What is shale oil?

Shale oil refers to the oil resources contained in shale series dominated by shale. These include oil in shale pores and fractures, and oil resources in adjacent layers and interlayers of tight carbonate rocks or clastic rocks in shale series. Usually effective development methods are horizontal well and staged fracturing technology. In the field of solid minerals, shale oil is a kind of artificial oil, which is a brown viscous liquid product with special pungent smell produced by decomposition of organic matter during shale dry distillation.

Kerogen in oil shale can be converted into synthetic crude oil through cracking chemical changes. When oil shale is heated to a certain temperature, steam can be separated, that is, shale oil similar to oil-an unconventional oil-and combustible oil shale gas produced by distillation ("shale gas" can also refer to natural gas contained in shale). Similar to natural petroleum, it is rich in alkanes and aromatics, but contains more olefin components, as well as non-hydrocarbon components such as oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. Due to the differences in shale composition and thermal processing conditions, the properties of shale oil are also different. Shale oil produced in Fushun, Maoming, China and Green River, USA has high hydrogen content and carbon number, and is suitable for processing and producing light oil products. However, because of its high nitrogen content, it must be removed during processing and refining, otherwise it will affect the quality of oil products. The shale oil produced in Estonia contains a variety of oxygenated compounds such as phenols, which is suitable for processing and preparing chemicals. Fushun and Maoming shale oil can produce qualified gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil, fuel oil and other chemical by-products such as paraffin, phenol, pyridine, naphthenic acid and petroleum coke after proper processing and refining. The processing method of shale oil is basically the same as the refining process of natural oil, including rectification, thermal cracking, petroleum coking, hydrofining and other processes.

Using shale oil to produce light oil is one of the lowest cost methods to produce qualified liquid fuel from artificial oil at present.