The Oil Drum

13 comments on An echoing Shhh, or more on mining of oil shale

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Rick on June 28, 2006 - 7:01pm

A very helpful post--thanks.

The numbers quickly get mind-numbing on this: they're both too large, and way too small, at the same time.

Based on your numbers, the hypothetical 100,000 ton per day operation would yield 59,500 bpd (average grade, 25 gal/ton) to 119,000 bpd (high grade, 50 gal/ton). At an arbitrary $70 per barrel, that's gross revenues of $4 to $8 million per day, or $1.5 to $3 billion per year. That's a pretty big business for most industries.

Unfortunately, for all the investment, and all the environmental damage, the output from this operation is maybe 0.3% of US daily consumption. Put this output in the context of declining US and world oil output, and it looks like a pretty small band-aid.

I think we'll need every little bit of fuel that is economically and environmentally feasible to produce--and current evidence (as RR points out) suggests that we'll produce everything regardless of environmental or economic concerns. Shale oil is probably part of that picture.

I guess there is no problem with clutching at straws as long as you know they are straws, and you work to come up with better approaches (like conservation).

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cactus on June 29, 2006 - 1:28am

Alternatively, at 25gal/ton, 1 million barrel per day production (5% of US consumption) would require mining and processing of just over 600 million tons (Mt) oil shale per year. That is equivalent to about 60% of the tonnage of US domestic coal production (1030 Mt/y).

To achieve oil independence, oil shale would need to be mined at a rate equal to more than 8 times current US coal production.

Energy content in 1 ton of oil shale: 2700MJ
Energy content in 1 ton of coal: 23000MJ

Compared to coal, mining the same tonnage of oil shale yields around 12% of the energy.

Hmmm, if insitu is not feasible, can't see this one flying somehow and we haven't even gotten to EROI, water usage, disposal of the waste material, GHG production...

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Luis de Sousa on June 29, 2006 - 3:29am

Hi cactus, very good point indeed.

Knowing that the EPR of Coal is around 30, that 12% figure gives us some (but small) hope about Shale.

If 1 ton of coal yields 23000 MJ, the energy spent to mine it would be about 770 MJ (766,666 actually).

So using the same techniques, and assuming that mining 1 ton of Shale takes the same energy has minig 1 ton f Coal, Shale would have an EPR of 3.5. This is lower than Nuclear but higher than Onshore Wind.

Still that rock would have to be heated up, lowering even further the EPR value.

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