Oil Shale Mining
[ http://www.questerre.com/en/operations/ ... le-mining/ ]
Utah, Wyoming, Saskatchewan
The announcement of a strategic environmental assessment in Quebec led Questerre to pursue unconventional oil opportunities. In the fall of 2011, the Company assembled a portfolio of oil shale mining opportunities including prospective acreage and licensing rights to a proprietary technology to produce oil from shale.
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The EcoShale process is designed to extract high quality light oil from mined oil shale in an environmentally sustainable manner. The process involves the mining of shale that is placed in a large clay lined and covered capsule. Expendable heat pipe loops are strategically placed in the capsule with the oil shale. External blowers are used to force the hot flue gas from natural gas burners through the pipe loops to heat the oil shale. Collection pipes are located at the top and bottom of the capsule to recover the natural gas and oil respectively. Produced natural gas from heating the oil shale fuels the burners used to heat other capsules. Upon completion, the pipes in the capsule are sealed and the surface of the capsule is covered with top soil and seeded with native vegetation.
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To capture additional resources, Questerre also executed a ten year non-exclusive option agreement to license Red Leaf's EcoShale processes and technology for any project identified by Questerre. Subject to the project meeting the criteria for commerciality, Questerre will pay Red Leaf a fee of US$2 million for each licence issued. Red Leaf will receive a gross overriding royalty on the project on mutually acceptable terms.
To assess its own acreage prospective for oil shale in the Pasquia Hills area of east central Saskatchewan, Questerre conducted a 16 well core-hole program during the year. Approximately 30m to 45m of good quality shale was encountered in all the wells drilled with grades of 10 g/t to 20 g/t and select intervals of up to 16 g/t to 20 g/t within a 20m to 30m section. Based on the core data,the original 100,000 acres has been high-graded to approximately 39,000 net acres.
For 2013, Questerre plans to complete analysis of the core data in advance of developing an independent resource assessment.
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EcoShale™ In-Capsule Technology
[ http://www.redleafinc.com/index.php?opt ... 6&Itemid=4 ]
Red Leaf Resources, Inc. has developed the EcoShale™ In-Capsule Technology to economically and environmentally produce high quality liquid transportation fuels from oil shale, oil sands, coal, lignite and bio-mass.
The EcoShale™ In-Capsule Technology involves heating mined shale in a closed surface impoundment, or capsule. The process relies on conventional mining and construction methods and produces a bottomless oil product that requires no coking. The process produces a shale oil with a much higher concentration of middle distillate than West Texas intermediate crude. Two synthetic shale oil products are produced: (1) prompt oil of approximately 29 API gravity; (2) condensate oil of approximately 39 API gravity. The oil and condensate produced with this process have no fines and have very low acid numbers.
The technology requires no process water, protects groundwater and vegetation, uses low temperatures for heating and allows for rapid site reclamation.
The resultant product is a high quality feedstock with an average 34 API and no fines. The process also results in synthetic natural gas production allowing for energy self-sufficiency.