Techno-economic Analysis And Environmental Impacts Assessment Of Shale Oil And Shale Gas Development In China

With rapid growth of China's economy,energy supply-demand contradiction becomes a thorny problem,development of unconventional shale oil and shale gas are of great significance for ensuring energy supply security and optimizing energy consumption structure.However,because of the reduction of international oil prices,immature technology,and the environmental impacts,it is necessary to quantitatively evaluate China's shale oil and shale gas industries from technology,economy and environment.Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment?LCA?are adopted to analyze the economic performance and environmental impacts of shale oil and shale gas,compared with the coal-based routes to figure out the bottleneck of shale industries in China.Input-output data are obtained by modeling and simulating the oil shale refinery process,results show that energy efficiency is relatively low,production cost of the oil shale to liquid fuels is 4217 CNY/t,while the break-even crude oil price of shale oil and coal pyrolysis substitute routes are 71-76$/bbl and 59-68$/bbl respectively.Environmental impacts results show that the water consumption is approximately 5.9 t/t fuel oil,life cycle greenhouse gas?GHG?emissions are 248.8 gCO_2-eq/MJ,also,air pollutants emissions are higher than conventional oil route.For shale gas,its profitability is subject to drilling and completion?D&C?costs and estimated ultimate recovery?EUR?,only a small part of shale gas projects with shallow burial depth and low D&C costs are now in the black.However,with technology innovation and cost reduction,shale gas will be competitive than coal-to-gas route.Shale gas cradle-to-gate life cycle GHG emission is about 19.1 gCO_2-eq/MJ,its water consumption is38.8 g/MJ.GHG and water consumption can not be neglected in the shale gas field.Although,China's shale oil and shale gas industries are facing challenges,considering supply-demand relationship and strategic stockpile requirement,China should support shale oil and shale gas from technology and policy aspects.Shale oil and shale gas will be powerful supplements to conventional resources,finally striving to achieve energy self-sufficient.