I have been pretty skeptical of the potential of oil shale for a long time. It is very difficult for me to see how they are going to make a go of it, and I wrote as much here:
“Oil Shale Development Imminent”
And:
Oil Shale = Cellulosic Ethanol
In those essays, I was primarily focused on the energy required to run the process, and I talked about Shell’s unique shale process. However, as I was passing through the Denver Airport on Sunday (actually, I ended up spending the whole day there!) – I spotted this story in the Denver Post:
Shale country tends to be dry country, and Shell’s process uses a lot of water. Some excerpts from the story:
In its quest to melt oil out of western Colorado’s shale, Royal Dutch Shell has been buying up land and water rights in anticipation of what is likely to be a thirsty new industry.
Some officials, however, worry that the demands of the oil-shale industry could drain every drop of the region’s remaining water.
“On the upper end, we’re looking at potentially several hundred thousand acre-feet of water — more than people think is commonly available to develop in the Colorado River,” said Dan Birch, deputy general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
Shell and other energy companies have amassed tens of thousands of acres of cropland, ranches and open space — including a state wildlife area — to gain water that would be needed to power the oil-shale process.
Count me among those who thinks this is a bad idea. We are pulling down aquifers now; I hate to see us accelerate that process to produce oil from shale. The energy return is already going to be very marginal. If it was any better than that for tar sands, they would already be producing oil from shale. But now add the fact that they are going to be using up water in dry areas, and it looks to me like a losing proposition.
While the claims of the oil potential there are pretty huge, so are the water requirements:
The Bureau of Land Management estimates the shale formation in western Colorado could yield as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of oil.
Getting that oil, however, could require three times as much water to operate power plants, according to some estimates.
“The volumes are pretty enormous,” said Bart Miller, water-program director for conservation group Western Resource Advocates.
“The net water requirements . . . were something in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000 acre-feet annually,” Miller said. “To put that in context, that’s the consumption of about 2.5 million people.”
Further, that 1.8 trillion is certainly not a net value. The net value is going to be far less, as it is going to take energy to process the oil. Even if the EROEI was 2 to 1, and I doubt it is, that would mean it would take almost a trillion barrels – all contributing more pollution to the environment – to process the 1.8 trillion barrels.
I remain skeptical. Oil shale has always been just around the corner. I think it will remain around the corner. On the other hand, the people at Shell aren’t stupid. They are buying up those water rights for a reason…
“Chrysler is hoping to jumpstart its faltering sales by guaranteeing customers they won’t have to pay more than $2.99 per gallon for most of the gas they use in their new Dodge, Chrysler, or Jeep for the next three years in an innovative new program that starts May 7 and runs through June 2.”
Getting that oil, however, could require three times as much water to operate power plants, according to some estimates.
“The net water requirements . . . were something in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000 acre-feet annually,” Miller said.
That’s 4.2-6.4 million bpd of water. At a 3:1 ratio, that’s 1.4-2.1m bpd of oil. Sounds like Shell is serious about a major ramp-up.
I’ve womdered for years why we haven’t piped water from the Mississippi out to the thirsty west. Over a million gallons of fresh water per second goes to waste.
They can’t recycle the water? In Orange County, CA, one of the wealthiest places in the country, they are doing toilet-to-tap for drinking water (PDF warning). Can’t these guys do effluent-to-influent?
They can’t recycle the water?
They haven’t gotten that worked out yet for tar sands, as evidenced by the continued presence of tailings ponds. So, I suspect that they probably can’t to any great extent.
Cheers, RR
Why isn’t Mississippi River water piped out the thirsty west? Easier said than done! Ask the Chinese how easy such large-scale water diversion projects are. Check out the “South-North Water Diversion Project” (nanshui beidiao), which was first conceived during the reign of Chairman Mao.
The water used is about the same as for 2-3 million people. That does not strike me as a problem. We grow by that amount of people (as a nation) annually, if you count immigration, illegal and legal. So, it would be like one year’s population growth, but only once. Remember, we total more than 300 million people now, as a nation. Check out rice farming if you want to know where water goes.
I sure hope this Shell shale works. We have gobs and gobs of the stuff. At $100 a barrel it will surely (okay, probably) make economic sense.
It is domestic. There are environmental problems, but not as bad as open-pit retort.
I see shale with wind, solar, geothermal and PHEVs as a doable pathway to energy independence and a higher standard of living.
True, when you burn shale oil, you pollute. But if combined with a switch to PHEVs, our total oil consumption could radically decline, while our domestic output rises.
What I am syaing, is there is the technology in place now to avoid any doomsday scenarios. We know windmills work. We know geothermal works, we know solar plants can be built. We have already built nuke plants, and we can build more. We are close on PHEVs, and even if they never work, we know we can build cars that get 65 mpg, or people can ride busses to work.
Riding a bus to work is not the end of the world, even in L.A.
Note that in Shell’s currently proposed process, this water is going to be used largely to cool the power plants needed to generate the electricity for their in situ retorting process. I had an opportunity to ask a couple of questions of Shell engineers when they did a presentation at Colorado School of Mines; a million bbl/day operation is projected to use about the same amount of electricity as currently generated in Colorado.
I have got to believe that there are better ways to apply that much electricity to transportation than to use it to heat oil shale.
By the way, Shell is saying they can get the shale oil out for $30 a barrel. Yes, what RR says is true, along with fusion, shale is the energy source of the future, and always will be….but Shell is not a bunch of VCs who think becuase they drive BMWs, that means their alternative energy plans will work…Shell has a very credible R&D effort….
They haven’t gotten that worked out yet for tar sands, as evidenced by the continued presence of tailings ponds.
Tailings ponds or dams is usually a way to dispose of the tailings, or “sand” from which the valuable oil/gold/platinum/whatever has been stripped off. The water is routinely recycled from tailings dams back into the mines for reuse.
…this water is going to be used largely to cool the power plants needed to generate the electricity for their in situ retorting process.
Well, if they are going to evaporate that much water, this can’t be very energy efficient. It takes a truckload of energy (2.4 MJ/kg) to evaporate water.
Something isn’t adding up…
Raytheon’s shale oil process using microwaves is much more efficient water-wise. Basing your expectations of shale oil on obsolete technologies would be doing your readers a disservice.
Expect EROI for shale oil to be in the vicinity of 3 to 4.
Well, if they are going to evaporate that much water, this can’t be very energy efficient. It takes a truckload of energy (2.4 MJ/kg) to evaporate water.
Something isn’t adding up…
Optimist 2.4 MJ/kg is a worst case scenario. If you use multi-effect evaporation depending on the number of effects you can cut down the amount of energy used signifigantly. For a 5 effect evaporation set you could evaporate 4 kg of water with only 1kg of steam.
Also being in the south west solar thermal would be perfect fit. Combined heat and power solar thermal electricity generation, where the excess heat is used to heat/evaporate and reprocess water tailings.
Monkey,
That’s great if the object is to evaporate water and save energy. With cooling water the object is the opposite: remove as much heat as possible and use as little water as possible. You’d try to get the full 2.4 MJ/kg as much as possible.
And if you are going to need that much water just to make-up your cooling requirements, you are sending a LOT of heat into the surrounding environment. All of which must come from either external supply or the oil shale. Either way it destroyes efficiency.
I have got to believe that there are better ways to apply that much electricity to transportation than to use it to heat oil shale
If we figure 1000 miles/bbl, then 1m bpd 365 billion miles/year. Colorado uses 50 billion kWh/year, enough to drive about 200 billion miles. So oil shale gives us almost twice as many miles. Well, that’s if all the oil went for transport. In reality the oil shale would produce a similar amount of vehicle miles plus a bunch of petroleum coproducts.
What is the cost of extracting shale oil excluding water?
Is it $30 to $60 a barrel?
Then we can add the market price of water. Assuming $30 per barrel of water, we get the cost of processing shale oil = $60-$90 a barrel.
At oil prices above $100, we can expect billions of barrels of oil to extracted from Shale around the world.
Can I ask some other questions?
What is the expected oil supply growth rate (global) for 2008? 2009? 2010? I would appreciate a variety of different forecasts from different sources.
Historical data is here:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/oilproduction.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentTotalOilSupplyBarrelsperDay.xls
Excluding Venezeula, Iraq, and Nigeria, is oil production being restrained by non-market factors (security, irrational policies) anywhere else in the world?
My project that global oil production will be much greater than expected in 2010 and 2011, as a lot more oil sands and oil shale production comes online than expected. The price of oil is also likely to tank as a result. Is this realistic?
Shale oil is another opportunity to use nuclear to enhance fuel production. see here
While the claims of the oil potential there are pretty huge, so are the water requirements:
Can they use salt water? If they can, it might be worth building a pipeline to bring water from the Pacific (no shortage there), even if it costs a billion or so to build the pipeline.
The problem of what to do with billions of gallons of waste salt water could be a problem, but there are places (dry lakebeds) in the American West that few should mind if they are made into a new Great Salt Lake.
My thoughts as well Rum.
If 2 barrels of salt water are needed to process 1 barrel of shale oil, and it costs $15 a barrel for ocean water, the water input costs of shale oil are $30 per barrel. Assuming the rest of the input costs per barrel of shale oil is $30 to $60 per barrel, shale oil has an extraction cost of $60 to $90 a barrel.
This is why I suspect there will be a big surge in shale and oil sands oil production in the coming years. I am surprised that major projects haven’t been announced yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_megaprojects
I suspect many major projects will be announced soon.