"Wasn't Carter a big believer in shale oil?"
In the political world, as opposed to the petroleum one, Nixon (I think), Ford, and Carter..
"To Washington, however, coal's virtue lay principally in its abundance and its accessibility. Congress in 1974 authorized stepped-up research into various nonnuclear alternatives to petroleum, and President Gerald Ford in 1975 proposed a national synfuels program which would produce the equivalent of 1 million barrels of oil per day by 1985. Not all of those million barrels were likely to come from coal; some would come from western oil shales or tar sands. Even so, synfuels promised a new market for coal as potentially profitable as home heating or electric utility markets."
RayGun pulled the plug.
lib.niu.edu
In petroleum world, they've been working on it for over 100 years. Turns out the best and highest energy use may be to burn it as it is, like coal.
The term ‘oil shale’ is a misnomer. It does not contain oil nor is it commonly shale. The organic material is chiefly kerogen and the "shale" is usually a relatively hard rock, called marl. Properly processed, kerogen can be converted into a substance somewhat similar to petroleum. However, it has not gone through the ‘oil window’ of heat (nature’s way of producing oil) and therefore, to be changed into an oil-like substance, it must be heated to a high temperature. By this process the organic material is converted into a liquid, which must be further processed to produce an oil which is said to be better than the lowest grade of oil produced from conventional oil deposits, but of lower quality than the upper grades of conventional oil.
There are two conventional approaches to oil shale processing. In one, the shale is fractured in-situ and heated to obtain gases and liquids by wells. The second is by mining, transporting, and heating the shale to about 450oC, adding hydrogen to the resulting product, and disposing of and stabilising the waste. Both processes use considerable water. The total energy and water requirements together with environmental and monetary costs (to produce shale oil in significant quantities) have so far made production uneconomic. During and following the oil crisis of the 1970’s, major oil companies, working on some of the richest oil shale deposits in the world in western United States, spent several billion dollars in various unsuccessful attempts to commercially extract shale oil. In Colo, after spending billions of dollars, industry has terminated oil shale operations due to a low net energy recovery and a lack of water resources.
Shell has been working for more than 25 years on a novel technology that heats the shale in the ground. Such an "in situ" process wouldn't involve an expensive and environmentally troublesome mining operation and wouldn't create thousands of tons of waste in the form of spent shale, as the mining method does.
But Shell's process is complicated. The company plans to insert electric heaters hundreds of feet into the ground to heat the oil shale to between 650 degrees and 700 degrees for more than two years. In order to prevent groundwater from flowing into its production area -- which would raise pollution concerns and dissipate the heat -- Shell plans to create an underground wall around its site by freezing surrounding groundwater, down to 2,000 feet deep.
All those heaters, freezers, hydrogen require their own energy, too.
A 2007 GAO study concluded that, “it is possible that in 10 years from now, the oil shale resource could produce 0.5 million to 1.0 million barrels per day.” ( Right now, we produce, total liquids, 85 MBPD. Looks like by 2020, that will be 60 MBPD. )But the GAO noted that the development of oil shale faces key challenges, including: “(1) controlling and monitoring groundwater, (2) permitting and emissions concerns associated with new power generation facilities, (3) reducing overall operating costs, (4) water consumption*, and (5) land disturbance and reclamation.”
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Message 24582364
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We do know that Shell has been buying water rights for years now and I assume that the other companies involved are also doing this. I've seen estimates of total use by oil shale of 300,000 acre feet per year. Coincidentally, that is pretty close to estimates of the remaining water for the Upper Basin States (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming) in the Colorado River Basin under the Colorado River Compact. In other words, oil shale development may take all the water that is left to develop in Colorado. No water for new agriculture, a growing population or other industries such as electrical generation or biofuels. Colorado's population is expected to grow by 3 million over the next few decades and we're hoping to keep agricultural dryups to a minimum since they provide $16 billion a year to the economy.
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