Re: Oil Shale Is Back
- From: Jo Schaper <jonot34schaperat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:28:48 -0600
However, I bet the biologists will have something to say about the 'cook the underground critters' plan. Just as they already have had stuff to say about the "pump CO2 underground to sequester it because nothing lives there except animals" plan.
I'm not as concerned about the oil shale plan as much as the carbon sequestration plan. I am concerned about the latter, because there seems to be a number of people who don't understand that CO2, moisture and limestone or gypsum don't mix very well, to say nothing of if you run into 'bad air' underground, you are pretty much toast if you don't get out PDQ. And I go underground.
One question about both plans: energy is needed to generate microwaves and to inject gas or liquified CO2.
I'd like to see net energy budgets on both schemes.
SBC Yahoo wrote:
It looks like microwaves and $90/barrel oil have made recovering oil from shale feasible again. The former vice president of a oil company with oil shale reserves, told me a couple of years ago, they would not go back into oil shale even at $70/barrell crude. I bet today, they are singing a different tune, if the microwaves work as well in the field as they did in the lab..
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Microwaves used to extract oil
Schlumberger will buy technology for use on oil-shale reserves in Colorado and other Western states.
By Mark Jewell
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 01/22/2008 01:06:51 AM MST
John Cogliandro, a Raytheon engineer, uses an antenna to generate heat and melt a substance in shale that can be converted to oil. (Michael Dwyer, The Associated Press )
BOSTON - A major defense contractor is selling technology to a large oil-field-services company that hopes microwaves will someday become a key tool in unlocking the vast but hard-to-extract oil reserves in the West's underground shale deposits.
Much as a microwave oven heats food, Raytheon Co.'s technology relies on microwaves to generate underground heat and melt a waxy substance in the shale called kerogen so it can be converted into oil. Carbon dioxide heated and pressurized into a liquid form is used to extract the oil from the rock and carry it to a well.
The world's fifth-largest defense contractor isn't the only company focusing on heat-generating technologies to address an engineering challenge that oil companies have tried to crack for decades - so far with no efficient, environmentally sensitive method that has proven commercially viable, despite rising oil prices.
In a deal to be announced today, oil-field-services company Schlumberger Ltd. is buying technology that Raytheon developed with Boston-based CF Technologies, which supplied expertise to extract oil using so-called "supercritical" liquid carbon dioxide.
Lee Silvestre, a Raytheon vice president, said Schlumberger was paying an undisclosed upfront fee along with royalties that could extend "multiple decades" for any revenue that Schlumberger generates through the technology. Some of the proceeds would be shared with CF Technologies.
Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon and Houston-based Schlumberger would not disclose further details
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8039042?source=rss
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