By Jessie Elder
A reserve of oil shale lying underneath Utah, Colorado and Wyoming could provide enough oil to meet 25 percent of America''s current oil demand for the next 400 years, according to a non-profit organization study.
That is, of course, if technological and environmental issues are resolved, says the RAND Corp.
Oil shale, which isn?t the typical oil most American?s think of, requires more processing and can be difficult to obtain.
?Obviously the oil shale deposits contain a significant resource of potential petroleum,? said James Kohler, Utah Bureau of Land Management solid minerals branch chief. ?However, there are a number of technological hurdles before it can actually be viable. So is it a potential? Absolutely. Are we here today? No.?
Before trying to mine oil shale, Kohler says we need to look at what oil shale really is.
?Oil Shale is actually a misnomer,? he said. ?Oil shale isn?t shale and it does not have oil in it.?
Oil shale is a poor grain limestone with a great amount of organic material that, in order to convert into a liquid petroleum product, needs to be heated up significantly. The liquid petroleum product is then shale oil.
Shale oil is different than typical petroleum, Kohler said, because it is deficient in hydrogen and contains excess nitrogen, so before the product can be used in a refinery processes it needs to go through an additional process to add hydrogen to it.
?All of those processes, the mining the rock or heating it up in place costs a fair amount of money,? Kohler said. ?The getting there is expensive and so it?s only sustainable when oil prices are high enough to justify the expense of doing it.?
Thomas H. Morris, a BYU geology professor said we have the technology.
?We know how to get oil out of these oil shale rocks, it?s just a matter of the economics of the whole project.?
Another technological concern is the amount of energy required to get a barrel of oil out of the oil shale, Kohler said.
?If it takes more energy to get a barrel of oil out than there is in that barrel of oil,? Kohler said. ?Then obviously it?s not the answer to any problems.?
There are also a number of environmental issues, Kohler said.
One way hydrogen is added to shale oil is water, a scarce commodity in areas of Colorado and Utah and Wyoming where the deposits exist.
?There?s some estimates that it takes upwards of three to four barrels of water for every barrel of oil you produce,? Kohler said. ?If we?re gong to produce a significant amount of shale oil, potentially we would be using a lot of water and in the arid west that is somewhat problematic.?
Another environmental concern is waste disposal.
?When you process the shale you get an increase in volume of the waste product that you?ve removed and there becomes a waste disposal issue,? Kohler said. ?There?s a certain amount of material that has to be disposed of somewhere.?
However, the amount of waste depends on how the oil shale is mined.
??If you?re going to extract oil shale at the surface and process the rock in a plant,? Morris said, ?then you?re going to have a lot of waste product.?
Morris not only teaches the petroleum geology class at BYU, but is also a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Morris said if the shale is heated up where it is in the ground, the oil will drip out of the rock and can be collected there without generating a lot of rock waste.
According to the RAND study, overcoming these technological and environmental issues could take 20 or 30 years and they recommend moving development at a measured pace.
The RAND group also recommends that the federal government refrain from major investments in oil shale development until the private sector is prepared to commit its technical, management and financial resources.
The Bureau of Land Management said they are moving forward with a measured step approach.
?There are some technological and environmental issues that are going to be overcome before oil shale is really commercial,? Kohler said.
The BLM just finished a period of accepting nominations for small research and development tracks. If operators working on these small tracks can show that oil shale oil production can be commercially viable, then these operations will be able to expand.
?I view it as something that requires a fairly measured incremental approach,? Kohler said. ? not something you can walk up and turn the switch and start immediately producing a million barrels of oil a day.?