07 December 2010
Amman - Head of the Corporate Affairs at the Jordan Oil Shale Company (JOSCo) Tamim Suyyagh on Tuesday said that the company, which had already started the initial exploration phase of deep layers of oil shale, will invest at least $340 million till reaching commercial production.
In a press conference, Suyyagh added that (JOSCo) would pay the state $85 million as fees for all post-commercial production phases. He noted that the company has dug a number of wells in a 22-thousand-sqaure-kilometre concession area to assess richness and thickness of oil shale layers.
Afterwards, Suyyagh added, the company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, will work in a one-thousand-square-kilometer area covering 20 sites for production after completing assessment, appraisal, pilot field project and finally project design.
He pointed out that Shell has been employing underground heating technique in the US state of Colorado and this gave good results. The heating process pyrolyses the organic matter in the oil shale and converts this matter into oil and hydrocarbon gas underground and then produced using conventional extracting technology.
JOSCo believes in a novel technology currently under development. The technology is called the In situ Conversion Process ("ICP"). ICP extracts hydrocarbons from oil shale by using underground heaters to heat the oil shale in place. The company is testing the new technique in an exploration site in northeastern Jordan.
Amman - Head of the Corporate Affairs at the Jordan Oil Shale Company (JOSCo) Tamim Suyyagh on Tuesday said that the company, which had already started the initial exploration phase of deep layers of oil shale, will invest at least $340 million till reaching commercial production.
In a press conference, Suyyagh added that (JOSCo) would pay the state $85 million as fees for all post-commercial production phases. He noted that the company has dug a number of wells in a 22-thousand-sqaure-kilometre concession area to assess richness and thickness of oil shale layers.
Afterwards, Suyyagh added, the company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, will work in a one-thousand-square-kilometer area covering 20 sites for production after completing assessment, appraisal, pilot field project and finally project design.
He pointed out that Shell has been employing underground heating technique in the US state of Colorado and this gave good results. The heating process pyrolyses the organic matter in the oil shale and converts this matter into oil and hydrocarbon gas underground and then produced using conventional extracting technology.
JOSCo believes in a novel technology currently under development. The technology is called the In situ Conversion Process ("ICP"). ICP extracts hydrocarbons from oil shale by using underground heaters to heat the oil shale in place. The company is testing the new technique in an exploration site in northeastern Jordan.
© Jordan News Agency - Petra 2010
