The significance of Oil shale in the oil and gas sector.

-
Oil shale can be defined as an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons, called shale oil can be produced. Not to be confused with tight oil—crude oil occurring naturally in shales, shale oil is an alternative for conventional crude oil. Though, in the oil and gas industry, extracting shale oil from oil shale is more costly than the production of conventional crude oil both financially and in terms of its environmental impact.
In oil and gas sector, 2016, estimate of global deposits set the total world resources of oil shale equivalent of 6.05 trillion barrels (962 billion cubic metres) of oil in place.  Deposits of oil shale take place around the world, including major deposits in the United States.
When oil shale is being heated to a sufficiently high temperature, it causes the chemical process of pyrolysis to yield a vapour. Cooling the vapour, the liquid shale oil—an unconventional oil—is separated from combustible oil-shale gas (the term shale gas can also refer to gas occurring naturally in shales).
 Oil shale can be burned directly in furnaces as a low-grade fuel for power generation and district heating. It can also be used as a raw material in chemical and construction-materials processing. Therefore, its significance cannot be overlooked in the oil and gas sector.
Oil shale gains consideration as a potential abundant source of oil whenever the price of crude oil rises in the oil and gas market. However, oil-shale mining and processing raise a number of environmental concerns, such as land use, waste disposal, water use, waste-water management, greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution. In the oil and gas sector, well-established oil shale industries are common in Estonia , China , Brazil, Germany and Russia.
General composition of oil shales constitutes inorganic matrix, bitumens, and kerogen. And oil shales differ from oil-bearing shales, shale deposits that contain petroleum (tight oil) that is sometimes produced from drilled wells. The following are examples of oil-bearing shales: the Bakken Formation, Pierre Shale, Niobrara Formation, and Eagle Ford Formation.


Chemical composition of oil shale
Primary
§  Kerogen
§  Quartz
§  Feldspar
§  Clay
§  Carbonate
§  Pyrite
Secondary
§  Uranium
§  Iron
§  Vanadium
§  Nickel
§  Molybdenum

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE IMPORTANCE OF OIL DEPOT IN THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRIES

-
Image
An oil depot (sometimes called a tank farm, installation or oil terminal) is an industrial facility for the storage of petroleum and / or petrochemical products and from which these products are generally transported to end-users or other storage facilities. An oil depot usually has a tank, either above ground or underground, and gantries (frame) for spilling products in tank trucks or other vehicles (such as barges) or pipelines. Oil depots are usually located near oil refineries or in places where tankers containing products can unload their cargo. Some deposits are attached to pipelines from which they draw their supplies and deposits can also be fed by rail, barge and tanker (sometimes called "bridge"). Most oil depots have tank trucks that operate from their land and these vehicles transport products to service stations or other users. An oil depot is a relatively unsophisticated facility in that (in most cases) there is no processing or other processing on the si
Read more

Typical flare system in industrial plants

-
Image
 Diagrammatic representations of a typical vertical, elevated flare stack system in an industrial plant. During operations, when industrial plant equipment items are over-pressured, the pressure relief valve is an essential safety tool that automatically releases gases and sometimes liquids. Those pressure relief valves are essential by industrial design codes and standards as well as by law. The released gases and liquids are directed through large piping systems known as flare headers to a vertical elevated flare. The escaped gases are burned as they exit the flare stacks. The size and brightness of the resulting flame is determined by the flammable material's flow rate in joules per hour (or btu per hour). Majority of industrial plant flares have a vapour-liquid separator(also called a knockout drum) upstream of the flare to remove any large amounts of liquid that may go along with the relieved gases. Steam is f
Read more

The Oando forensic audit is delayed

-
Image
The delay of the Nigerian oil and gas company Oando plc's judicial audit by the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, is caused by "payment to auditors and other logistical problems," PREMIUM TIMES has learned. A senior SEC official told PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday that the regulator was working to open the audit after the holidays, in 2018. The source, who spoke under strict conditions of anonymity, also referred to some of the challenges faced by the organization in the area of ​​logistics and payments to be made to external auditors. On December 5, the SEC informed Nigerians that the judicial audit of the company would begin as of the next day of notification.  But PREMIUM TIMES reported Monday that two weeks after the announcement, the regulator had not started the audit yet . "You know they (external auditors) are from the private sector and this exercise also requires money."   There may be some concerns about the payment because the auditors would
Read more