European shale gas company San Leon Energy produced the first oil shale from its Timahdit permit in Morocco
Authorities from San Leon Energy stated that oil successfully flowed from the Enefit retort process during the bench tests. Though the company is still carrying out tests in the area, authorities have confirmed that results so far appear encouraging.
Final results will be utilised to update the project feasibility study and enable consideration of the upgrading options for the raw oil, added authorities.
Oisin Fanning, executive chairman of San Leon Energy said, “Our Timahdit oil shale project continues to show its long-term potential to generate up to 11,000 bpd for 30 years and the current work is designed to build the business case to attract capital investors.”
Local reports stated that the European company signed an MoU in January 2014 with Chevron Lummus Global to maximise technologies required to produce synthetic crude oil from raw shale oil at the Timahdit license area. Surface and core sampling of oil shale from the Timahdit license was completed at the time. The samples are currently the subject of bench tests at the EOT/Enefit facility in Frankfurt to confirm the quality of the various layers of oil shale, and the oil yield possible from those layers.
In addition, San Leon Energy also saw a well spud on the Nour prospect offshore Morocco. The well is targeting 300mn barrels of oil equivalent (boe), added San Leon authorities.
