Carbon Dioxide Sequestration Studied In U. S.

…project could unlock 1.5 trillion barrels of U. S. oil and make U. S. permanently energy independent.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and American Shale Oil have announced that they have entered into a technical cooperation agreement to develop carbon sequestration technologies for in-ground shale-oil production processes.

Specifically, LLNL will partner with AMSO to study how to use depleted underground oil shale retorts to permanently store carbon dioxide generated during the oil shale extraction process. AMSO will provide technical expertise and oil shale core samples from its federal lease site.

Oil shale can be converted to oil by heating it and applying high pressures. That speeds up the geologic clock so to speak. In early demonstration projects, LLNL researchers used explosives to fracture the vast oil-shale reserves in the western U.S. so that the oil could be processed in place, thus providing an important alternative to imported oil.

That effort evolved in the early 1980s into a surface oil-shale retorting process that used hot oil-shale particles as the heat carrier. The research also produced a model of how oil is formed in nature. Today, this model aids the exploration efforts of nearly every major oil company in the world.

The shale that remains in the ground after the oil is extracted could be used as a storage place for the carbon dioxide that is created during the extraction process.

Once solved the key environmental and technical challenges facing domestic oil shale production will have been resolved.

AMSO holds a Research Development and Demonstration (RD and D) lease for a 160-acre parcel of federal land in northwest Colorado's oil-shale rich Piceance Basin. Upon demonstration of an economically viable, environmentally acceptable extraction process, AMSO has a preference right to acquire a 5,120-acre commercial lease.

After the oil is extracted from shale, the depleted retort of heated, rubberized underground shale may be particularly suitable for capturing carbon dioxide, according to AMSO's Chief Technology Officer. "Together with the LLNL, we will explore several interesting approaches to protect the environment by sequestering CO2 through mineralization in retorted oil shale." Contrary to some perceptions and deceptive PR there is no open pit or other mining operations.

The fine-grained sedimentary rock known as oil shale contains significant amounts of kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds), from which technology can extract liquid hydrocarbons. There is 3 trillion barrels of oil recoverable worldwide. And half that is locked in deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. If successful this LLNL-AMSO project could result in U. S. energy independnce and end the need to import any oil.

This is different from the recently reported Algerian joint partnership that chemical scrubs carbon dioxide from natural gas and sequesters the CO2 more than a mile underground beneath an impermiable layer of slate.

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