Written by Jeremy Boak

Oil shale

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Alternate titles: bituminous shale; kerogen shale; kerogenite; Kuskerite
Written by Jeremy Boak

Organic content

The organic matter contained in oil shale is principally kerogen, a solid product of bacterially altered plant and animal remains that is not soluble in traditional petroleum solvents. Kerogen is the source of virtually all crude oil. The richest oil shale ranges from brown to black in colour. Rich oil shale has low density and is flammable, burning with a sooty flame. In addition, oil shale is quite resistant to the oxidizing effects of air. The external structure is commonly laminar; a cross section would show alternating darker and lighter layers, or varves, attributed to annual cycles of organic matter deposition and accumulation. The lamination would have resulted from sedimentation in the quiet waters of a lake or shallow sea, in which either carbonates were precipitated from solution or clay minerals and other silicate minerals were transported as extremely fine detritus.

Some oil shale kerogens are composed almost entirely of identifiable algal remains, whereas other types are a mixture of amorphous organic matter and only some identifiable organic remnants. The main types of algae are Botryococcus, Tasmanites, and Gloeocapsomorpha. Botryococcus is a colonial alga that lives in brackish or fresh water. Permian kerogen from France appears to consist almost exclusively of Botryococcus colonies, as does the kerogen in Carboniferous and Permian torbanites from Scotland, Australia, and South Africa and Holocene coorongites from Australia. Tasmanites is a marine alga the remains of which make up nearly all the kerogen of tasmanites in Australia (Permian) and Alaska (Jurassic-Cretaceous). The remains of Tasmanites also are present in the Lower Toarcian shales of the Paris Basin in France and the Lower Silurian shales of Algeria. Gloeocapsomorpha prisca is a marine alga that makes up the kerogen found in the kukersite oil shales of Estonia and adjacent Russia. Oil shale in Queensland, Australia, contains kerogen derived from planktonic lacustrine algae.

Commonly, only a minor part of the kerogen in oil shale is made of recognizable organic remnants. The rest is amorphous, probably because of alteration by microbes during sedimentation. Amorphous organic material (known as sapropelic matter) is found in thick accumulations in the Permian Irati shale of Brazil and in the Eocene GRF. The organic material may have been derived from planktonic organisms (e.g., algae, copepods, and ostracods) and from microorganisms that lived in the sediment (e.g., bacteria and algae).

World oil shale resources

Oil shale is found in more than 30 countries around the world, yet on a global scale its development has been economically attractive for only a few brief periods since the early 20th century. Only in a few locations, where specific conditions have made its exploitation feasible, has oil shale been developed for any considerable period of time. Developed oil shale formations include the kukersite deposits of northern Estonia (extending into northwest Russia), the Fushun deposits of northeast China, and the Irati Formation of southern Brazil. In addition, the large and rich Green River Formation (GRF) in the western United States has attracted commercial interest periodically, depending on the price of conventional crude oil. (See below History of oil shale use.)

World shale oil resources are listed in the table.

Shale oil resources and production of the world*
in-place resources  production (2008)    
leading countries million
metric tons
United States 4,291,363 617,956
China 354,430 47,600 13 641
Israel 250,000 36,000
Russia 247,883 35,470
Jordan 102,000 14,688
Democratic Republic of the Congo 100,000 14,310
Brazil 82,000 11,734 3.8 200
Italy 73,000 10,446
Morocco 53,381 8,167
Australia 31,729 4,531
Estonia 16,286 2,494 9 507
Canada 15,241 2,192
world total 5,684,497 815,198 25.8 1,348
*Figures adapted from World Energy Council; U.S. Geological Survey; and Oil Shale Symposia, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, U.S.

The estimated shale oil resources of the top 12 countries together account for 99 percent of the world’s total reserves and production. The “in-place resources” of each country are commonly given in oil equivalents—that is, the number of barrels or metric tons of oil that are estimated to be contained in the oil shale deposits located in that country. In turn, the estimated values for contained oil are based primarily upon the amount of oil extracted from given samples of rock using the Fischer assay, which is the standard tool for estimating oil yield. In the Fischer assay, a rock sample is heated at a constant rate to a target temperature—at 12 °C per minute to 500 °C, or 22 °F per minute to 930 °F—and then held at that temperature for 40 minutes. The test mimics the pyrolytic conditions present in some surface retorts, and in fact it is the benchmark for comparing the efficiency of various retort types. The assay does not measure the yield of gas from the pyrolytic process, which can be substantial.

Estimates of in-place oil resources do not take into account how much of the oil contained in the shale deposits can actually be recovered. Actual recovery rates depend upon the technology used to extract the oil on an industrial scale as well as features of each individual oil shale deposit and the local operational environment. For this reason, figures on total resources tend to be much larger than the amount that can be recovered. A useful example would be the GRF. The GRF is estimated to contain more than 4 trillion barrels, or more than 600 million metric tons, of oil. However, considering current extraction technology, the location of the deposits, and many other economic and regulatory cost factors, it is unlikely that rock yielding less than about 15 gallons per short ton (63 litres per metric ton) could be processed economically from the GRF. This grade cutoff of 15 gallons per short ton effectively reduces the oil resources of the GRF by almost 75 percent, to between 1 and 1.5 trillion barrels (about 140 and 200 million metric tons). If technological and market conditions forced the grade cutoff upward to 25 gallons per short ton (104 litres per metric ton), then the actual recoverable amount would be reduced by more than 90 percent, to less than 500 billion barrels (60 million metric tons).

Because data for making such practical calculations are not available for other major oil shale basins of the world, resources are indicated on the basis of estimated oil content using the Fischer assay.

Recovery of oil from oil shale

Minimum organic requirement

As is stated above (see Organic content), the organic matter present in oil shale is principally kerogen; no oil and little extractable bitumen is naturally present in oil shale. The kerogen found in oil shale is not distinct from the kerogen of petroleum source rocks—that is, the material from which petroleum was generated under conditions of heat and pressure over long periods of geologic time. To some extent the pyrolysis process for extracting oil from oil shale is comparable to the natural processes that generated conventional crude oil.

In order to be of commercial interest, oil shale must contain a large amount of organic matter—significantly larger than the 2 percent or more of organic carbon commonly found in the source rock from which conventional oil or gas may be generated. At the very least, the organic matter in a prospective oil shale must provide more energy than is required to process the shale. For instance, under controlled laboratory conditions, if the kerogen content of the shale is less than about 3 percent by weight, then its total calorific value will be needed simply to heat the rock to surface retorting temperatures and react the kerogen to oil and gas. Commercial conditions are far less efficient: heat is lost at various parts of the process, and other energy inputs are required for handling, upgrading, and so on. Consequently, the organic content of commercial-grade oil shales must be considerably higher than 3 percent.

In commercial practice, the actual energy recoverable from the shale, and hence the specific break-even point in organic content, is strongly dependent upon properties of the oil shale as well as features of the process. For example, the organic matter content of prospective western and eastern U.S. oil shale is roughly the same (7.5–15 percent). However, the organic matter in western shale is “richer” in hydrogen than eastern shale, yielding 20 to 40 gallons of oil per short ton (84 to 168 litres per metric ton) compared with only 10 to 15 gallons per short ton (42 to 63 litres per metric ton) in the “leaner” eastern shale. At the same time, western oil is relatively high in paraffinic compounds, so that, with upgrading, it becomes an excellent refinery feedstock that is well suited to large yields of diesel and jet fuel. Eastern shale oil, on the other hand, contains more aromatic compounds and, when upgraded, is better suited as a feed for catalytic crackers in the production of gasoline. Here the different end-products will determine the ultimate economic value of producing oil from either shale, so that the two different deposits may well have different cutoff grades.

Economic conditions elsewhere in the world may make it feasible to recover oil from leaner deposits than those found in the United States. In all cases, the overall energy balance is a critical determinant of whether shale oil production can proceed. Much research focuses on better defining this balance as well as looking for ways to improve it.

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