Featured Project: Geospatial Infrastructure for Oil Shale Development
The project titled GIS- and Web-Based Water Resource Geospatial Infrastructure for Oil Shale Development is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The lead principal investigator is at Colorado School of Mines (CSM) with collaborators at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL). The principle objective of the project is to develop a water resource geospatial infrastructure (including data, toolsets, analytical models and graphical user interfaces (GUIs)), to provide water management solutions to facilitate decision making for potential oil shale resource development in the Western U.S., and to facilitate environmental impact studies (EIS), and cost estimation under different scenarios.
The term oil shale generally refers to any sedimentary rock that contains solid bituminous materials (called kerogen) that are released as petroleum-like liquids when the rock is heated. Oil shale was formed by deposition of silt and organic debris on lake beds and sea bottoms. Over long periods of time, heat and pressure transformed the materials into oil shale in a process similar to the process that forms oil; however, the heat and pressure were not as great. The Green River Basin, Piceance Creek Basin, Uinta Basin, and the Washakie Basin (shown in Figure to left - modified from Smith, 1980) each contain vast amounts of oil shale. It is estimated that these formations hold 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude oil equivalent. Our study area, the Piceance Creek Basin of western Colorado, is believed to be the biggest reserve with an estimated 1 trillion barrels of crude oil equivalent. The Piceance Creek Basin is comprised of several kerogen-rich (R) and kerogen-lean (L) oil shale zones; in descending order: Mahogany, R-6, L-5, R-5, L-4, R-4, L-3, R-3, L-2, R-2, L-1, and R-1.
