Shale newcomer IDT Corp. plans initial extractions below water table
By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel
Saturday, August 23, 2008
gjsentinel.com
A New Jersey-based telecommunications company is working to get to the bottom of oil shale’s prospects.
IDT Corp., which founder Howard Jonas started as a supplier of low-cost, long-distance phone calls and which now is known for its prepaid phone cards, delved into oil shale earlier this year when Jonas started looking for a way into the energy business.
The Bronx-raised Jonas watched the rise and eventual collapse of the oil shale in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Claude Pupkin, president of American Shale Oil, one of the companies IDT purchased as it ventured into shale.
Jonas was “aware of the vast resources and frustrated that we haven’t exploited the resource,” Pupkin said.
American Shale and EGL Resources are working on one of the five research, demonstration and development leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management in northwest Colorado.
Shell Oil Co., which holds three of those leases, is now experimenting with a freezewall that surrounds the rock the company is heating until it releases the petroleum distillates that can be captured. The distillates are then refined into transportation fuels for autos, trucks and jets.
IDT hopes to avoid the step of setting up a freezewall, which is aimed at protecting groundwater, by first capturing the petroleum products available beneath the groundwater.
Like the Shell process, the IDT approach leaves the rock otherwise undisturbed, even while the petroleum is being freed up by heat.
To capture the deepest resources first, the company will drill 2,000 to 2,300 feet and, using directional techniques, bore a horizontal grid beneath and around the deposit. Such a grid would allow the company to produce petroleum while also buying it time to learn how to deal with water-quality issues, said Roger Day, vice president of operations.
“We’ll start with this below-aquifer approach, generate cash flow and work on technological development, then come up with other solutions” for the rock close to the surface, Pupkin said.
Rather than being a consumer of water, the technique would produce water, Day said.
American Shale Oil’s technique also would generate its own energy from the fuels being released far below the surface, Day said.
“We’ll be self-sufficient and not have to import” heating fuels, he said.
Once the petroleum is freed, the shale could be used for carbon sequestration, Day said.
The company plans to submit its application for commercial development in six years, but expects to produce small quantities in a few years, Pupkin said. |
