Oil Shale?

You are going to be hearing a lot about oil shale in the coming months as the arguments on how to become energy independent heat up. There are huge oil shale (actually organic marlstone) deposits in the Green River Formation located in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. It is estimated that there is ~800 billion barrels of recoverable oil in this formation. This is far larger than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

The organic marlstone deposits in the Green River formation has been known about for several decades. So why hasn't it been tapped? Because it was too expensive - until now...maybe. Getting the oil involves heating the organic marlstone, which takes energy. Shell oil is proposing a method called in situ retorting. This involves heating a 6 x 6 mile x 1000 ft deep area of land to 700 degrees and keep it that hot for 3 years while the liquid fuel is pumped out. This could theoretically produce 20 billion barrels of oil. But here is the thing:

Although Shell's method avoids the need to mine shale, it requires a mind-boggling amount of electricity. To produce 100,000 barrels per day, the company would need to construct the largest power plant in Colorado history. Costing about $3 billion, it would consume 5 million tons of coal each year, producing 10 million tons of greenhouse gases. (The company's annual electric bill would be about $500 million.) To double production, you'd need two power plants. One million barrels a day would require 10 new power plants, five new coal mines. And 10 million barrels a day, as proposed by some, would necessitate 100 power plants.

So if we are going to get oil from shale in the near future, we better start building those power plants.