Sage-Tips

What are the disadvantages of oil shale?

Another environmental disadvantage to extracting shale oil is the enormous amounts of freshwater required. Water is necessary for drilling, mining, refining, and generating power. Mining can also contaminate groundwater. During in situ processing, toxic byproducts are left underground.

Is oil shale bad for the environment?

Surface mining of oil shale deposits causes the usual environmental impacts of open-pit mining. In addition, the combustion and thermal processing generate waste material, which must be disposed of, and harmful atmospheric emissions, including carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

What are the major advantages and disadvantages of using shale oil and heavy oils produced from tar sands or oil sands?

advantages:large potential supplies, easy transportation, efficient distribution system. disadvantages: low energy net yield, released co2 and other air pollutants when produced and burned, severe land disruption and high water use.

What is a major problem of oil shale and tar sands?

Besides helping push us toward global warming catastrophe, oil shale and tar sands development destroys species habitat, wastes enormous volumes of water, pollutes air and water, and degrades and defiles vast swaths of land.

What are the advantages of using shale oil?

Shale oil production makes the United States more energy independent. Storing barrels of shale oil helps prices remain more stable. Shale oil extraction (fracking) benefits from innovative drilling techniques. Fracking causes ecological damage to the environment.

Is shale oil a dirty oil?

Oil shale is a dirty and expensive source of unconventional oil. Because oil shale requires mining and energy-intensive refining processes, it’s a substantially dirtier energy source than conventional liquid oil.

Who discovered oil shale?

In the 10th century, the Arabian physician Masawaih al-Mardini (Mesue the Younger) described a method of extraction of oil from “some kind of bituminous shale”. In the early 14th century, the first use of shale oil was recorded in Switzerland and Austria.

What are the advantages and disadvantages to using heavy oils?

Heavy Oil Pros and Cons Advantage: The energy density that creates an alternative source for transportation fuel and other products like plastics. Disadvantage: These processes pose environmental obstacles such as greenhouse gas emissions.

What are the disadvantages of oil sands?

Cons

• Enormous GHG emissions.
• Relatively low net energy return compared to other sources.
• Large amounts of water required: roughly 3:1.
• Water pollution.
• Destructive to major boreal forest.
• Widespread habitat destruction, both on land and water.
• Requires expensive and risky pipelines.

Is fracking used in oil sands?

There is no doubt that the dirty tar sands and fracking are revolutionising the industry. It is abundant in the shale gas and tight oil wells that are being drilled across America using the fracking method.

What are facts about shale?

Key Takeaways: Shale Shale is the most common sedimentary rock, accounting for about 70 percent of the rock in the Earth’s crust. Shale is a fine-grained rock made from compacted mud and clay. The defining characteristic of shale is its ability to break into layers or fissility. Black and gray shale are common, but the rock can occur in any color.

Is shale gas renewable?

Shale Gas is Not a Saviour, it is a Thorn in Renewable Energy’s Side. In a report on global shale released in June, the US Energy Information Administration estimated worldwide technically recoverable reserves of shale gas at 7,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, the equivalent to almost a third of global gas resources.

What is shale oil used for?

The term “shale oil” is also used for crude oil produced from shales of other very low permeability formations. However, to reduce the risk of confusion of shale oil produced from oil shale with crude oil in oil-bearing shales, the term “tight oil” is preferred for the latter.

What is the definition of shale oil?

Shale oil is the oil that is produced in an informal way from the oil shale rock formations by using different techniques. The techniques, such as thermal dissolution, pyrolysis and hydrogenation lead to the conversion of the organic matter into artificially matured oil. Shale oil is also often referred to as synthetic oil and gas or Kerogen .