BINYAMINA, Israel, March 27 (UPI) -- An Israeli company has proposed a plan to manufacture synthetic oil from oil shale that, if successful, could cut the country's oil imports by one-third.
"Theoretically, there is enough oil shale in Israel to provide the country with 50 years' worth of oil," Israel Petroleum Commissioner Ya'akov Mimran told United Press International in a telephone interview.
However, a myriad of economic, geologic, environmental and logistical concerns mean getting at these reserves and converting them would be "not at all simple," Mimran said.
Israel imports all its oil -- 75 percent comes from Russia and the former Soviet Union, and the rest comes from West Africa, Egypt and Mexico.
Representatives of the Afsak Hom-Tov company met with the director general of the Ministry of National Infrastructures and several other energy officials last week. The company asked government representatives to set in motion the process of mining the shale and building a factory to convert it to synthetic oil, according to a ministry statement.
"The ministry promotes this initiative ... and will surely reduce (Israel's) dependence on world oil prices," Eli Ronen, the ministry's director general, said in the statement.
This does not mean Israel will cancel its oil orders any time soon, however. It signified a first step for the Hom-Tov company, but Mimran said, "We have a lot of work ahead of us ... it's too early to say when the factory would start producing oil."
Ronen's encouragement was also not an official endorsement of the project, Mimran said, emphasizing that environmental concerns still needed to be addressed.
The term "oil shale" is actually a misnomer, the World Energy Council says. The organic material that would act like petroleum is called kerogen. When processed, kerogen becomes a petroleum-like substance, but in order to be able to use it for energy, it must also be heated to around 932 degrees Fahrenheit.
The resulting substance is said to be of slightly better quality than the lowest grade of petroleum produced from conventional oilfields, but of lower quality than higher petroleum grades, the World Energy Council said.
There are two ways to process the shale: One way is to fracture the shale in its location and then heat it to get gases and liquids by wells. In the second process, the shale is mined, transported and then heated to about 842 degrees Fahrenheit. Hydrogen is then added to the resulting product and waste is then disposed and stabilized.
Both processes require a significant amount of water, which will present a problem for Israel that has a water shortage. To complicate matters, Israel's oil shale reserves are concentrated in the northern Negev Desert, an area with even less water than the rest of the country.
"The total energy and water requirements together with environmental and monetary costs (of producing) shale oil in significant quantities have so far made production uneconomic," a World Energy Council paper said.
In any case, Mimran said, Hom-Tov would have to conduct much research and planning to produce the shale oil.
"This is a very, very innovative technology," Mimran said.
Logistics will also present a problem, Mimran said.
"For instance, one of the deposits (of oil shale) is under Beit Shemesh," a sizeable suburb outside of Jerusalem.
However, the deposits are sizeable.
Mimran said the country has 14 billion tons of proven reserves, while the Ministry of National Infrastructures statement placed the amount of reserves at closer to 15 billion tons.
"Generally speaking, Israeli oil shales are relatively low in heating value and oil yield, and high in sulfur content, compared with other major deposits," the World Energy Council paper noted.
Hom-Tov's factory would process 6 million tons of oil shale annually, producing 2 million tons of waste, "which is also an environmental problem," the ministry statement said.
According to Greenpeace, to call the production of shale oil "an environmental problem" is an understatement. The global environmental group waged and won a campaign against a shale oil production site in Queensland, Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef.
The greenhouse gas emissions from the Australian production site would have been nearly quadruple those of a regular oil production site, Greenpeace said.
In addition, the Australian plant was called a "public health nuisance" by Queensland Health and "repeatedly made local people sick," Greenpeace said. Furthermore, "shale oil produces highly toxic dioxins, which have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems and immune system defects," the environmental group said.
Besides using large quantities of water, shale oil plants can produce toxic waste water, Greenpeace said: the Australian production facility "would have discharged waste water that exceeds the water quality guidelines for every reported contaminant."
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