Clean and secure energy from domestic oil shale and oil sands resources: Quarterly progress report - April 2014-June 2014

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 have continued to focus on disseminating results from the various subtasks and on fielding interview requests. Two papers from this program have been submitted for presentation at the 35th Oil Shale Symposium in Golden, CO, in October 2014. Task 3 focuses on utilization of oil shale and oil sands resources with CO2 management. The Subtask 3.1 team focused on organizing and interpreting emission factors associated with natural gas production and processing. The Subtask 3.3 and 3.4 teams completed a skeletal model (composed of component modules) for conventional oil and gas development in the Uinta Basin, including a module for estimating CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions that uses data provided by Subtask 3.1. Task 4 projects are related to liquid fuel production by in-situ thermal processing of oil shale. Subtask 4.1 researchers have added a flow through porous media simulation strategy to their suite of simulation tools for modeling oil production from a bed of rubberized oil shale. The Subtask 4.3 team has been working on a mechanistic model of oil shale kerogen pyrolysis based on the Chemical Percolation Devolatilization model. In the model, light gases are assumed to come from char bridge formation and heavy gases from aliphatic bridge cleavage. These assumptions result in good agreement with the kerogen retort data for the three kerogen samples studied. Task 5 and 6 projects relate to environmental, legal, economic, and policy analysis. A final topical report on policy and economic issues associated with using simulation to assess environmental impacts (Subtask 5.3) has not been submitted. All Task 6 projects are now complete. Task 7 researchers are completing research projects with their industrial partner, American Shale Oil (AMSO). The Subtask 7.1 team has been developing reservoir scale simulations using FLAC3D to simulate the entire reservoir development process, including heating, porosity and permeability development, and associated stress and deformation changes. They are also using the software to simulate their triaxial testing data. Subtask 7.3 researchers completed simulations of AMSO heater tests and reported their results to AMSO. They also began simulations using a much larger domain (e.g. five wells) that better represents a commercial-scale in-situ production operation.