Oil Shale Deposits

Shale oil deposits in the northern Rocky Mountain states constitute a huge, new potential source of hydrocaibons but exploration and development of this area is explicitly banned by federal legislation. The presence of very large quantities of both natural gas and crade oil beneath these shale oil deposits has also been detected. Known as the Bakken Formation, these reserves are estimated by the Energy Information Administration as holding 503 billion barrels of oil, greater than the existing oil fields of Saudi Arabia. (7)... 

Thietanes and 3-thietanones represent the only four-membered sulfur-containing heterocycles of the title group that have been isolated from natural sources. Even in petroleum deposits, where 5- and 6-membered cyclic sulfur compounds are common, thietanes occur only in small amounts. However, thiacyclobutane (1) and thiacyclopentane are both commonly found in shale oil and could be utilized as a possible source of fuel. ... 

Thietane and thiophene deposits in shale oil may be used as a future fuel source. Laser-induced fragmentation of these heterocycles in the presence of oxygen could produce a variety of useful gaseous molecules. Unfortunately, these could create a severe pollution problem. ... 

Kattai, V. Puura, V. 1988. Commercial zonation of the Estonia oil shale deposit. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Oil Shale and Shale Oil, 16-19 May 1988, Beijing, China, 51-58. 

Oispuu, L., Randmann, R. Rootamm, R. 1994. Components of oil-shale ash deposited on ash-fields, consumed or ejected with exhaust gases. Transactions of Tallinn Technical University, 739, 94-113 (in Estonian). 

Dr. Fester Only to say that most oil shales, including Green River oil shale, were deposited in a slightly alkaline environment. 

Surveys (10) show that oil shale deposits in the U.S. testing 25 gal or more per ton contain about 600 billion bbl of oil. These deposits range in depths from surface outcrops to 2000 ft. If a lower limit of richness is set at 10 gal/ton, the available volume of oil would be increased 25-fold to about 2 trillion bbl. The development of a technique for efficient shale oil recovery would significantly influence the U.S. s total oil supply. 

Oil Shale (Shale Oil) Sedimentary rock that contains kerogen, a solid, waxy mixture of hydrocarbon compounds. Heating the rock to very high temperatures will convert the kerogen to a vapor, which can then be condensed to form a slow flowing heavy oil that can later be refined or used for commercial purposes. The United States contains vast amounts of oil shale deposits, but so far it has been considered not economically feasible to produce from them on a large scale. 

Rundle Formation Oil Shale. The Rundle oil shale was deposited as a 300 meter thick sedimentary section in a freshwater, ephemeral lake/ depositional cycles in the Rundle are described by Coshell (4 3). A typical cycle began with periods of multiple transgressive-regressive... 

Natural gas provides about 23 percent of the energy used in the United States. The natural gas is found in oil deposits, coal beds, and even a type of rock called oil shale. Natural gas is made almost entirely of the chemical methane. 

This first run with ICR 106 catalyst was shut down at 2000 hr on stream when a plug consisting of iron and arsenic deposits from the shale oil developed in the preheat section of the reactor. (In this first test, a guard bed to remove these metals was not provided.) To prepare sufficient feedstock for downstream processing studies, a larger-scale, 3500-hr pilot plant run was made with 650 mL of ICR 106 catalyst-. 

There are at least 13 Tertiary oil shale deposits scattered along 900 km of coastal Queensland with an in situ shale oil resource totalling in excess of 25 billion barrels of shale oil. The paper compares aspects of the geochemistry for five of these deposits, which contain about two thirds of the demonstrated resource. 

In the five deposits under review the demonstrated in situ shale oil resource exceeds 17 billion barrels (at a cut-off grade of 50 litres/tonne at 0% retort water (LTOW) over a 4 metre minimum mining thickness. This cut-off grade is used herein when resource dimensions are specified). 

The shale oil average yield for the Rundle oil shales is 99 LTOW and 94 LTOW for those in the Stuart deposit. Average moisture in this formation is 20% by weight and in situ bulk density 1. 5 g/cc. The measured in situ resource in the graben is 5.16x10 barrels of shale oil. 

Fossils are extremely rare in the Condor deposit. The measured in situ resource is 8.45 x 10 barrels of shale oil. 

The Upper Ordovician Whitby Formation represents a transition from carbonate to shale deposition on a broad, shallow shelf. The Lower member—the Collingwood member—has the most potential for shale oil production. This member is an organic-rich marl or carbonate with considerable lateral variation along its subcrop trend from Manitoulin Island to the Toronto area. TOC values up... 

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