Oil from shale as a viable replacement of depleted crude reserves: processes and challenges

摘要

Increasing demands for petroleum and lagging discoveries will inflate prices to a point where alternative resources will become viable. A gigantic reserve of oil shale in the Piceance Basin provides such an alternative. The hydroretorting pprocess has the potential for producing millions of barrels of preemium syncrude per day from this resource. This report concentrates on the desirable fetures of the process and on the timing of challenges yet to the resolved.