. Of course by the time all the leases are signed and fees paid and lawsuits brought we'll probably be flying spaceships to the grocery store. I believe some countries use shale to run power plants too. Yeah when the go to tier 3 it will have to be the good stuff used in the US and we'll all pay for it of course. Maybe time to get a horse.
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Old 05-13-2012, 01:04 AM
 
4,019 posts, read 3,930,755 times
Reputation: 2938
Very misleading report.

What they don't tell you is that oil shale extraction is notoriously difficult and energy intensive.

Requires vast amount of energy to extract this kind of oil. It could take 2.5 trillion barrels of oil to extract that 3 trillion barrels of oil in the ground for example. So your net energy is only half a billion barrels.

They also don't tell you oil shale is much lower quality than conventional light sweet crude. Much of the shale oil may be so poor in quality that it cannot be used as liquid fuel. And requires very costly special processing facilities.
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Old 05-13-2012, 01:15 AM
 
29,409 posts, read 21,918,854 times
Reputation: 5455
Well there are folks like Shell, Chevron, Exxon going after the shale in Argentina. I'm sure the main reason is most of the shale here is on government lands and they know it would be useless to even try.

The way I look at it is it's there so when somebody comes up with a good way to get it then go for it. Unlike the green weenies who think they have to plow on into the madness with government funded projects going bankrupt by the month lately it seems. Nobody said it was gonna happen overnight. Let em figure it out.
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Old 05-13-2012, 11:21 AM
 
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,620 posts, read 12,683,986 times
Reputation: 20050

Tar Sands Oil Extraction - The Dirty Truth - YouTube
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Old 05-13-2012, 01:48 PM
 
27,307 posts, read 16,124,363 times
Reputation: 12100
I would use trucks or trains to remove the shale for processing elsewhere then restore the grounds.

Everybody is happy.
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