Underground oil‐shale retort monitoring using geotomography

Abstract

Geophysical tomographs (geotomographs) were made of two underground oil‐shale retorts: (1) the Occidental Oil Shale Inc. miniretort constructed for ignition tests at the demonstration mine at Logan Wash, Colorado; and (2) the Geokinetics Oil Shale Inc. Retort 25 near Vernal, Utah. These experiments demonstrate that geotomography may be a valuable diagnostic tool for underground oil‐shale retorting processes. At the Geokinetics in‐situ retort, the technique delineated the zones of high permeability in a cross‐section of the retort. At the Occidental modified in‐situ miniretort, the technique imaged the high temperature zone of the retort with a spatial resolution of about 2 m, and showed its temporal development over a period of eleven days.