OCR Text |
Show ETC director chairs UN oil hale, tar sands meeting Laramie, Wyoming recently had the itinction of one of its citizens chairing important energy committee ;eting of the United Nations in New ..rk City. Dr. Andrew W. Decora, Director, ramie Energy Technology center, ns nominated by the United States vernment and selected by a UN :retary-General to participate as an Dert member of the Technical Panel Oil Shale and Tar Sands. This panel s convened as part of the ;paratory process for the 1981 United tions Conference on New and newable Sources of Energy. T'he Technical Panel was comprised experts from France, "Morocco, ' nada, Brazil, the People's Republic .j China, the Soviet Union, Iran, and pt. At its first meeting, the Panel ' cted Dr. Decora as chairman. Vith regard to resources, Decora d that the Panel noted that Canada jears to have by far the largest tar ids resource. The United States ntly upped its estimates of tar sand ources by a factor of ten, so that it v approaches its conventional oil serves. Recently, Iran has covered and is investigating large intities of bituminous carbonate :k type tar sands. The USSR is ieved to have very large reserves. )il shale, on the other hand, appears e more widely distributed with huge 1 posits in the United States and major l()osits in Brazil, China, the USSR and .ny other countries. "he USSR is mining 35 million tons of shale with 70 percent burned directly to raise steam for electric power and for heat. This is being produced in large power stations in the Baltic region. The Chinese are surface mining oil shale and producing about 300,000 tons of oil annually. Retorted shale ash is mainly used as a fill-in on underground coal mines. Brazil has been operating a shale oil pilot plant producing 1,000 barrels a day using surface mining and a top-feeding retorting process. The Brazilians expect ex-pect to have a commercial plant producing pro-ducing 50,000 barrels per day in the early ear-ly 1980's. Morocco is proceeding with the development of in situ technologies for producing an expected 7,000 tons per day. Dr. Decora was a recent visitor to Morocco where he noted that "the 50,000 barrels per day of shale oil expected ex-pected from the Moroccan development will supply nearly all of the petroleum needs for their country." As in the USSR, some developing countries are developing electric power plants based on direct combustion of oil shale. In the United States, oil shale technologies are still in the development develop-ment stage and there is no facility in continuous production. Decora described describ-ed the many surfaces and in situ technologies being considered by this country. After the discussion of resources, the Panel reviewed the products and byproducts by-products of coke, sulphur, and carbon dioxide. The Soviets use shale oil products pro-ducts for petrochemical industry feedstock, whereas the Chinese use shale oil directly for heating, and the Brazilians are producing in their pilot plant synthetic oil with by-products of sulphur and gas. In the United States, oil shale developments are intended primarily to produce pipeline quality synthetic crude; however, one development will produce substitute natural gas. Byproducts By-products are not yet of major interest, but at least one process aims at large-scale large-scale aluminum and sodium. Trials with test runs of gasoline, jet fuel, and boiler fuel refined from upgraded shale oil show satisfactory short term performance. perfor-mance. Concern was expressed by the Panel over a number of different types of environmental en-vironmental insult associated with tar sands and oil shale exploitation. These environmental considerations included landscape disturbance, disposal problems pro-blems of large quantities of sand from tar sands surface processing and spent shale ash, especially from oil shale retort processing, the production of sulpher dioxide in the flue gas in the processing operations for both tar sands and oil shale, and the consumption consump-tion of large quantities of water in the processing and upgrading of both tar sands and oil shale. In the true spirit of international cooperation, Dr. Decora said that all discussions were amicable and produc- tive. The Iranian panel member indicated in-dicated that life in Tehran goes on in a very normal way and that the only sign of disruption in the city was near the American Embassy where the hostages are being held. The next Panel meeting will be held this October in Geneva, Switzerland, followed by a 1981 meeting in Narobi, Kenya. |