DOE-Funded Project Shows Promise for Tapping Vast Oil Shale Resources

Washington, D.C.—A technology as simple as an advanced heater cable may hold the secret for tapping into the nation’s largest source of oil, which is contained in vast amounts of shale in the Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

In a recently completed project sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) through the Office of Fossil
Energy’s Oil and Natural Gas Program, Composite Technology
Development (CTD) Inc. successfully demonstrated the
application of a ceramic-composite insulated heater cable for
oil shale recovery deep underground.

“With DOE’s support over two phases of this project, CTD has demonstrated a way to tap into the western oil shale resources,” said Dr. Victor K. Der, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy. “With two-thirds of the world’s supply of oil shale in the United States, technologies such as this can go a long way toward bolstering the development of our domestic energy resources, creating jobs, and supporting energy security.”

The United States holds about two thirds of the world’s estimated reserves of 3.7 trillion barrels of oil shale, an amount thought to be 40 percent larger than remaining supplies of petroleum worldwide. Scientists believe that the Green River shale formation alone, in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, has as much as 1.1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent.

CTD researchers conducted 5,000 hours of continuous testing of its cable at temperatures ranging between 760 to 850 degrees Celsius. During the tests, the cable overcame many of the limitations of existing cables, which include conductor instability, moisture-induced degradation, and operating temperatures too limited to recover shale oil underground. The project was managed by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Oil shale contains a substance called kerogen, which is the
organic material from which oil is derived. Kerogen cannot be
pumped from a reservoir like oil. Instead, the oil shale rock
must be heated to separate the liquid. Once the liquid is
collected, it can be upgraded to synthetic crude oil for
shipment and refining in the nation’s existing petroleum
infrastructure.

CTD’s successful test of its heater cable holds promise for
heating the shale oil in situ, down to a depth of 5,000 feet,
thus separating the kerogen without having to go through the
expensive process of mining the oil shale rock. If future
underground tests of the cable prove successful, operators
should be able to extract a petroleum-like liquid that is fluid
enough to be pumped to the surface.

By eliminating the mining and a portion of the large-scale
processing associated with oil shale recovery, CTD’s advanced
cable system is estimated to cut recovery costs in half while
addressing environmental issues on the surface.

source: DOE, Mike Jacobs