Oil Shale Exploration Company

Technology
Extracting Synthetic Oil from Oil Shale

After careful study, OSEC currently intends to use the Petrosix process (a patented retort process) as the technology to process the mined oil shale into shale oil at the White River Mine.

The Petrosix process has been under development since the 1950’s and is one of the few retorting processes in the world that can show significant production of oil and reasonable on-stream factors. This retort technology is owned by Petrobras and has been operational in Brazil since 1992.

Petrosix is an externally generated hot gas technology. Externally generated hot gas technologies use heat, transferred by gases which are heated outside the retort vessel. As with most internal combustion retort technologies, the Petrosix retort processes oil shale in a vertical shaft kiln where the vapors within the retort are not diluted with combustion exhaust. The world’s largest operational surface oil shale pyrolysis reactor is the Petrosix thirty-six foot diameter vertical shaft kiln which is located in São Mateus do Sul, Paraná, Brazil. This retort processes 260 tons of oil shale per hour.

While the Petrosix process is a proven technology, oil shale processing technologies are evolving worldwide every day. Many other countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Estonia, Germany, Jordan, Israel, Russia and Thailand are developing their own oil shale resources and technology. OSEC will actively explore all state-of-the-art processing technologies as the company progresses through the RD&D project and into its commercial phase.