The last effort to exploit the vast oil-shale fields in western Colorado and eastern Utah foundered in the 1980s after crude prices tumbled 72 percent.
But today, in the high desert near Rifle, workers from the major oil companies are back, trying to develop breakthrough technology that would allow oil to be extracted from the rock.
Chevron, which helped build the Saudi Arabian energy industry when it struck oil in the kingdom in 1938, plans to shatter 200-foot-thick layers of shale deep underground, said Robert Lestz, the company’s oil-shale technology manager.
Rather than using heat to transform the shale into crude, Chevron plans to saturate the rubble with chemicals to convert it. The method will reduce power needs and production costs, Lestz said last week. Using chemical reactions to get oil from shale also means fewer byproducts such as ash and fewer greenhouse gases, he said.
Competing experiments
Chevron scientists are working with researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to determine which chemicals work best for converting shale to crude oil.
Shell engineers are burying hundreds of steel rods 2,000 feet underground that will heat the shale to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which Teflon melts.
The heat will be applied for the next four years to convert the hydrocarbons from dead plants and plankton, once part of a prehistoric lake, into high-quality crude that is equal parts jet fuel, diesel and naphtha, the main ingredient in gasoline.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil plans to shoot particles of petroleum coke, a waste byproduct of oil refining, into cracks in the shale. The coke will be electrically charged to create a subterranean hot plate that will cook the shale until it turns into crude. The company declined to discuss the progress of its oil-shale tests.
Raytheon Co., the maker of Tomahawk missiles and the first microwave ovens, is developing a process that would use radio waves to cook the shale.
“These are quite remarkable technological approaches,” said Jeremy Boak, a geologist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, who spent 11 years cleaning up radioactive waste and disposing of weapons-grade plutonium at U.S. government sites. “The oil companies don’t have the exploration problem of finding resources to drill. We know the oil is here. It’s just a matter of getting it out.”
Energy providers are investing in shale-oil production because the reserves are large enough to generate higher returns than smaller fields in Oklahoma and Texas, where output is declining after eight decades.
U.S. oil-shale deposits likely hold 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, according to Jack Dyni, a geologist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey. All 12 countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries combined have proved crude-oil reserves of about 911 billion barrels, according to statistics compiled by BP Plc.
“The potential for shale is large,” said Joseph Stanislaw, senior energy adviser for Deloitte & Touche LLP and co-author with oil analyst Daniel Yergin of “The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy.”
“Assuming the technology proves out, the size and scale of the reserves are significant.”
