DE-NT0006554

Goal
The goal of this project is to develop a water resource geospatial infrastructure which contains the basin/baseline dataset for surface and ground water, cus¬tomized analytical toolsets and GUIs within the GIS platform. The water resource geospatial infrastructure will provide water management solutions that will facilitate decision making for potential oil shale resource development in the Western U. S., environmental impact studies (EIS), and cost estimation under different development scenarios.

Performers
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401
University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249
Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID 83415-2107

Collaborators
USGS Energy Resources Program, Denver, CO 80228
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545

Background
Abundant oil shale deposits are found throughout the Midwestern and Eastern United States, however, the deposits of the Green River Formation in northwestern Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, and northeastern Utah are most likely to be developed because of their richness, accessibility, and extensive prior characterization.

Figure 1 Green River Formation basins in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Figure shows most geologically prospective oil shale resources; areas where the overburden above the oil shale resources is =500 ft; and locations of the six RD&D projects [1].

The Green River oil shale deposits are located within the Upper Colorado River Basin, which includes the Colorado River and its tributaries north of Lee’s Ferry, Arizona. Colorado River waters are critical resources in this semiarid region, being used for municipal purposes, irrigated agriculture, industry and mining, energy development, and for maintaining recreational, scenic, and ecological values. Oil shale development has diverse impacts on water quality and water quantity. It is necessary that these impacts be addressed while developing the oil shale resource.

Development of Western oil shale resources will require significant quantities of water for mine and plant operations, reclamation, and associated economic growth. Department of Energy (DOE) report indicates that current estimates based on updated oil shale industry water budgets for new retorting methods will be 1 to 3 barrels of water per barrel of oil. For an oil shale industry producing 2.5 MMBOPD, this equates to between 105 and 315 million gallons of water per day (MGD).

These numbers include water requirements for power generation for in-situ heating processes, retorting, refining, reclamation, dust control and on-site worker demands. According to this DOE fact sheet report, municipal and other water requirements related to population growth and industry development will require an additional 58 million gallons per day. In areas where oil shale is available, particularly in the Western U.S., the water will be drawn from local and regional sources. The major water source would be rivers, which have to support the water demands from municipal, industrial, and agricultural activities in addition to baseline environmental flows.

In addition to water quantity issues, water quality issues need to be addressed. There are CO₂ foot prints and possibility of oil spills because of large amounts of shale oil produced, processed, and transported. Stream temperature could also be altered due to warm wastewater discharge from power plants, by consuming cool water, or by lowering the ground water table. Toxic trace elements and organic chemicals from stack emissions from processing operations, chemicals used in upgrading and gas processing, leachates from raw and retorted shale, and associated industrial and municipal wastes are also a concern because of their potential impact on aquatic life, and on human health through drinking water supplies and irrigation.

Due to these potential environmental impacts of oil shale development, the water usage issues need to be further studied. A basin-integrated baseline for surface and ground water data is the foundation of these studies. The study of water availability and environmental impact is a critical early step for the potential development of oil shale resources in the Western U.S.

Impact
One of the greatest challenges to advancing scientific discovery and industrial development is to collect data efficiently so that can be shared among the scientific and public communities. Development of the water resource geospatial database will create a repository for large volumes of water resource and oil shale data. This database will allow for collaborative regional basin assessments for future oil shale development. This type of collaboration provides the ideal atmosphere for the development of new, generically useful approaches to the use of technology, and procedures that promote the best and most widespread use of our enormous data holdings despite their disparate locations and heterogeneous formats. The developed databases will enhance existing oil shale data, by developing tools and GUIs to integrate previously dispersed and diverse datasets, thus standardizing oil shale data. The results of this research will become a powerful approach to facilitate communication among industry, state, federal regulators, and other stakeholders.

Architecture of the GIS-based Water Resource Geospatial Infrastructure, figure also shows the tentative methodology to be used in the infrastructure development.

Accomplishments
The “GIS and Web-Based Water Resource Geospatial Infrastructure for Oil Shale Development” Project started last October. Recent accomplishments are listed as follows:

• Design of the framework of the initial Geodatabase
• Purchase and setup a GIS server that designated to the project
• Task 4a deliverable submitted by Idaho National Laboratory for Oil and Natural Gas Technology Program, DOE Award No. DE-NT0006554, "GIS- and Web-based Water Resources Geospatial Infrastructure for Oil Shale Development".
• Report on International Oil Shale Symposium, Tallinn, Estonia, June 8-11, 2009, and on travel to China related to oil shale development, June 13-26, 2009
• Completion of the initial framework/prototype of the geodatabase for surface water resource
• Completion of the initial framework/prototype of the geodatabase for ground water resource
• Completion of the initial framework/prototype of the integrated geodatabase including all the data collected so far, such as geological, geomorphologic, oil shale (Fisher assays), surface water, ground water, and climatic data sets.
• The initial products of customized tools for I/O automation and data processing.

Current Status (January 2010)
The project team is currently continuing to collect data and integrate them into the geodatabases. These geodatabases evolve with time through the life span of the project. The current focus points of the project are building customized tools/procedures that will facilitate the automation of the data processing and data input from the geodatabases into the surface water model, as well as build the prototype of the 3D geological model. The setup of the surface water model has already started. Details about the ground water model have been discussed in our weekly team meetings during the past a couple of months. The setup of ground water model is expected to start soon Ideas on how to build the connection between the 3D geological model and the Energy Resource Development System Dynamic model have been exchanges many times between researchers at CSM and scientists at INL. The System Dynamic model will be set up soon after the 3D geological model has been built.

Project Start: October 1, 2008
Project End: September 30, 2011

DOE Contribution: $883,971
Performer Contribution: $298,253

Contact Information:
NETL – Virgiina Weyland (Virgiina.Weyland@netl.doe.gov or 281-494-2517)
Colorado School of Mines – Wei (Wendy) Zhou (wzhou@mines.edu or 303-384-2181)

Additional Information:

Technology Status Assessment [PDF-44KB]

Publications

The Office of Technology Assessment Materials Program staff, An Assessment of Oil Shale Technol¬ogy, Volume I, June 1980

Geology and Resources of Some World Oil-Shale Deposits (USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2005–5294)

Draft OSTS PEIS, Appendix A: Oil Shale Development Background and Technology Overview (De¬cember 2007)

U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory 2007 Oil Shale Environmental Issues and Needs Workshop, October 18, 2007, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, March 2008.

Zhou, W.; Chen, G.; Li, H.; Luo, H.; Huang, S. L., GIS Application in Mineral Resource Analysis – A Case Study of Offshore Marine Placer Gold at Nome, Alaska, Computers and Geosciences, 33 (2007), pp. 773–788.