Oil shale deposits are vast throughout the western parts of the United States and Canada. It is estimated that 500-1,000 billion recoverable barrels of oil are present in the US alone. The quantity of oil held in these reserves could provide enough energy to allow the U.S. and Canada to significantly reduce their dependence on foreign oil. However, the lack of an economical and environmentally friendly method for extracting oil from shale has kept it from being a significant energy or chemical feedstock source. This project will develop a reliable, cost-effective in situ process for obtaining oil from shale, allowing it to be used as a feedstock for large scale chemical production. The approach involves five steps: (1) oil well holes drilled into shale strata using standard oil-industry equipment; (2) radio fredquency (RF) antennae, lowered into the shale, transmit RF energy to heat the buried shale; (3) supercritical carbon dioxide fluid pumped into the shale formations to separate petroleum from rock, using an in situ proprietary chemical process; (4) freed fuel directed to another well, where it is extracted; and (5) finally, carbon dioxide fluid separated from the oil. The resultant product will be semi-refined oil similar to kerosene, suitable as a feed stock for chemical production.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The new process should enable the utilization of oil shale, with significantly less energy use compared to conventional in situ and ex situ processes. In addition, the approach would not result in significant land disruption and would not contribute the greenhouse effect by releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
