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In-situ

Heavy oil and bitumen fall into the ‘difficult’ hydrocarbon category - very thick and very heavy, making it difficult to extract. But as we have more than 20 billion barrels of recoverable heavy oil in Canada alone, ‘difficult’ has to be overcome.

IUP

Having used various extraction methods with some success, we studied the possibility of upgrading the oil while still in the ground or ‘in situ’. Upgrading while still in place, we theorised, might increase recovery and enable us to extract a lighter, more valuable product that would reduce the usual amount of processing steps.

What started as a good theory, done on a molecular scale in a laboratory, worked in practice. In the first three years of our in situ field test in Peace River, Canada, more than 100,000 barrels of light oil were produced. The process involves drilling a number of closely spaced horizontal wells, some of which are used to insert heaters, others for production and monitoring. Over time, the heaters gradually warm the heavy oil. As the temperature increases, the heavy oil begins to separate – unwanted coke remains in place underground while the now lighter, cleaner oil is ready for extraction.  As much as 50% of the oil can be recovered with this method compared to the typical 30% recovered from conventional oil reservoirs.

ICP

Shell has been researching the potential to use a similar approach to recover oil and gas from oil shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing significant amounts of kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds). Our patented In situ Conversion Process (ICP) like IUP, bypasses surface mining and instead uses an advanced heating system, this time to heat the solid shale. At temperatures of 650 – 750 degrees F, the intense heating process releases oil and gas from the kerogen contained in the oil shale. The oil and gas is then brought to the surface using traditional methods, with the resulting products requiring fewer processing steps to produce transportation fuels such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.

One of our field tests in Colorado, USA, successfully used the In situ Conversion Process to recover 1,700 barrels of high quality light oil plus associated gas from oil shale. Our research to-date has demonstrated that the technology works technically on a small scale - what remains is to prove it can work commercially.

Similarly the In-situ Upgrading Process is still under development and there is a long way to go before we can consider full-scale commercial application. But both are exciting developments that we continue to pursue to unlock the vast remaining resources of unconventional oil.