SHALE OIL PATENTS
Shale oil extraction is an industrial process for unconventional oil production. This process converts kerogen in shale oil into shale oil by pyrolsis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution. The resultant shale oil is used as fuel oill or upgraded to meet refinery feedstock specifications by adding hydrogen and removing sulfur and nitrogen impurities.
Shale oil extraction is usually performed above ground using in-situ processing, by mining the shale oil and then treating it in processing facilities using thermal energy. Other modern in-situ technologies perform the processing of kerogen underground by applying heat and extracting the usable oil via oil weelss. The generation of thermal energy to promote these processes can be generated using SMRs to mitigate the generation of GHGs.
Shale oil deposits represent what is arguably the largest source of oil on earth. Canada's substantial shale oil deposits range from Ordovician to Cretaceous age and include deposits of lacustrine and marine origin. As many as 19 deposits have been identified by authorities (Macauley, 1981; Davies and Nassichuk, 1988). During the 1980s, a number of the deposits were explored by core drilling (Macauley, 1981, 1984a, 1984b; Macauley and others, 1985; Smith and Naylor, 1990). The richest part of the sequence, the Albert Mines zone, measures about 120 m thick in one borehole, which may be double the true stratigraphic thickness because of structural complexity. The shale-oil resource for the entire oil-shale sequence is estimated to be at least 270 million barrels (Macauley and others, 1984), or about 37 million tons of shale oil. Many other shale oil deposits have been identified throughout Canada.
It has been estimated that in the US state of Colorado over 1 trillion barrels of shale oil that can be extracted from shale oil deposits in the Piceance Basin. In the 1960s there was a large effort underway to extract oil from Colorado's shale oil deposits. However, at that time the producing nations of OPEC increased production in order to undercut the price of oil on the global market resulting in a market price of oil that was too low to support continued production of oil from the shale oil deposits. After investing over a billion dollars, the companies pursuing the production of oil from those shale oil deposits, believing that OPEC would continue its market intervention for the long term, abandoned the projects leaving OPEC as a monopoly supplier with disastrous results.
The SASOR shale oil patents offer an economic method to access these massive reserves for the long term on an economic basis by obviating the need for thermal sources, like natural gas combustion, that result in substantial emissions of GHGs accelerating the progress of climate change.
Shale oil extraction is usually performed above ground using in-situ processing, by mining the shale oil and then treating it in processing facilities using thermal energy. Other modern in-situ technologies perform the processing of kerogen underground by applying heat and extracting the usable oil via oil weelss. The generation of thermal energy to promote these processes can be generated using SMRs to mitigate the generation of GHGs.
Shale oil deposits represent what is arguably the largest source of oil on earth. Canada's substantial shale oil deposits range from Ordovician to Cretaceous age and include deposits of lacustrine and marine origin. As many as 19 deposits have been identified by authorities (Macauley, 1981; Davies and Nassichuk, 1988). During the 1980s, a number of the deposits were explored by core drilling (Macauley, 1981, 1984a, 1984b; Macauley and others, 1985; Smith and Naylor, 1990). The richest part of the sequence, the Albert Mines zone, measures about 120 m thick in one borehole, which may be double the true stratigraphic thickness because of structural complexity. The shale-oil resource for the entire oil-shale sequence is estimated to be at least 270 million barrels (Macauley and others, 1984), or about 37 million tons of shale oil. Many other shale oil deposits have been identified throughout Canada.
It has been estimated that in the US state of Colorado over 1 trillion barrels of shale oil that can be extracted from shale oil deposits in the Piceance Basin. In the 1960s there was a large effort underway to extract oil from Colorado's shale oil deposits. However, at that time the producing nations of OPEC increased production in order to undercut the price of oil on the global market resulting in a market price of oil that was too low to support continued production of oil from the shale oil deposits. After investing over a billion dollars, the companies pursuing the production of oil from those shale oil deposits, believing that OPEC would continue its market intervention for the long term, abandoned the projects leaving OPEC as a monopoly supplier with disastrous results.
The SASOR shale oil patents offer an economic method to access these massive reserves for the long term on an economic basis by obviating the need for thermal sources, like natural gas combustion, that result in substantial emissions of GHGs accelerating the progress of climate change.
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