Neste Jacobs and Global Oil Shale sign oil shale development and engineering strategic agreement
13 May 2013
Technology, engineering and project management company Neste Jacobs Oy and energy company Global Oil Shale Group PLC (GOS) have signed a strategic oil shale development and engineering agreement to collaborate in oil shale processing and plant design for converting oil shale into liquid fuel and gas as well as any upgrading required for synthetic crude oil production.
GOS is exclusively focused on large-scale mining and processing of the world’s kerogen rich oil shale deposits to oil, with potential for add-on electricity production and associated minerals extraction.
Lifecycle GHG for oil shale |
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A DOE-sponsored study by researchers at the University of Utah evaluated life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from several oil sands and shale processes and compared these to conventional liquid-fuel production processes. (Earlier post.) |
Among their findings were that estimated greenhouse gas emissions for oil shale in general vary more widely (38-180 g CO2 equiv/MJ) than for liquid fuels produced from petroleum (14-21 g CO2 equiv/MJ) or from oil sands (27-36 g CO2 equiv/MJ) because oil shale is not produced commercially in the US and because there is uncertainty over the amount of CO2 released from minerals in the oil shale during processing. |
The much higher CO2 footprint is largely due to the energy required for upgrading/retorting of the shale materials. |
Oil shale generally refers to sedimentary rocks containing solid bituminous materials (kerogen) that are released as petroleum-like liquids when the rock is heated via pyrolysis. Oil shale can be mined using one of two methods: underground mining using the room-and-pillar method or surface mining. After mining, the oil shale is transported to a facility for retorting, a heating process that separates the oil fractions of oil shale from the mineral fraction.
Neste Jacobs will participate in GOS’s oil shale processing plant development—including engineering, process modeling, testing and optimizing, construction commissioning as well as health and safety monitoring of GOS oil shale plants.
Neste Jacobs will also act as a joint coordinator and project manager to integrate details from GOS’ other partnerships for oil shale concentration and thermal processing in order to enable efficient modeling, scaling up and simulation of oil shale processes. GOS has already assigned the first projects to Neste Jacobs to be performed under the agreement.
Initial oil shale projects for the collaboration include GOS’ 2.18 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) oil shale project in Julia Creek, Queensland, Australia as well as GOS’ oil shale projects in evaluation and preparation elsewhere in the world including North Africa and the Middle East.
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