In Situ Conversion is oil extraction from rock
Um. Holy shit.
Shell has come up with a way to extract oil from oil-bearing rock instead of oil fields.
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Please note, you don’t have to go looking for oil fields when you’re brewing your own.
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. “Product” – about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude – began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O’Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles – the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
And it gets much better than that. Go read the whole article.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html
