Page 189 - Synthetic Fuels Handbook

FUELS FROM OIL SHALE 175

Many estimates have been published for oil shale reserves (in fact resources), but the
rank of countries vary with time and authors, except that United States is always on number
one over 60 percent. Brazil is the most frequent number two. The United States has vast
known oil shale resources that could translate into as much as 2.2 trillion barrels of known
kerogen oil-in-place. In fact, the largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the
Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates
of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion
barrels. However, not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil
shale resources, there is an approximate upper boundary of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a
lower boundary of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to
know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in the estimate
(800 billion barrels) is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. With present
demand for petroleum products in the United States at approximately 20 million barrels per
day, oil shale by only meeting a quarter of that demand would last for more than 400 years.
Oil shale represents a large and mostly untapped hydrocarbon resource. Like tar sand
(oil sand in Canada), oil shale is considered unconventional because oil cannot be produced
directly from the resource by sinking a well and pumping. Oil has to be produced thermally
from the shale. The organic material contained in the shale is called kerogen, a solid mate-
rial intimately bound within the mineral matrix.
Oil shale occurs in nearly 100 major deposits in 27 countries worldwide (Duncan and
Swanson, 1965; Culbertson and Pitman, 1973). It is generally shallower (<3000 ft) than the
deeper and warmer geologic zones required to form oil. Worldwide, the oil shale resource base
is believed to contain about 2.6 trillion barrels, of which the vast majority, or about 2 trillion
barrels, (including eastern and western shale), is located within the United States.

6.3.1 Australia
Australia has reported a proved amount in place of 32.4 billion metric tons of oil shale, with
proved recoverable reserves of oil put at 1725 million metric tons. Additional reserves of
shale oil are huge: in excess of 35 billion metric tons.
Production from oil shale deposits in southeastern Australia began in the 1860s, coming
to an end in the early 1950s when government funding ceased. Between 1865 and 1952
some 4 million metric tons of oil shale were processed. During the 1970s and early 1980s
a modern exploration program was undertaken by two Australian companies, Southern
Pacific Petroleum (SPP) and Central Pacific Minerals (CPM). The aim was to find high-
quality oil shale deposits amenable to open-pit mining operations in areas near infrastruc-
ture and deepwater ports. The program was successful in finding a number of silica-based
oil shale deposits of commercial significance along the coast of Queensland.
In 1995, SPP and CPM signed a joint venture agreement with the Canadian company
Suncor Energy Inc., to commence development of one of the oil shale deposits, the Stuart
deposit. Located near Gladstone, it has a total in situ shale oil resource of 2.6 billion barrels
and the capacity to produce more than 200,000 bbl/day. Suncor had had the role of operator
of the Stuart project. In April 2001, SPP and CPM purchased Suncor’s interest.
The Stuart project is conceived as processing (stage 3) 125,000 ton/day of oil shale to give
65,000 bbl/day of shale oil products, bringing total Stuart production to about 85,000 bbl/day
by 2009.
The raw shale oil produced will constitute relatively light crude with 42° API gravity
(American Petroleum Institute), 0.4 percent by weight of sulfur and 1.0 percent by weight
nitrogen. To meet the needs of the market, the raw oil requires further processing, resulting
in raw low-sulfur naphtha and medium shale oil. It is planned that the medium shale oil
will be sent directly to tankage for marketing as 27° API gravity, 0.4 percent by weight of