Jordan Making Move on Oil Shale-Fed Direct Combustion Power Plant

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The pace picked up on Jordan's intention to start oil shale projects when plans were announced to build a 600- to 900-megawatt (MW) direct combustion power plant running on oil shale, during the Jordan Energy Investment Summit in Amman this week.

For related information see October 10, 2011, article - Jordan to Launch Major Oil Shale Production.

Andres Anijalg, Enefit's (Tallinn, Estonia) project director of the company's Jordan shale oil program, said that the company was in the final stages of negotiations with Jordan's Ministry of Environment and National Electric Power Company to establish the power plant and begin construction on the project in early 2012. Enefit, known as Eesti Energia in Estonia, is the Baltic states' largest power producer, with decades of experience producing shale oil and using it as a power feed.

Anijalg said that the cost of operating a shale oil-based power plant is significantly lower than one operating on a diesel, heavy oil or gas feed. In Estonia, the company had shut down plants operating on gas, as they found oil shale a more cost-effective feed.

The Jordanian government signed a 44-year product-sharing agreement with Eesti Energia in 2010 under which the company will extract oil shale in the central region of the country and produce up to 40,000 barrels of oil per day by 2019.

Jordan's National Resources Authority (NRA), while accepting that developing the indigenous resources should be a pillar of the country's energy policy, said that there was still environmental concerns when undertaking oil shale extraction and that work was under way to draft laws and bylaws to enforce and develop environmental monitoring.

In addition to Eesti Energia, Karak International Oil, a subsidiary of U.K.-registered Jordan Energy and Mining Limited (Tunbridge Wells, England) and Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (The Hague, Netherlands) are also working to tap Jordan's oil shale resources, reports the Jordan Times.

The country's oil shale reserves cover more than 60% of the country and are estimated to exceed 50 billion tons.

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