Piceance Basin - Oil Shale

Oil Shale

The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most on-going oil shale research and development extraction projects in the U.S. The Piceance Basin has an estimated 1.525 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources. This study also found an estimated 43.3 billion tons of in-place nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin. This mineral is embedded with oil shale in many areas.

Oil is obtained when oil shale rock is heated to 530° to 930°F (276°to 498°C). These temperatures are required because oil shale does not contain crude oil but instead contains kerogen, which is an organic precursor to oil that must be heated for oil production.

Development of oil shale has significant technological and environmental challenges and no economic extraction method is currently available in the U.S. Therefore it is unknown how much of the assessed in-place (total amount present) resource is recoverable.

Increasing demand for energy resources has spurred interest in energy alternatives such as oil shale. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has researched the geology of oil shale, especially the extensive Green River deposits of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The USGS is making oil shale information accessible via the Internet. Planned products include digital-format shale-oil analyses, stratigraphic and lithologic information, geophysical logs, bibliographic references, and geologic maps of oil shale lands in the western United States.

The USGS is updating its assessments of oil shale resources in support of recommendations in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The USGS is also conducting oil shale assessments in the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and the Greater Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming. USGS oil shale research activities include:

• Utah Geological Survey Collaboration.
• Archive and update critical oil shale information.
• Development of an oil shale clearinghouse of available USGS reports, papers, and databases.
• Monitoring of geologic, technologic, and environmental developments related to unconventional fossil fuel energy sources.
• USGS Core Research Center maintenance of core and sample collections.
• Collaboration with industry and government in fossil-fuel research.

On 2 April 2009 The U.S. Geological Survey updated its assessment of in-place oil shale resources in the Piceance Basin in western Colorado. This new assessment is about 50 percent larger than the 1989 assessment of about one trillion barrels. Almost all of this increase is due to assessments of new geographic areas and subsurface zones that had too little data for previous research and assessments. "For the first time in 20 years, we have an updated assessment of in-place oil shale in the Piceance Basin of Colorado," said US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "The USGS scientific report shows significant quantities of oil locked up in the shale rocks of the Piceance Basin. I believe it demonstrates the need for our continued research and development efforts."