(79a) Maguire Frac -- a Novel and Efficient Means for Oil Shale Recovery

Maguire Frac -- a Novel and Efficient Means for Oil Shale Recovery

Background and Challenge ? Oil shale formations underlie large sections of Western Colorado, Eastern Utah, and Southern Wyoming. It has been well studied that this oil shale can be several thousand feet think and contains billions of barrels of oil ? often called the ?Saudi Arabia of Oil.? The challenge to date has been in implementing economical and environmentally friendly means with which to recover this oil. While surface mining has been technically demonstrated, the economics and environmental challenges are difficult to overcome for large scale commercial operations. Instead, ?it-situ? or underground recovery has been identified as a preferred method of producing shale oil since it requires no mining, crushing, or disposal of spent shale. While a number of companies and techniques are being proposed for ?in-situ? recovery, one common challenge has been in fracturing the rock ? since oil shale has little to no permeability, a fracturing system must be established in order to quickly and efficiently heat as much oil shale as possible to cause the liquefaction of the kerogen. Most traditional fracturing techniques do not result in widespread proliferation of fractures throughout the volume of oil shale, thereby limiting the methods of inserting heat and ultimately causing these conventional recovery approaches to be less efficient and effective than they otherwise could have been.

The ?Maguire Frac? Approach ? This novel fracturing and shale oil recovery technique utilizes a substance (to be discussed at the conference) common in the high-tech industry. This substance is inserted into the rock causing a quick and fairly predictable low-explosive fracturing of the shale oil. A proliferated cross-hatched fracturing will occur, analogous to a ?spider webbing? of the rock. Fracture spacing distances will be controlled to maximize heating. It is believed no propping of the rock will be required after the technique has been implemented. Once the rock has been fractured in this manner, traditional steam injection or direct combustion techniques can be utilized to reclaim the shale oil.