Is oil-shale feasible?
With oil over $100/barrel, the answer is almost certainly yes. There’s something like a $50T incentive there for exploitation, and somebody is going to make something work. In that way its similar to the Bakken basin, which may have 400B barrels of true oil, though only 4B is economically recoverable right now. Kerogen has the advantage of not needing hydrogenation (which is needed for both tar-sands and CTL), which requires expensive natural gas or a combination of added energy and water (also a significant cost). On the other hand Green River kerogen (mis-named oil shale) is low density, and a pain to dispose of after burning (it expands). That’s why even low-value coal is more attractive for burning (which is what the Estonians do with it). That’s also why retort conversion to oil (the conventional method) is unattractive, and why Shell is considering in-situ conversion instead. Further, kerogen requires a lot of energy to upgrade – the Shell process looks very much like a very slow
