Abstract: Shale oil, known also as kerogen oil or oil-shale oil, is an unconventional oil produced from oil shale by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution. The amount of shale oil that can be recovered from a given deposit depends upon many factors. Geothermal heating, or other factors, may have degraded some or all of a deposit, so that the amount of recoverable energy may be significantly decreased. Some deposits or portions thereof, such as large areas of the Devonian black shales in the eastern United States, may be too deeply buried to mine economically in the foreseeable future. Surface land uses may greatly restrict the availability of some oil shale deposits for development, especially those in the industrial western countries. The obvious need today is new and improved methods for the economic recovery of energy and by-products from oil shale. The bottom line in developing a large oil shale industry would be governed by the price of petroleum-based crude oil. When the price of shale oil is comparable to that of crude oil because of diminishing resources of crude, then shale oil may find a place in the world fossil energy mix.
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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