Multi-Agent Simulation and Geospatial Infrastructure for Oil Shale Production and Water Resource Utilization in the Piceance Basi

Oil shale deposits of the Green River Formation (GRF) in Northwestern Colorado, Southwestern Wyoming, and Northeastern Utah may become one of the first oil shale deposits to be developed in the U.S. because of their richness, accessibility, and extensive prior characterization. Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock that contains significant amounts of kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. Water is needed to retort oil shale at an approximate rate of three volumes of water for every volume of oil produced. Concerns have been raised over the demand and availability of water to produce oil shale, particularly in semiarid regions where water consumption must be limited and optimized to meet demands from other sectors. Water demand and availability for oil shale development in the Piceance Basin in Northwestern Colorado were assessed by developing a basin-wide water resource geospatial infrastructure within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and a Multi-Agent Simulation. This geospatial infrastructure was designed for managing a large amount of oil shale related data, and for setting up the frameworks for analytical and numerical models including three-dimensional geologic, energy development systems, and surface water models. The geodatabase and the interfaces between the components within the geospatial infrastructure, were developed to aid in finding solutions to address water demand and availability and environmental issues relating to potential development of oil shale resources in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado. The simulation was designed to read in the oil shale resource from the geodatabase and simulate five agents and their different operational technologies and resource target zones through commercial production scenarios. Output from the simulation included water resource utilization over time by agent, retort cell, and basin wide total use. Results showed water resource utilization was sensitive to operational plans and power consumption.