Oil companies researching oil shale development are watching the unfolding of US leasing and environmental regulatory policies that could influence the economics of producing unconventional petroleum resources, said the National Oil Shale Association.
GlennVawter, executive director of National Oil Shale Association in Glenwood Springs, Colo., said technological advances have sharply reduced possible negative environmental consequences of production processes.
Yet, questions still remain about how much energy would be used and how much carbon dioxide could be emitted if commercial oil shale projects are undertaken in the US.
“Oil shale developers are actively engaged in research, development, and planning for the best methods to manage the carbon that will be produced during production,” Vawter said, adding that sequestration technology could contain the CO2 emitted.
He notes that “the means and cost of disposing of or sequestering vast amounts of CO2 poses a significant challenge. Lastly, the cost of meeting uncertain future regulatory requirements adds significant investment risk.”
No commercial leasing yet
The US Bureau of Land Management issued a final programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) on Sept. 4 to guide the use of public land containing oil shale and tar sands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
The document, which BLM developed under Sec. 369[d] and [c] of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, amends 12 land-use plans to set aside 1.9 million acres of public land for potential commercial oil shale development, the US Department of the Interior agency said.
The PEIS identifies the most promising areas on federal land in the three states that would be open to applications for commercial leasing.
Multiple steps have yet to be completed before any oil shale lease sale would happen, BLM has said. Spokesmen with oil companies suggest that it could take 5-10 years to finalize regulations, and that leasing might start toward the end of the next decade.
Vawter said that completion of oil shale leasing regulations would give oil companies “the ground rules on leases and bonus payments, which would help companies decide if they want to spend millions of dollars” on oil shale development.
Water, carbon balance
Researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque are analyzing the lifecycle carbon footprint and the water required to fully extract hydrocarbons from oil shale, they said in comments prepared for a recent Oil Shale Symposium in Golden, Colo., organized by the Colorado Energy Research Institute and the Colorado School of Mines.
“Extracting unconventional petroleum reserves can be relatively water and energy intensive, which could result in correspondingly greater environmental impacts when the process is scaled up to the billions of gallons (and trillions globally) of potential petroleum in place,” Sandia researchers said.
When considering the oil shale of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, it is estimated that production could require 3 gal of water or more for every barrel produced, they said, noting this would add to competition for the heavily used water in the Colorado River basin.
Researchers said they are working to develop metrics based on production of unconventional oil, including the cost per barrel, the volume of water per barrel, and the volume of CO2 emitted per barrel depending upon which process might be used.
