Oil Shale Reserves

Ando 1 Lisa Ando Professor Mable English 1010 17 December 2010 Oil Shale reserves: What will the nation do when it is out of anele and exceedingly in debt? That question should be going through the minds of the united States citizens because that is exactly the direction the economy is heading. With the crisis of the shortage of oil color, oil shale is a very prospective alternative for the future. Oil shale is a delicately grained sedimentary rock that contains large amounts of kerogen that liquid hydrocarbons can be taken out of. The largest deposits of oil shale reside right hither in the United States. The shale is in the Green River Formation, which is located in parts of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. The formation is estimated to have somewhere in between 1.2 and 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. The United States to daytime uses or so 20 million barrels of oil a day; if even 800 billion barrels could be recoered, it would last for over 400 years (RAND). Very little attention has been enjoin towards oil shale by the U.S.. The problem the nation is facing is the change magnitude need for oil and oil shale should be the solution to this dilemma. The paper will discuss oil shale technologies, the strategic significance of oil shale and the policy issues of development.

The technology of oil shale consists mainly of two move: mining and surface retorting. The mining process can each be underground using the room-and-pillar method, or it can be done on the surface. Once the shale has been mined, it is hence transported to a retorting rapidness. The retorting facility is the process where the shale is heated which separates the oil parts from the minerals and some other parts. Next, the oil must be upgraded by more processing in the beginning it can be taken to a refinery. The spent shale is then disposed of in abandoned mining sites or other suitable places. Ando 2 Fig. 1. RAND MG414-3.1 There is also another way of extorting the oil, which is called in-situ retorting. In-situ retorting is... If you want to get a full essay, auberge it on our website: Orderessay

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