TOOLEBUC FORMATION - OIL SHALEArticles of interest.Toolebuc Oil...

TOOLEBUC FORMATION - OIL SHALE
Articles of interest.

Toolebuc Oil Shale

Oil Shale in the marine Toolebuc Formation of Early Cretaceous age underlies about 484,000 km² in parts of the Eromanga and Carpenteria Basins in Queensland and adjacent States (fig. 2). The oil-shale zone ranges from 6.5 to 7.5 m in thickness but yields on average only about 37 l/t, making it a low-grade resource. However, the Toolebuc Formation is estimated to contain 245 billion m³ (about 1.7 trillion barrels) of in-situ shale oil. Excluding weathered oil shale from the surface to a depth of 50m, about 20 percent (49 billion m³ or 340 billion barrels) of the shale-oil resource between the depths of 50 to 200 m could be produced by open-pit mining (Ozimic and Saxby, 1983, p.1). The oil shale also contains potential resources of uranium nad vanadium. One of the more favorable localities for oil-shale development is near Julia Creek, where the Toolebuc oil shale is near the surface and is amenable to open-pit mining. The resources of shale oil in the Toolebuc Formation suitable for open-pit mining total 1.5 billion U.S. barrels, but the oil shale is too low grade for development at present (Noon, 1984, pg. 5).

The organic matter of the Toolebuc oil shale is composed largely of bituminite, liptodetrinite, and lamalginite (Hutton, 1988, p. 210; Sherwood and Cook, 1983, p. 36). The atomic hydrogen to carbon (H/C) ratio of the organic matter is about 1.1 ± 0.2 with high aromaticity (>50 percent). Only 25 percent of the organic matter converts to oil by conventional retorting (Ozimic and Saxby, 1983).

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