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44 comments on Denver Post: Oil shale may be fool's gold

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mcain6925 on December 19, 2005 - 7:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I had a chance to have one of my questions about oil shale asked during a session by Shell at the Colorado School of Mines. I couldn't be there that day, so a friend on the faculty acted as the go-between. My question was basically, "You put a certain large amount of energy into an oil shale formation using the in situ process and you get X barrels of petroleum out. You put the same amount of energy into a coal liquifaction facility (including the mining, etc) and you get Y barrels out. Is X larger or smaller than Y." There were a lot of caveats added, but the basic answer seemed to be that they thought X<Y.

If the Shell process works as advertised, there are some benefits. Any excess carbon is supposed to stay in the ground along with any heavy metals that happen to be there. And there's a boatload of oil shale. But coal liquifaction can be clean too, if you work at it. And if the correct answer is that X<Y, then it would seem logical to do coal liquifaction first and get around to the oil shale later if you need it.

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Boof on December 20, 2005 - 1:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If shale oil and coal-to-liquids are both evil does it matter which is the lesser of two evils? Remember in either case that carbon was safely underground before it was added to the atmosphere.

OK in 100 years time we can have some alternative fossil fuels when CO2 is under control.

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Jack on December 20, 2005 - 2:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Why would coal-to-liquids be "evil"?
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Boof on December 20, 2005 - 6:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If you can download this file dclversussicl.pdf from the Princeton Environmental Institute (no link) it suggests CTL has well-to-wheels CO2 omissions 80% higher than petrofuels. However I believe this estimate uses optimistic assumptions and the figure is more like the 200% excess attributed to Canadian tar sands. The same kinds of negatives from tar sands also apply to CTL such as water requirements, strip mining, declining EROI and inevitable depletion. Positives are electricity co-generation and the fact the fuel is low in sulphur and aromatics. If you believe we must move towards carbon neutral fuels then CTL has no place.
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Stuart Staniford on December 20, 2005 - 4:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes.  Shell has quoted the EROEI of their in-situ process at around 3.  Mining and liquifying coal has got to be quite a bit better than that.  However, if one adds in carbon-sequestration at the CTL plant, it maybe isn't so clear.
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44 comments on Denver Post: Oil shale may be fool's gold

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