Abstract
Oil Shale is one of the world's largest known fossil fuel resources. More than 1.8 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in shale in Federal lands in the western United States in the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, of which 800 billion is considered recoverable. This amounts to three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. During the past decade, a lot of attention has been given to the various extraction technologies to make oil shale economically feasible. Rising oil prices and improvements in technology have made the development of oil shale economically viable.
Detailed economic analysis has been conducted on the potential development of oil shale. This paper will describe the four representative production technologies being considered by companies for oil shale development. These include emerging in-situ processes as well as traditional mining with surface retorting technologies. The paper will provide details of various components of capital and operating costs for each of these technologies and the price at which each of these technologies will be economical. In addition to presenting an evaluation of the economic viability of an oil shale industry, this paper also describes the costs and benefits of such an industry to local, state, and Federal governments. Measures such as jobs created (for example: 2.5 million barrels of oil shale industry will require up to 300,000 direct and indirect jobs), GDP, and imports avoided will be described.
