Clean and Secure Energy from Domestic Oil Shale and Oil Sands Resources: Quarterly progress report - January 2015 to March 2015

The Clean and Secure Energy from Domestic Oil Shale and Oil Sands Resources program, part of the research agenda of the Institute for Clean and Secure Energy (ICSE) at the University of Utah, is focused on engineering, scientific, and legal research surrounding the development of these resources in Utah. Outreach efforts in Task 2 focused on finishing up the transition of the ICSE unconventional fuels repository to the Institutional Repository maintained and managed by the University of Utah. Task 3 focuses on utilization of oil shale and oil sands resources with CO2 management. The Subtask 3.3 and 3.4 teams finalized the emission factors and their ranges for oil and gas operations in the Uinta Basin. They also made three improvements to their conventional oil and gas simulation model: (1) switched to a cumulative production equation for predicting oil and gas production, (2) developed a method for forecasting oil and gas price paths based on EIA's Annual Energy Outlook price forecasts and the forecasting error, (3) added capability to model production from existing wells. Task 5 and 6 projects relate to environmental, legal, economic, and policy analysis. All Task 5 and 6 projects are now complete. Task 4 and 7 projects are related to liquid fuel production by in-situ thermal processing of oil shale. For Subtasks 4.8 and 7.1, numerical simulations of the triaxial testing were performed and the development of a computational methodology for simulation of subsidence and compaction associated with in-situ pyrolysis of oil shale continued. In addition, the permeability and porosity of rich and lean oil shale samples from the Green River Formation were measured before and after pyrolysis. The Subtask 4.1 and 7.3 team modified their simulation geometry, which allowed them to run an optimization study to determine an optimum design for well arrangement. This design maximizes the net energy return by maximizing oil production and minimizing the number of wells drilled. They also accomplished their milestone of implementing kinetic models in their simulations.