L' huile de schistes ("oil shale")

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Message par energy_isere » 25 avr. 2006, 13:08

un article interessant de la revue Oil & Gas journal de 2004 :

Is Oil shale America's answer to peak oil challenge ?

un pdf de 163 kO / 6 pages

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/r ... 10-373.pdf

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Message par Devenson » 30 juin 2006, 10:53

Exploiter les schistes en faisant exploser des chapelets de bombes atomiques. Il serait étonnant que cela fonctionne exactement comme prévu, mais cela sera sans doute tenté. Du pétrole radioactif, cela peut être sympa !
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/30/02641/9310

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Message par energy_isere » 07 août 2006, 16:32

une nouvelle à propos des oil shale, il semblerait qu' un procédé faisant appel aux micro-ondes et aux fluide supercritique puisse étre appliqué à la récupération de "pétrole" à partir de la matiére premiére "oil shale" .

La news vient de Raytheon qui est une compagnie US sérieuse. (ils travaillent aussi dans les radars et l'armement).


voir ici : http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05 ... nd_pa.html

et la press release de Raytheon : http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro ... ay+8,+2006

Reste qu' entre un résultat de labo donnant lieu à une press release et une exploitation industrielle il y a encore beaucoup de chemin à faire.

Et puis il faut voir le rendement energétique de l' affaire, car des microondes ca se trouve pas gratuitement (il faut faire de puissant génerateurs microondes) et pour les fluides supercritique il va falloir pas mal d' energie pour faire tourner les pompes et obtenir des fluides assez purs pour étre supercritiques.

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Message par energy_isere » 26 sept. 2006, 20:47

Chevron, Los Alamos to Study U.S. Oil Shale Deposits

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, said it started a joint research project with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study hydrocarbon reserves trapped in rock formations known as oil shales.

Oil shales are sedimentary rocks that contain a high proportion of organic matter that can be converted into crude oil or natural gas. The research will be based on formations in the Piceance Basin in Colorado and experiment with underground processing techniques that might mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, Chevron said in a statement.

``Today's unconventional energy sources, such as oil shales and other tight formations, will become part of the core energy supplies in the future, and our alliance can play a significant role in unlocking the potential of these resources,'' Donald Paul, Chevron's chief technology officer, said in the statement.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the U.S. holds 2 trillion barrels of oil shale resources, with about 1.5 trillion barrels located in the western states, primarily Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, Chevron said.

The resource is less developed than oil sands, which are oil- encrusted rock particles found in Canada and elsewhere.

Oil sands, oil shales and other energy forms, such as liquid fuels produced from coal or gas, are often grouped under the term ``unconventional oil'' because they differ from standard oil and gas fields.

Shales vs Sands

U.S. Energy Department estimates show that oil shale will add relatively little in coming years to global oil supply, now about 85 million barrels a day.

Oil shale production is expected to rise to 100,000 barrels a day worldwide by 2030, from none now, Guy Caruso, the head of the department's Energy Information Administration, said earlier this month at conferences in Vienna and London. Oil sands supply may reach 3.6 million barrels a day by 2030, up from 1 million barrels a day last year, according to Caruso.

Other major oil companies have also been examining the potential for years. Royal Dutch Shell Plc carried out field tests on oil shales in Colorado 10 years ago, using an in-ground heating process, and last year a Shell unit formed a joint venture with Jilin Guangzheng Mineral Development Co. to explore oil shale resources in China's northeastern province of Jilin.

Governments concerned about the eventual decline of conventional oil production should begin a ``crash course'' of spending on unconventional oil in order to mitigate fuel shortages, according to a study funded by the Energy Department and led by Robert Hirsch, a former NASA adviser.

The world needs to spend $1 trillion a year developing alternative fuels, starting 20 years before the peak in conventional oil production, Hirsch told the Oil & Money Conference in London last week. Oil executives or policy makers differ on when world production may reach its zenith, with some saying it'll occur within a few years and others decades.
source Bloomberg : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... fer=canada

en rouge :
Oil shale production is expected to rise to 100,000 barrels a day worldwide by 2030, from none now

La production de pétrole à partir de schistes bitumineux est prévue de 100000 baril/jour en 2030, pour 0 actuellement.


C'est sur que ce sera pas grand chose devant les 85 millions de baril/jour actuel de la production mondiale de pétrole !

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Message par GillesH38 » 27 sept. 2006, 15:11

et encore, ça ne dit pas clairement si on soustrait ou non la quantité de pétrole utilisée pour les produire ! :-D
Zan, zendegi, azadi. Il parait que " je propage la haine du Hamas".

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Message par energy_isere » 31 oct. 2006, 12:27

un projet dément de Shell pour l' exploitation des oil shale aux USA :

en gros, pour exploiter ca il faut transformer le kérogéne du schiste bitumeux en pétrole en le chauffant in situ. Mais ce faisant on risque de contaminer les nappes aquiféres. Il faut donc "isoler" la zone chauffée par un mur ( "wall" ) de sol gelé. Le gel du sol est obtenu par refrigération avec des tuyaux ou circule du gaz Amoniaque. :evil:
The company is spending $30 million to make a huge underground "freeze wall" to safeguard oil-shale reserves in the region.


In an arid, sage-dotted valley here, Shell Exploration & Production Co. has begun work on what could be the final technological challenge to large-scale production of oil from shale.

Shell already has figured out how to melt kerogen - the oil-like substance - from underground shale deposits with electric heaters to produce oil from one of the world's largest potential petroleum sources.

Oil-shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have technically recoverable reserves of 500 billion to 1.1 trillion barrels of oil, according to a study last year by the Rand Corp. for the Department of Energy.

The midpoint of the Rand estimate - 800 billion barrels - is three times the size of Saudi Arabia's reserves and enough to meet 25 percent of current U.S. oil demand for 400 years.

Eager to tap into that possibility, Shell is spending $30 million to create and test a massive "freeze wall" that would extend from the surface to 1,700 feet below the ground. The walls would be 30 feet thick in a shape 300 feet wide by 350 feet long.

It is designed for a dual purpose: to keep groundwater from infiltrating Shell's oil-shale wells, and to prevent produced oil from contaminating nearby groundwater.

"We see this as our last major technological hurdle," said Terry O'Connor, a Denver-based Shell vice president in the company's unconventional resources division.

Shell already has tested a small-scale version of the freeze wall at its Mahogany research facility in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado.

A crew of 200 construction workers will complete the larger freeze wall in the spring by drilling a series of 150 well bores that will be pumped full of ammonia-based coolant. It will take about 18 months for the adjacent water and rock to freeze to minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit, creating the massive ice wall.

Shell then will intentionally try to crack the wall with air and water pressure, testing its strength and assessing how it can be repaired if breached.

Perfecting the technology ultimately could lead Shell to commercial production of shale oil on 40,000 acres it owns in the Piceance Basin and thousands more acres it may lease from the federal government. Commercial production is unlikely to begin until 2015.

Yet technology is just one challenge faced by Shell and other prospective shale developers as they prepare to launch a major industry. Social impacts from potentially thousands of new workers and demands on water and energy resources leave some local residents wary.

Western Colorado communities suffered severe and long-lasting economic damage when the shale industry temporarily boomed then went bust in the early 1980s.

"We need to maintain quality-of-life issues while still developing the energy resources this nation needs," said Kent Walter, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's White River field office. "The message I've gotten from the community is that we can develop shale if we have a phased, sustainable approach."

source : Denverpost : http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4530946?source=rs

Commercial production is unlikely to begin until 2015. : La production commerciale ne commencera probablement pas avant 2015. :-D

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Message par Tiennel » 31 oct. 2006, 12:34

Et le jour où on cessera l'exploitation, on débranchera le frigo ? Ca me paraît délirant.
Cela dit, c'est ptet juste un projet délirant servant de pivot factice à un projet d'exploitation plus traditionnel mais aujourd'hui décrié. Ou bien un simple "paper concept" cherchant à prouver l'ingéniosité des ingénieurs de Shell. Je me rappelle que pour le projet de tunnel sous la Manche, certains n'avaient pas hésité à présenter des options pharaoniques (rampes d'accès hélicoïdales au large des côtes)
Méfiez-vous des biais cognitifs

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Message par energy_isere » 31 oct. 2006, 12:46

un autre article le meme jour (pour les Anglicistes) :
Coaxing oil from huge U.S. shale deposits Coaxing U.S. oil from Earth's biggest fields


Underneath the high, scrub-covered rangeland of northwest Colorado is the world's biggest oil field. Getting the oil out of the ground, however, is one of the world's biggest headaches.

The area's deposits of oil shale are believed to be larger than all the oil reserves of the Middle East. But past attempts to get at this oil locked in tarry rock have cost billions of dollars and raised the prospect of strip-mining large areas of the Rocky Mountain West.

Now, as the federal government makes another push to develop oil shale, Shell and other companies say they have developed techniques that may extract this treasure with much less environmental impact.

Shell's project is stunningly complex. Instead of strip-mining the rock and then processing it, Shell plans to superheat huge underground areas for several years, gradually percolating oil out of the stone and pumping it to the surface.

Years of testing still lie ahead. Shell's heating process risks polluting local water supplies, and the enormous amounts of electricity needed would require construction of the West's largest power plants.

But even opponents say the new technology might just succeed.

"It's a very high-stakes gamble," said Randy Udall, an environmentalist who is director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency in nearby Aspen. "It's probably folly, but if not, it's brilliant inspiration."

Oil shale deposits in Colorado and neighboring areas of Utah and Wyoming are estimated to contain 800 billion recoverable barrels, three times larger than Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of conventional crude, and the equivalent of 40 years of U.S. oil consumption.

To stimulate the sector's development, in June the House passed a bill written by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, calling for much lower royalties on oil shale than the 12.5 percent for conventional oil and gas. The bill suggests companies pay royalties of about 1 percent until they recoup their investments.

The bill, which also would open offshore waters to conventional oil and gas drilling, is pending in the Senate.

In early August, the Bureau of Land Management gave a boost to oil-shale plans, granting preliminary approval to research and development projects by Shell and Chevron. On Aug. 25, the bureau took its first steps toward creating a national oil-shale leasing program, inviting public comment on proposed rules.

Unlike conventional deposits of petroleum, found in a liquid form that can be pumped to the surface, oil shale doesn't even contain oil. Instead, the rock is impregnated with kerogen, a chemically immature hydrocarbon -- essentially, oil's geological ancestor.

"If society wanted, it could wait 100 million years for this kerogen to mature into oil, then drill down and pump it out normally," said Terry O'Connor, Shell's vice president of external affairs. "We're just speeding up the process."

Though often compared to the oil sands being mined in the Canadian province of Alberta, oil shale is much more difficult to extract and to transform into crude.

To coax the oil out of the rock, it must be heated to high temperatures. In the 1970s and early 1980s, companies including Exxon, Atlantic Richfield, Unocal, Shell and Chevron spent billions on strip-mining large volumes of oil shale and then cooking it in huge retorts, or kilns.

The process disfigured the landscape, spewed out vast heaps of slag and sucked up tens of millions of dollars in federal synthetic fuels subsidies -- but produced only a poor-quality crude that required costly refining.

When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he eliminated the subsidy. And when global oil prices collapsed in 1982, the bottom fell out.

Longtime residents vividly remember May 2, 1982 -- known as "Black Sunday" -- when Exxon abruptly canceled its $5 billion Colony Shale Oil Project near the town of Parachute and laid off more than 2,000 workers, leaving a trail of home foreclosures and small-business bankruptcies.

"Nobody in this region wants to go through that again, nobody," said Kim Cook, a commissioner for Rio Blanco County, site of the largest oil-shale deposits.

This time, Shell is pioneering a much different technology that company officials say is more efficient, profitable and environmentally friendly.

Instead of mining the shale, since 1996 Shell has experimented with in situ, or in-place, extraction of oil from the ground. Twenty-five miles southwest of Meeker, a ranching town in northwest Colorado, drilling rigs, compressors, ducts and tanks are scattered across a pinon- and juniper-covered plateau, connected to scores of electric heaters sunk hundreds of feet underground.

At each production site, the powerful heaters extend down hundreds of feet, stretching vertically through a cylindrical area of shale about 100 feet in diameter. They then heat the area to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit -- for two to three years.

During this period, the heat ages the kerogen by the geological equivalent of millions of years, chemically transforming it into a high-grade oil that is easily pumped to the surface. In an experiment that ended in May, 1,500 barrels of light, sweet crude were produced from one site.

O'Connor, the Shell executive, says these techniques have been highly successful but need several more years of testing.

One danger is that the oil might pollute the surrounding water table. To prevent that, Shell plans to surround each heated area with a frozen barrier about 10 feet thick, chilled by pipes of pressurized aqueous ammonia.

Machinery is being installed now to create a circular freeze-wall about 1,700 feet deep. When it is finished, engineers will simulate an environmental emergency by pumping water at high pressure outside the wall to try to force a rupture. Then they will rush to plug the break and re-create the barrier.

"We believe that we can produce large amounts of oil with no adverse environmental impact, but we're proceeding slowly and responsibly to make sure this is true, to cover all contingencies," O'Connor said.

If the tests go well and Shell gets all necessary government approvals, he said, the company will be ready to start large-scale, commercial oil production by about 2015.

O'Connor said the company expects commercial production to be profitable as long as international oil prices are at least in the low $30s per barrel, far below the current $70 average.

Other nations with oil-shale deposits also would benefit if the technologies prove successful. One is Israel, where the Negev Desert holds deposits estimated at 18 billion barrels, or about 190 years of the country's annual oil consumption. Israel imports nearly all of its oil, and becoming self-sufficient has long been a national security goal.

Shell has invited environmentalists to its Colorado test site, and many leave favorably impressed.

"Shell is certainly making a genuine effort to reach out to elected officials, ranchers and environmentalists," said Steve Smith, assistant regional director of the Wilderness Society in Denver. "They are saying the right things, and they are moving slowly like they should."

Chevron, which got a late start behind Shell in the research and development process, is pursuing different in situ techniques that use high-pressure inert gases, rather than Shell's electric heaters and freezers, to extract the kerogen. Many smaller companies are experimenting with other methods -- including the strip-mining that failed in the early 1980s.

Critics worry that if in situ techniques turn out to be less trouble-free than expected, strip-mining could become widespread.

"In many areas, the oil-shale formations are near the surface, so getting at them would be by mining rather than in situ," said Udall, the Aspen environmentalist. "That would mean we could again see widespread strip-mining, with the most environmentally destructive, wasteful and inefficient form of energy production on the planet."

A report prepared last year for the U.S. Energy Department by the Rand think tank said that about 20 percent of all oil-shale deposits are shallow enough that they may be extracted by strip-mining. However, it said the cost of strip-mining production would be much higher than with in situ, requiring world oil prices of at least $70 to $95 per barrel.

The report also noted that all forms of oil-shale production could cause a big shift toward burning the region's abundant supplies of coal.

Under in situ methods, the report said, each 100,000 barrels produced daily would require about 1.2 gigawatts of electric-generating capacity -- the size of Colorado's largest power plant, a coal-fired facility in nearby Craig. The Energy Department has forecast oil-shale production of 2 million barrels a day by 2020 and eventually 10 million barrels a day.

As a result, the report said, the industry could become a major producer of the greenhouse gases that are linked to global warming.

"The spooky thing is how much power will be needed for the oil shale," said Cook, the county commissioner.

O'Connor said Shell estimates that the energy value of the oil produced would be about 3.5 times greater than the energy in the electricity used to produce it, though he declined to provide details. Udall said such a result would be achievable only with the most expensive, rarely used natural-gas generating technology. Conventional coal-fired power plants would reduce the net power return to about 2 to 1, he said.

Most of the oil shale lies under Rio Blanco County and neighboring Garfield County, while other concentrations are in Utah and Wyoming. The region is typical of the empty, vast horizons of the Intermountain West, with plateaus and canyons from about 4,000 to 9,000 feet in elevation, covered with scrubby forests, sage thickets and desert.

In some respects, it's an ideal area for natural resource extraction, because it lacks the dramatic mountain vistas that might draw protests from environmentally minded people far away.

However, the local economy could hardly be described as needing help. Much of western Colorado has undergone a boom in natural-gas drilling over the past decade, employing thousands of people. Other residents make long daily commutes to jobs in the fast-growing ski areas and mountain resorts several hours to the east.

As a result, unemployment is negligible, housing prices have tripled in recent years, and towns are swelling with thousands of Mexican immigrants.

"If you don't have a job in this area, you either don't want one or just can't pass the drug test," said Rio Blanco County Commissioner Forrest Nelson, a Republican and a longtime cattle rancher in the area. "We don't really need more jobs around here."

In Congress, many lawmakers are bullish on the prospects for oil shale.

Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican and chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said U.S. oil shale has the potential "to shake the world."

In June, Domenici took his committee to Grand Junction, the largest town in western Colorado, for a hearing on oil shale. "This is not pie in the sky," he said. "It's real this time."
source : Sa nFransico chronicles : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... KV0D41.DTL
Dernière modification par energy_isere le 31 oct. 2006, 12:47, modifié 1 fois.

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Message par GillesH38 » 31 oct. 2006, 12:46

hmm miam de l'ammoniac.

Vous vous rappelez la piste de bobsleigh de La Plagne des JO d'Albertville? elle est refroidie à l'ammoniac... quelques fuites quand même, et aux dernières nouvelles ils auraient décidé de s'en débarrasser et de le remplacer par du glycol.
http://www.cbls-laplagne.fr/detail_actu ... _actualite

L'ammoniac gazeux est extrêmement toxique et est un assez puissant gaz à effet de serre, par ailleurs .. :shock:
Zan, zendegi, azadi. Il parait que " je propage la haine du Hamas".

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Message par mahiahi » 31 oct. 2006, 12:59

Et en plus, ça pue et ça irrite les muqueuses comme ça devrait pas être permis!
C'était pour encourager les sportifs à passer la piste le plus vite possible?
C'est quand tout semble perdu qu'il ne faut douter de rien
Dieu se rit des hommes déplorant les effets dont ils chérissent les causes
Défiez-vous des cosmopolites allant chercher loin dans leurs livres des devoirs qu'ils dédaignent remplir autour d'eux

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Message par Lansing » 31 oct. 2006, 13:07

Pas loin, c'est avec ça que les haltérophiles se font une sniffette avant de soulever la fonte.

th
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Message par th » 31 oct. 2006, 13:18

Tous les projets d'exploitations des oils shales sont pharaoniques et demandent des quantité d'enegie gigantesques.
Dans l'alberta ils envisagent d'utiliser du nucleaire pour leur sable bitumineux. http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/200 ... nds-2.html

Ici ils precisent qu'il faut 1.2 GW, soit un EPR, pour produire 100 000 barils/j. Ca donnerai 100 reacteurs pour produire les 10 mb/j qu'ils pouraient produire! ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

"the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function"- Bartlett.

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Message par Glycogène » 31 oct. 2006, 16:41

th a écrit :Ici ils precisent qu'il faut 1.2 GW, soit un EPR, pour produire 100 000 barils/j.
J'avais des doutes sur le rendement énergétique.
Mais 100000 b/j, ça correspond à 6,6 GW.
Donc un EROI de 5,5 sur le process (faut encore enlever toutes les pertes de séparation, pompage, etc, mais qui restent beaucoup plus faible que 1,2 GW !).

C'est dingue ça : 1 GW, c'est 0,175 baril par seconde (un peu plus qu' 1/6 de baril).

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Message par energy_isere » 01 nov. 2007, 01:36

Un trés long article sur les oil shale dans FORTUNE : http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazin ... /index.htm
Oil shale may finally have its moment

In a dusty corner of northwestern Colorado, an energy of the future is beginning to look like the real thing. Can oil shale work? Fortune's Jon Birger reports.

......
Shell qui travaille depuis 28 ans sur les oil shale aurait déja un portefeuille de 200 brevets sur la question !
...... et dépensé 200 millions de $ dans ces recherches.
But now the veil of secrecy has lifted. With some 200 Shell oil shale patents already filed and approvals needed from Colorado and the U.S. Department of the Interior to proceed with commercial production, Shell knows it has to make the public case for developing the country's oil shale potential.

So after months of negotiations, Shell and Vinegar agreed to give FORTUNE an exclusive look at a new technology - inelegantly dubbed the In Situ Conversion Process, or ICP - that could vindicate Shell's 28-year, $200 million (at least) bet on oil shale research.

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Message par energy_isere » 28 déc. 2007, 01:02

2 Million Acres Proposed for Oil Shale

Federal land managers have proposed setting aside nearly 2 million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for potential commercial oil shale development.

The draft plan released Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management is meant to provide a framework for developing the region's large reserves of oil shale and tar sands. Except for experimental projects, there is no current program for commercial oil shale development on federal land.

Most of the nation's oil shale reserves are in western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming and eastern Utah. The draft plan also covers development of the tar sands in Utah.

The development scenario recommended by the BLM would make 359,798 acres of federal land in Colorado available; 630,971 acres in Utah; and about 1 million acres in Wyoming.

A provision in an omnibus spending bill passed this week by Congress prohibits the BLM from issuing final regulations for commercial oil shale development and offering any commercial leases in the 2008 budget year.

BLM spokeswoman Heather Feeney in Washington said the agency will comply with the provision. She said the environmental impact statement under way doesn't involve writing regulations.

The BLM will take public comments on the draft plan for the next 90 days and release a final plan later.

BLM officials have said more thorough analyses will be done as specific projects are proposed.

Federal officials and industry experts estimate that up to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil is trapped in the region's oil shale, or three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. Of that, roughly 800 billion barrels is considered recoverable.

"The potential of America's oil shale resources to meet future U.S. demand for fuel is significant," said BLM Director Jim Caswell.

The catch is extracting the oil from the rock, something that's been tried on and off for nearly a century. The shale, or kerogen, is a petroleum precursor that wasn't buried deeply enough or naturally processed long enough to complete the transformation to oil.

Turning the shale to oil requires heating it: above ground after mining or in the ground, a process called in situ _ "in place."

Companies working on oil-shale technology have said commercial development is likely years off. Shell Frontier Oil & Gas has been researching ways to tap oil shale for more than a quarter century, and has been running tests since 1996 on private land in northwestern Colorado.

The BLM has awarded 160-acre leases for research and development projects to Shell, Chevron USA and Midland, Texas-based EGL Resources Inc. in Colorado. Alabama-based Oil Shale Exploration Co. received one of the 10-year leases on federal land in Utah.

The research leases could lead to larger ones for commercial production.

In western Colorado, some elected officials and residents are urging the federal government to move cautiously on oil shale. The last major push to develop oil shale collapsed in 1982 when Exxon closed its $5 billion project near Parachute amid plummeting oil prices and government subsidies. About 2,200 people lost their jobs on what's still referred to in the area as "Black Sunday."
source : http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5397220.html

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