Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How much does oil shale sell for?
The production cost of a barrel of shale oil ranges from as high as US$95 per barrel to as low US$25 per barrel, although there is no recent confirmation of the latter figure. The industry is proceeding cautiously, due to the losses incurred during the last major investment into oil shale in the early 1980s, when a subsequent collapse in the oil price left the projects uneconomical.
Australia's oil shale resources are estimated at about 58 billion barrels, or 4,531 million tonnes of shale oil. The deposits are located in the eastern and southern states, with the greatest feasibility in the eastern Queensland deposits. Between 1862 and 1952, Australia mined four million tonnes of oil shale. The mining stopped when government support ceased. Since the 1970s, oil companies have been exploring possible reserves. From 2000 to 2004, the Stuart Oil Shale Project near Gladstone, Queensland produced over 1.5 million barrels of oil. The facility, in operable condition, is on care and maintenance and its operator (Queensland Energy Resources) is conducting research and design studies for the next phase of its oil-shale operations. A campaign by environmentalists opposed to the exploitation of oil-shale reserves may also have been a factor in its closure.
Water concerns are sensitive issues in arid regions, such as the western US and Israel's Negev Desert, where plans exist to expand oil-shale extraction despite a water shortage. Depending on technology, above-ground retorting uses between one and five barrels of water per barrel of produced shale-oil. A 2008 programmatic environmental impact statement issued by the US Bureau of Land Management stated that surface mining and retort operations produce of waste water per of processed oil shale. "In situ" processing, according to one estimate, uses about one-tenth as much water.
Environmental activists, including members of Greenpeace, have organized strong protests against the oil shale industry. In one result, Queensland Energy Resources put the proposed Stuart Oil Shale Project in Australia on hold in 2004.
Fracking is a colloquial term for "horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing." During the 19th century natural gas was easy to extract from moderate depths using vertical wells. Sometimes wells were not needed at all because the gas was so plentiful it would bubble up from the ground. As non-renewable energy resources become more scarce, advances in fracking technology have allowed access to natural gas reserves accumulated in shale formations. Reserves of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale rock formation are valued at around $500 billion in Pennsylvania alone. 
While coal production in Appalachia has been in decline, advances in fracking technology have contributed to the regional "natural gas boom." The coal deposit of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia's coal fields have been mined longer than other reserves in the United States. The remaining deposits in these areas are deeper and the costs of extraction has increased.
When oil was discovered in the Maracaibo Basin town of Mene Grande in 1914, the fortunes of the island were dramatically altered. In the early years, both Shell and Exxon held drilling concessions in Venezuela, which ensured a constant supply of crude oil to the refineries in Aruba and Curaçao. Crude oil production in Venezuela was inexpensive. The integrated companies Shell and Exxon controlled the entire industry from pumping, transporting, and refining to marketing the end product. The refineries on Aruba and Curaçao operated in global markets and were profitable partly because of the margin between the production costs of crude oil and the revenues realized on products. This provided a safety net for losses incurred through inefficiency or excessive operating costs at the refineries.
The oil and gas drilling industry uses massive semi trailer-transported triplex pumps called mud pumps to pump drilling mud, which cools the drill bit and carries the cuttings back to the surface.
Drillers use triplex or even quintuplex pumps to inject water and solvents deep into shale in the extraction process called "fracking".
Superior Oil Company (1921–1984) was an independent American oil company that is now part of ExxonMobil. Founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California, by William Myron Keck, Superior Oil began as a drilling contracting firm and grew into the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. In 1930 the company was the first to successfully use directional drilling in California. Moving to Houston, Texas, by 1931 the company had wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana and Venezuela. In 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1970s, Superior Oil was involved in the oil shale industry developing the Superior multimineral process. In September 1984 the company, then based in Houston, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobil.
Hydraulic fracturing (also fracking, fraccing, frac'ing, hydrofracturing or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique in which rock is fractured by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of 'fracking fluid' (primarily water, containing sand or other proppants suspended with the aid of thickening agents) into a wellbore to create cracks in the deep-rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum, and brine will flow more freely. When the hydraulic pressure is removed from the well, small grains of hydraulic fracturing proppants (either sand or aluminium oxide) hold the fractures open.
In 1933, under Keck the company was the first to use a reflection seismograph to help with finding hydrocarbons. Keck was a "pioneer" in deep offshore drilling, and in 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. The first independent to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, he was the first to find commercial deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, where he set consecutive records for the deepest-drilled well. Running his company like a "one-man machine," he kept control of the company's stock after it went public. The company also became the largest independent oil producer in the United States. According to author Kevin Krajick, Keck also "practically ran the oil-rich nation of Venezuela." Keck was an active stalwart of the oil lobby politically, in part through his attorney Harold Morton and lobbyist Monroe Butler. Upon his death in 1964, his son William M. Keck Jr. became Superior's chief executive officer, followed by leadership from his second son Howard. He served as chairman of Superior. At one point, his fortune was estimated at $160 million, and at the time of his death, he and his family owned 51 per cent of Superior's shares.
After oil was discovered in Venezuela in 1922 during the Maracaibo strike, Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gómez allowed American oil companies to write Venezuela's petroleum law. In 1943, Standard Oil of New Jersey accepted a new agreement in Venezuela based on the 50–50 principle, described as "a landmark event". Even more favorable terms were negotiated in 1945, after a coup brought to power a left-leaning government that included Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso.
Economic deposits of hydrate are termed Natural Gas Hydrate (NGH) and are unique in that they store 164 m of methane, 0.8 m water in 1 m hydrate. Most NGH is found beneath the seafloor (95%) where it exists in thermodynamic equilibrium. The sedimentary methane hydrate reservoir probably contains 2–10 times the currently known reserves of conventional natural gas, . This represents a potentially important future source of hydrocarbon fuel. However, in the majority of sites deposits are thought to be too dispersed for economic extraction. Other problems facing commercial exploitation are detection of viable reserves and development of the technology for extracting methane gas from the hydrate deposits.
Oil was discovered in producible quantities in Venezuela in 1914 at the town of Mene Grande in the east central part of the Maracaibo basin near a surface oil seep.
A proppant is a solid material, typically sand, treated sand or man-made ceramic materials, designed to keep an induced hydraulic fracture open, during or following a fracturing treatment. It is added to a "fracking fluid" which may vary in composition depending on the type of fracturing used, and can be gel, foam or slickwater–based. In addition, there may be unconventional fracking fluids. Fluids make tradeoffs in such material properties as viscosity, where more viscous fluids can carry more concentrated proppant; the energy or pressure demands to maintain a certain flux pump rate (flow velocity) that will conduct the proppant appropriately; pH, various rheological factors, among others. In addition, fluids may be used in low-volume well stimulation of high-permeability sandstone wells (20k to 80k gallons per well) to the high-volume operations such as shale gas and tight gas that use millions of gallons of water per well.
The main concern raised against fracking is of the environment. In order to extract the gas, water and chemicals must be blasted into the shale at high pressures. This process concerns opponents of fracking because of the potentially chemical leaks into sub-surface aquifers, which could affect thousands of hectares of land for many years. Radioactive particles could also pollute groundwater, which is already scarce in the Karoo. Proponents of the process argue that a well-maintained regulatory environment, with emergency event control protocols, would prevent environmental catastrophes from occurring. In the United States, leakage has been reported in less than 1% of wells. Proponents also argue that more casing can be used while drilling to prevent leakages and environmentally friendly chemicals have been developed to prevent leaks from being harmful to local water supplies. Finally, proponents contend that aquifers depended on for human use in the Karoo are generally shallow, while shale pockets that could be extracted from are deeper, so contamination is less likely.
By 1910, significant oil fields had been discovered in the Dutch East Indies (1885, in Sumatra), Persia (1908, in Masjed Soleiman), Peru (1863, in Zorritos District), Venezuela (1914, in Maracaibo Basin), and Mexico, and were being developed at an industrial level. Significant oil fields were exploited in Alberta (Canada) from 1947.
First offshore oil drilling at Oil Rocks (Neft Dashlari) in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan eventually resulted in a city built on pylons in 1949.
Availability of oil and access to it, became of "cardinal importance" in military power before and after World War I, particularly for navies as they changed from coal, but also with the introduction of motor transport, tanks and airplanes. Such thinking would continue in later conflicts of the twentieth century, including World War II, during which oil facilities were a major strategic asset and were extensively bombed.
In 1938, vast reserves of oil were discovered in the Al-Ahsa region along the coast of the Persian Gulf.
The Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC), the local water utility, leased the watershed in 1999 for gas drilling, and about 100 shallow gas wells have been drilled since then.
And in 2008, deeper drilling and fracking for gas in the Marcellus shale began near the reservoir.
As of 2013, 41 deep wells have been drilled on 6 pads. The drillers are Consol Energy's CNX Gas.
Some of the chemicals used by Consol for fracking have been listed online by the MAWC.
There is no information on the location, date, or total quantities of chemicals used, but Material Safety Data Sheets discuss the hazards and properties of these chemicals and others:
It is available as a generic medication and not very expensive. Wholesale it costs between 0.03 and 0.13 a dose. In the United States it is sold for about 0.40 per dose.
In hydraulic fracturing, well operators force water mixed with a variety of chemicals through the wellbore casing into the rock. The high pressure water breaks up or "fracks" the rock, which releases gas from the rock formation. Sand and other particles are added to the water as a proppant to keep the fractures in the rock open, thus enabling the gas to flow into the casing and then to the surface. Chemicals are added to the fluid to perform such functions as reducing friction and inhibiting corrosion. After the "frack," oil or gas is extracted and 30–70% of the frack fluid, i.e. the mixture of water, chemicals, sand, etc., flows back to the surface. Many gas-bearing formations also contain water, which will flow up the wellbore to the surface along with the gas, in both hydraulically fractured and non-hydraulically fractured wells. This produced water often has a high content of salt and other dissolved minerals that occur in the formation.
Since E&B Natural Resources will be using directional drilling for this project, traditional offshore drilling platforms will not be necessary for recovery. The process of Hydraulic Fracturing, or “fracking”, will also not be used, as the oil field provides naturally occurring characteristics that make the fracking unnecessary.
Berkeley Research Group Director William Hamm completed a study that estimated that the City of Hermosa would receive $519 million of total economic benefit from the project, a figure that was quickly criticized by opponents of the project as speculative and unreliable since it is based on a study paid for by E&B.
The Cretaceous 144-66 Ma to Miocene periods deposited clastic sediments from the Cordilleran orogeny. This period saw 40% of the region now called North America below sea level under the Rocky Mountain Seaway which comprised the Western Interior Seaway and the Hudson Seaway, and Labrador Seaway. The Cretaceous period rocks produce medium and heavy gravity oil in the Lloydminster region, and of the western province. The Laramide orogeny episode near the end of the Cretacsous and early Tertiary period caused larger gravels to be deposited from the newly formed Rocky Mountains when the Kula and Farallon Plates subducted below the North American plate. In the Cypress Hills area and southern Saskatchewan, lignite deposits developed from the marshes of these Tertiary rivers. The sea waters have retreated from the areas known as Saskatchewan. The Ravenscrag formation, Cypress Hills, and Wood Mountain Formations were notable gravel deposits from the Tertiary period. The Williston Basin affects this region at the southern edge. Tectonic movements and global changes in the sea level have given rise to a source of oil, natural gas, and coal.
The sea lanes in the Indian Ocean are considered among the most strategically important in the world with more than 80 percent of the world's seaborne trade in oil transits through Indian Ocean and its vital choke points, with 40 percent passing through the Strait of Hormuz, 35 percent through the Strait of Malacca and 8 percent through the Bab el-Mandab Strait.
The Indian Ocean provides major sea routes connecting the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia with Europe and the Americas. It carries a particularly heavy traffic of petroleum and petroleum products from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf and Indonesia. Large reserves of hydrocarbons are being tapped in the offshore areas of Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and Western Australia. An estimated 40% of the world's offshore oil production comes from the Indian Ocean. Beach sands rich in heavy minerals, and offshore placer deposits are actively exploited by bordering countries, particularly India, Pakistan, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
The project of a new Alberta Taciuk Processor which was planned by VKG Oil, was estimated to achieve break-even financial feasibility operating at 30% capacity, assuming a crude oil price of $21 per barrel or higher. At 50% utilization, the project was expected to be economic at a price of $18 per barrel, while at full capacity, it could be economic at a price of $13 per barrel. However, instead of Alberta Taciuk Processor VKG proceeded with a Petroter retort which production price level is not disclosed. Production costs in China have been reported to be as low as less than $25 per barrel, although there is no recent confirmation of this figure.
Major oil shale deposits are located in China, which has an estimated total of 32 billion metric tons, of which 4.4 billion metric tons are technically exploitable and economically feasible. In 2008, the amount of potential shale oil was estimated at and in 2016 at . The principal Chinese oil shale deposits and production lie in Fushun and Liaoning; others are located in Maoming in Guangdong, Huadian in Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Shandong. Professor Alan R. Carroll of University of Wisconsin–Madison estimates that Upper Permian lacustrine oil shale deposits of northwest China, absent from previous global oil shale assessments, are comparable to the Green River Formation.
On 28 August 1859, Edwin Drake discovered oil in a well 70 feet deep along Oil Creek, south of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The well made only 12 to 20 barrels per day, but the discovery set off a boom in oil drilling up and down Oil Creek, and then all down the Ohio valley, to Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, the same area where many shale oil retorts were located. In 1861, petroleum flooding onto the market drove the price down to US$0.52 per barrel, and lamp oil refiners switched over to petroleum as a much cheaper raw material. Refining petroleum had the further advantage that the process was not patented, allowing refiners to produce lamp oil without paying royalties. The existing shale oil refineries were forced by price-cutting competition to adapt their operations to use petroleum instead, and the American oil shale industry, booming just the previous year was suddenly abandoned. Cheap petroleum prices had driven oil shale out of business.
By early 1860, there were between 60 and 75 shale oil companies in the United States, producing from seven to nine million gallons annually of lamp and lubricating oil. Lamp oil from shale was reportedly much improved, and free from its early problems of smoke and odor. It was hailed as giving “more and cheaper light than any other substance,” and was driving the turpentine-based (camphene) lamp oils, as well as the much more expensive whale oil, from the market.