Some organic matter retains enough biological structures so that specific types can be identified as to genus and even species. The oil shale deposits are in three structural and sedimentary basins that have been recently assessed: 2010 Piceance Basin in western Colorado 2010 Uinta Basin in eastern Utah and western Colorado 2011 Greater Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming and northwest Colorado By Christopher J. Petherick. Most of the organic matter is insoluble in ordinary organic solvents; therefore, it must be decomposed by heating to release such materials. His classification has proved to be useful for correlating different kinds of organic matter in oil shale with the chemistry of the hydrocarbons derived from oil shale. Although the heating value of a given oil shale is a useful and fundamental property of the rock, it does not provide information on the amounts of shale oil or combustible gas that would be yielded by retorting (destructive distillation). As of 2019, OPEC controlled roughly 75% of the world's total crude oil reserves and produced 42% of the world's total crude oil output. A comprehensive geology-based assessment of in-place oil, regardless of richness, in oil shales of the Eocene Green River Formation of the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and western Colorado was conducted in 2010. Click on a pin on the map to see more information. Any technology to produce shale oil includes mining, heat treatment—also known as retorting—to extract the oil, and oil upgrading. Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad, said production would remain between 11.5m b/d and 12m b/d at $40 a barrel. Oil shale is a rock that contains significant amounts of organic material in the form of kerogen. One technique is to observe the changes in color of the organic matter in samples collected from varied depths in a borehole. A scale of vitrinite reflectances has been developed that indicates when the organic matter in a sedimentary rock has reached temperatures high enough to generate oil and gas. You won’t think much of Rio Blanco County if you ever drive through it. The deposits are commonly small, but can be extremely high grade. The estimated in-ground resources are over 300 billion barrels of oil—some of the largest oil-shale resources in the world. Texas alone holds more than 60 billion barrels of shale oil according to this new data. This is usually much less efficient than drilling rocks that will yield oil or gas directly into a well. Argentina: 802 tcf - In July 2013 Chevron and YPF put pen to paper on a deal worth $1.2 billion to … The U.S. Geological Survey has used a lower limit of about 40 l/t for classification of Federal oil-shale lands. Halite and the sodium bicarbonate mineral nahcolite were deposited in Eocene-age saline Lake Uinta in the Piceance Basin, northwestern Colorado. The underestimation of the U.S. shale gas business is just as huge as it is for oil. 2nd challenge: Reducing operating costs. This is only slightly lower than the estimated 1.53 trillion barrels for the adjacent Piceance Basin, Colorado, to the east, which is thought to be the richest oil shale deposit in the world. U.S. gains increased at least 100,000 barrels per day for 10 of the last 16 months. To bring some uniformity into this assessment, oil-shale resources in this report are given in both metric tons of shale oil and in equivalent U.S. barrels of shale oil, and the grade of oil shale, where known, is expressed in liters of shale oil per metric ton (l/t) of rock. The Piceance Basin is the smallest of the three principal basins of the Green River Formation in terms of area covered and contains the highest concentration of high-grade oil shale (capable of generating at least 25 gallons of oil per ton of rock), with approximately 352 billion barrels of in-place oil resource. The Eocene Green River Formation was deposited in two large Eocene saline lakes, Lake Uinta in the Uinta and Piceance Basins and Lake Gosiute in the Greater Green River Basin. The fracking of hard-to-reach oil reserves has helped the US regain its crown as the world's top crude oil producer. Johnson, R.C., Birdwell, J.E., Brownfield, M.E., and Mercier, T.J., 2015, Mass-movement deposits in the lacustrine Eocene Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, western Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2015–1044, 13 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20151044. This formation contains the largest oil shale deposits in the world. It also reviews the economics, the environment and the major shale oil countries. Enlarge map. Most of these uses are still small or in experimental stages, but the economic potential is large. On the other hand, oil-shale deposits that have economic potential for their shale-oil and gas yields are geothermally immature and have not been subjected to excessive heating. Argentina’s shale oil reserves – 16.2 billion barrels (60 per cent) – are also one of the largest in the world. Utah’s oil-shale deposits are located in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. Culture of Inflating Oil Reserves Helped Stoke U.S. Shale Boom As the industry reels from the pandemic, some question whether oil reserves were as rich as some companies estimated. In general, the precursors of the organic matter in oil shale and coal also differ. In these fields, drillers use multistage fracking to create longer cracks. Many oil-shale deposits contain small, but ubiquitous, amounts of sulfides including pyrite and marcasite, indicating that the sediments probably accumulated in dysaerobic to anoxic waters that prevented the destruction of the organic matter by burrowing organisms and oxidation. Others have suggested a limit as low as 25 l/t. Torbanite, named after Torbane Hill in Scotland, is a black oil shale whose organic matter is composed mainly of telalginite derived largely from lipid-rich Botryococcus and related algal forms found in fresh- to brackish-water lakes. For decades many politicians and scientists have touted Utah’s oil shale as the energy of the future. This is perhaps the most common type of analysis that is currently used to evaluate an oil-shale resource. While the current report considers more … More information on United States oil shale. For US, more than 50% of remaining oil reserves is unconventional shale oil. Such deposits are generally close enough to the surface to be mined by open-pit, underground mining, or by in-situ methods. Enlarge map. Shale oil is a substitute for conventional crude oil. However, the U.S. was the world's largest oil … The crude oil ranking is led by the U.S. (78.2 billion barrels), Russia (74.5 billion) and China (32.2 billion). Other minor components in lamosite include vitrinite, inertinite, telalginite, and bitumen. The estimated in-place nahcolite resource is about 43.3 billion short tons. More information on China, Russia, Syria, Thailand and Turkey oil shale. The grade of oil shale can be determined by measuring the yield of oil of a shale sample in a laboratory retort. For US, more than 50% of remaining oil reserves is unconventional shale oil. Rankings for natural gas proved reserves from shale in 2018. Shale oil is a synthetic crude oil produced by retorting oil shale and is the pyrolysis product of the organic matter (kerogen) contained in it. Oil shales range widely in organic content and oil yield. We produce marketing and networking events for oil and gas businesses and organizations. Shale Energy Resources is a Texas-based marketing firm that. Oil shale, shale oil, and oil-bearing shale are three different substances.   They perforate short segments of … Petroleum and natural gas are probably the most familiar hydrocarbons. Terrestrial oil shales include those composed of lipid-rich organic matter such as resin spores, waxy cuticles, and corky tissue of roots, and stems of vascular terrestrial plants commonly found in coal-forming swamps and bogs. Uranium, vanadium, zinc, alumina, phosphate, sodium carbonate minerals, ammonium sulfate, and sulfur are some of the potential byproducts. The situation today has not greatly improved, although much information has been published in the past decade or so, notably for deposits in Australia, Canada, Estonia, Israel, and the United States. The Estonian oil-shale deposit in northern Estonia along the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland and its eastern extension into Russia, the Leningrad deposit, are kukersites. As supplies of petroleum diminish in future years and costs for petroleum increase, greater use of oil shale for the production of electric power, transportation fuels, petrochemicals, and other industrial products seems likely. In areas where the rocks have been subjected to complex folding and faulting or have been intruded by igneous rocks, the geothermal maturity of the oil shale should be evaluated for proper determination of the economic potential of the deposit. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), Mapping, Remote Sensing, and Geospatial Data, spatial and tabular datasets, fischer assays and well logs, http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-069/dds-069-y/, http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-069/dds-069-bb/, http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-069/dds-069-ddb/. The Devonian-Mississippian oil shales of eastern United States are typical marinites. Adapting petrographic terms from coal terminology, Hutton developed a classification of oil shale based primarily on the origin of the organic matter. Lamosite is pale- and grayish-brown and dark gray to black oil shale in which the chief organic constituent is lamalginite derived from lacustrine planktonic algae. However, this method can pose a problem with respect to oil shale, because the reflectance of vitrinite may be depressed by the presence of lipid-rich organic matter. Oil shale is commonly defined as a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter that yields substantial amounts of oil and combustible gas upon destructive distillation. Both give more complete information about the grade of oil shale, but are not widely used. The processes used for hydrocarbon extraction also produce emissions and waste products that cause significant environmental concerns. Shale oil is the product of the thermal reaction and decomposition of kerogen present in oil shales. Oil shale is the rock from which shale oil is extract ed. Johnson, R.C., Birdwell, J.E., Mercier, T.J., and Brownfield, M.E., 2016, Geology of tight oil and potential tight oil reservoirs in the lower part of the Green River Formation, Uinta, Piceance, and Greater Green River Basins, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2016–5008, 63 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/sir20165008. For much of the 20th century, the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves served as a contingency source of fuel for the Nation's military. Newer techniques for evaluating oil-shale resources include the Rock-Eval and the "material-balance" Fischer assay methods. The distilled vapors of oil, gas, and water are passed through a condenser cooled with ice water into a graduated centrifuge tube. China, Russia, Syria, Thailand and Turkey, China, Russia, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey. The U.S. Geological Survey has used a lower limit of about 40 l/t for classification of Federal oil-shale lands. For other oil shales, the reverse is true-silicates including quartz, feldspar, and clay minerals are dominant and carbonates are a minor component. Deposits of oil shale are in many parts of the world. Marinite may also contain small amounts of bitumen, telalginite, and vitrinite. Shale has a shorter lead time between drilling and production relative to offshore exploration and other traditional oil projects, making it more responsive to oil price movements. The Radial Basis Function extrapolation method was used to generate isopach and isoresource maps, and to calculate resources. Oil Shale Reserves. Texas alone holds more than 60 billion barrels of shale oil according to this new data. Commercial grades of oil shale, as determined by their yield of shale oil, ranges from Its principal organic component is telalginite derived from the green alga, Gloeocapsomorpha prisca. At best, the Fischer assay method only approximates the energy potential of an oil-shale deposit. An in-place assessment of the oil shale and nahcolite resources of the Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado was competed in 2010. The material has not been fully characterized with respect to its composition or origin, but it is commonly an important component of marine oil shales. The availability and price of petroleum ultimately effect the viability of a large-scale oil-shale industry. Public domain.). Other retorting methods, such as the Tosco II process, are known to yield in excess of 100 percent of the yield reported by Fischer assay. As it reaches its oil window, oil shale releases a liquid known as shale oil. Some oil shales may have a greater energy potential than that reported by the Fischer assay method depending on the components of the "gas plus loss.". Some of these names are still used for certain types of oil shale. The recent successful development of a tight oil play in the Eocene-age informal Uteland Butte member of the lacustrine Green River Formation in the Uinta Basin, Utah, using modern horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques has spurred a renewed interest in the tight oil potential of lacustrine rocks. Shale gas has become the focus of global natural gas exploration, and shale oil plays an important role in unconventional oil and gas exploration. Year Published: 2020 Assessment of continuous oil and gas resources in Lower Silurian Shales of the Arabian Peninsula, 2019. Mining oil shale can be either surface mining or in situ retorting. Johnson, R.C., (and U.S. Geological Survey Oil Shale Assessment Team), 2010, Oil Shale Resources of the Uinta Basin, Utah and Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-69-BB, [CD-ROM]. For this reason, it may be necessary to measure vitrinite reflectance from laterally equivalent vitrinite-bearing rocks that lack the algal material. Technically Recoverable Shale Oil and Shale Gas Resources estimates that shale resources considered in conjunction with EIA's own assessment of resources within the United States indicate technically recoverable resources of 345 billion barrels of world shale oil resources and 7,299 trillion cubic feet of world shale gas resources (see Table 1). Thanks to the shale oil boom, the U.S. is now sitting on more oil reserves than Russia, which Rystad estimates as having 256 billion barrels of untapped oil. The well confirmed the existence of substantial reserves of shale gas in the Ahnet Basin, located in In Salah, 650 km northwest of Tamanrasset. The oil shale interval in the Piceance Basin is subdivided into seventeen “rich” and “lean” zones and each interval was assessed for variations in gallons per ton, barrels per acre, and total barrels in each 36-square mile township. More information on Canada oil shale. More information on Estonia and Sweden oil shale. The Green River oil shale, for example, is presumed to be the source of the oil in the Red Wash field in northeastern Utah. Tectonic events and volcanism have altered some deposits. US is making the most of Shale gas as they have lots of inhabited land. Today, we are producing ~87 Bcf/d, which is a whopping 30% higher than the 67 … Previous studies on the distribution of bulk sulfur species in bitumen before and after artificial thermal maturation using various pyrolysis methods have indicated that the quantities of reactive (sulfide, sulfoxide) and thermally stable (thiophene) sulfur moieties change following consistent trends under increasing thermal stress. Evaluation of world oil-shale resources is especially difficult because of the wide variety of analytical units that are reported. Many deposits are not reviewed because data or publications are unavailable. We produce marketing and networking events for oil and gas businesses and organizations. The oil and water are then separated by centrifuging. When oil shale is retorted, the organic matter decomposes into oil, gas, and a residuum of carbon char remaining in the retorted shale. Iran - 155 billion barrels. The Bakken Field in North Dakota and Montana is the largest producing shale oil reserve. Telalginite is organic matter derived from large colonial or thick-walled unicellular algae, typified by genera such as Botryococcus. Since the oil-price bust of 2014, unpredictability has been the theme music of U.S. shale. The technique was subsequently standardized as the American Society for Testing and Materials Method D-3904-80 (1984). http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-069/dds-069-y/, Mercier, T.J., Johnson, R.C., Brownfield, M.E., and Self, J.G., 2010, In-Place Oil Shale Resources Underlying Federal Lands in the Piceance Basin, Western Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-2010-3041, 4 p. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2010/3041/, Johnson, R.C., Mercier, T.J., Brownfield, M.E., Pantea, M.P., and Self, J.G., 2009, Assessment of in-place oil shale resources of the Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, western Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2009–3012, 6 p. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3012/, Uinta Basin, Colorado and Utah 2010 Assessment. Oil shales range widely in organic content and oil yield. Enlarge map. Adding the U.S. estimate of the shale gas technically recoverable resources of 862 trillion cubic feet results in a total shale resource base estimate of 6,622 trillion cubic feet for the United States and the other 31 countries assessed. Telalginite and lamalginite fluoresce brightly in shades of yellow under blue/ultraviolet light. Oil shales typically contain much larger amounts of inert mineral matter (60-90 percent) than coals, which have been defined as containing less than 40 percent mineral matter. U.S. gains increased at least 100,000 barrels per day for 10 of the last 16 months. Up to 1/3 of the rock can be solid organic material. Today, few, if any deposits can be economically mined and processed for shale oil in competition with petroleum. The resulting oil can be used immediately as a fuel or upgraded to meet refinery feedstock specifications by adding hydrogen and removing impurities such as sulfur and nitrogen. ... We have access to over 60,000 contacts in the oil & gas industry. The standardized Fischer assay method consists of heating a 100-gram sample crushed to -8 mesh (2.38-mm mesh) screen in a small aluminum retort to 500ºC at a rate of 12ºC per minute and held at that temperature for 40 minutes. Estimated in-place oil is about 1.5 trillion barrels, based on Fischer assay results from boreholes drilled to evaluate oil shale, making it the largest oil shale deposit in the world. If the size of the resource is expressed only in volumetric units (barrels, liters, cubic meters, and so on), the density of the shale oil must be known or estimated to convert these values to metric tons. Their combined recoverable reserves are estimated at about 225 billion cubic metres of gas and 75 million barrels of oil and condensate following interpretation of the exploration drilling results. Relatively little is known about many of the world's deposits of oil shale and much exploratory drilling and analytical work need to be done. In the past 20 years, despite the extraction of almost 50 billion barrels and 475 trillion cubic feet, proven oil reserves have increased 66% to over 50 … The Bakken Field in North Dakota and Montana is the largest producing shale oil reserve. More information on Israel and Jordan oil shale. Tasmanite, named from oil-shale deposits in Tasmania, is a brown to black oil shale. The USGS estimates that over 46 billion barrels of oil, 280 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are trapped in these low-permeability shale formations. Utah’s oil-shale deposits are located in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. Recent studies indicate that the Piceance Basin in northwestern Colorado contains over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in place, making the basin the largest known oil-shale deposit in the world. Enlarge map. For decades many politicians and scientists have touted Utah’s oil shale as the energy of the future. It also includes fischer assays and scans of well logs in the Colorado Piceance Basin. Oil shale has received many different names over the years, such as cannel coal, boghead coal, alum shale, stellarite, albertite, kerosene shale, bituminite, gas coal, algal coal, wollongite, schistes bitumineux, torbanite, and kukersite. Marine oil shales are composed of lipid-rich organic matter derived from marine algae, acritarchs (unicellular organisms of questionable origin), and marine dinoflagellates. For much of the 20th century, the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves served as a contingency source of fuel for the Nation's military. Marinite is a gray to dark gray to black oil shale of marine origin in which the chief organic components are lamalginite and bituminite derived chiefly from marine phytoplankton. Importantly, unconventional plays account for more than 50 percent of remaining U.S. oil reserves, with Texas alone holding more than 60 billion barrels of recoverable oil in shale plays. 54, pp. Most of the organic matter in oil shale is insoluble in ordinary organic solvents, whereas some is bitumen that is soluble in certain organic solvents. By comparison, the heating value of lignitic coal ranges from 3,500 to 4,600 kcal/kg on a dry, mineral-free basis (American Society for Testing Materials, 1966). The spent shale after retorting is used to manufacture cement, notably in Germany and China. Thermal alteration of this type may be restricted to a small part of the deposit, or it may be widespread making most of the deposit unfit for recovery of shale oil. The reserves data distinguish between reserves in existing fields and new projects, and potential reserves in recent discoveries and still undiscovered fields. Oil shales were deposited in a variety of depositional environments, including fresh-water to highly saline lakes, epicontinental marine basins and subtidal shelves, and in limnic and coastal swamps, commonly in association with deposits of coal. The origin of some of the organic matter in oil shale is obscure because of the lack of recognizable biologic structures that would help identify the precursor organisms. In terms of mineral and elemental content, oil shale differs from coal in several distinct ways. Variations in the areal extent of saline mineral deposition through time were studied using descriptions of core and outcrop. Kukersite, which takes its name from Kukruse Manor near the town of Kohtla-Järve, Estonia, is a light brown marine oil shale. The drilling of AHT1 H2 well, completed within four months, used 7,000 cm of water as part of the hydraulic fracturing technique used during drilling. Lacustrine oil shales include lipid-rich organic matter derived from algae that lived in freshwater, brackish, or saline lakes. The USGS Energy Resources Program has studied oil shale resources of the United States, with a significant effort on the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. If the oil shale is heated to a high enough temperature, as may be the case if the oil shale were deeply buried, the organic matter may thermally decompose to form oil and gas. Although shale oil in today's (2004) world market is not competitive with petroleum, natural gas, or coal, it is used in several countries that possess easily exploitable deposits of oil shale but lack other fossil fuel resources. In this regard, Colombia is preparing new tax incentives and is about to launch free-trade zones (see page 14). The situation was such that few would have predicted the current abundance of gas and new oil reserves derived from shale gas operations. The high-grade kukersite oil shale of Estonia, which fuels several electric power plants, has a heating value of about 2,000 to 2,200 kcal/kg. It commonly occurs as an organic groundmass with fine-grained mineral matter. Brazil: Deposits of oil shale in Brazil (locations after Padula, 1969). 227-264. The Fischer assay method also does not necessarily indicate the maximum amount of oil that can be produced by a given oil shale. The Fischer assay method does not determine the total available energy in an oil shale. Extracting shale oil from oil shale is more potentially costly than the production of conventional crude oil both financially and in terms of its environmental impact. Vitrinite may be difficult to recognize in oil shale because it resembles other organic material of algal origin and may not have the same reflectance response as vitrinite, thereby leading to erroneous conclusions. A new independent estimate of world oil reserves has been released by Rystad Energy, showing that the US now holds more recoverable oil reserves than both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Shale has a shorter lead time between drilling and production relative to offshore exploration and other traditional oil projects, making it more responsive to oil price movements. Nevertheless, some countries with oil-shale resources, but lack petroleum reserves, find it expedient to operate an oil-shale industry. This file is updated from the Piceance Basin Oil Shale Database with data for additional new drill holes. Previously published histograms display oil-yield variations with depth and widely correlate rich and lean oil-shale beds and zones throughout the basin.... Below are data or web applications associated with this project. Oil shales range widely in organic content and oil yield. Since the oil-price bust of 2014, unpredictability has been the theme music of U.S. shale. The Green River oil-shale deposits in western United States and a number of the Tertiary lacustrine deposits in eastern Queensland, Australia, are lamosites. Canada: Oil-shale deposits in Canada (locations after Macauley, 1981). about its oil and gas reserves. Cannel coals originate in oxygen-deficient ponds or shallow lakes in peat-forming swamps and bogs (Stach and others, 1975, p. 236-237). Thanks to the shale oil boom, the U.S. is now sitting on more oil reserves than Russia, which Rystad estimates as having 256 billion barrels of untapped oil. More information on Brazil oil shale. Geologists, petroleum companies and the federal government have known about these massive deposits for nearly a century. Thus, the total resource numbers reported herein should be regarded as conservative estimates. Below are publications associated with this project. ... We have access to over 60,000 contacts in the oil & gas industry. He then divided oil shale into three groups based upon their environments of deposition - terrestrial, lacustrine, and marine. To counteract the oil price impact and, at the same time, be able to develop all reserves, the country’s goal aims at reducing operating costs. The health impacts of the chemicals used in fracking and disposed of are not yet fully known. Cannel coal is brown to black oil shale composed of resins, spores, waxes, and cutinaceous and corky materials derived from terrestrial vascular plants together with varied amounts of vitrinite and inertinite. Events. Hutton (1991) visualized oil shale as one of three broad groups of organic-rich sedimentary rocks: (1) humic coal and carbonaceous shale, (2) bitumen-impregnated rock, and (3) oil shale. Iran is finding itself in a bit of a sticky, or rather oily, spot. More information on Australia oil shale.