FY-09 Summary Report to the Office of Petroleum Reserves on the Western Energy Corridor Initiative Activities and Accomplishments

To meet its programmatic obligations under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Office of Naval Petroleum and Shale Oil Reserves (NPSOR) has initiated the Western Energy Corridor Initiative (WECI). The WECI will implement the Unconventional Strategic Fuels Task Force recommendations for accelerating and promoting the development of domestic unconventional fuels to help meet the nations’ energy needs. The mission of the WECI is to bolster America’s future fuel security by facilitating socially and environmentally responsible development of unconventional fuels resources in the Western Energy Corridor, using sound engineering principles and science-based methods to define and assess benefits, impacts, uncertainties, and mitigation options and to resolve impediments. The Task Force proposed a three-year program in its commercialization plan. The work described herein represents work performed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in support of the DOE’s WECI. This effort represents an interim phase of work, designed to initiate only select portions of the initiative, limited by available funding resources within NPOSR. Specifically, the work presented here addresses what was accomplished in FY-09 with the remaining carryover (~$420K) from NPOSR FY-08 funds. It was the intent of the NPOSR program to seek additional funding for full implementation of the full scope of work; however, the original tasks were reduced in scope, terminated, or eliminated (as noted below). An effort is ongoing to obtain funding to continue the tasks initiated under this project. This study will focus on the integrated development of multiple energy resources in a carbon-neutral and environmentally acceptable manner. Emphasis will be placed on analyses of the interrelationships of various energy-resource development plans and the infrastructure, employment, training, fiscal, and economic demands placed on the region as a result of various development scenarios. The interactions at build-out during the design, permitting, and construction of individual and multiple energy developments are not fully considered at the local, state, regional, or national levels. The net impacts to the Western Energy Corridor cannot be understood and the design optimized under the current approach. A regional development plan is needed to model cumulative impacts, determine the carrying capacity of the basin, and provide valuable technically based information to both skeptics and advocates. The INL scope of work for FY-09 involved six tasks: 1. Evaluation of the ASPEN Code as a dynamic systems model for application and use under the WECI and communications with Alberta Oil Sands Research Institutions as an “analog” resource development in the Western Energy Corridor 2. Application of the Aspen Plus computer model to several oil shale processes to consider energy balances and inputs and outputs (e.g. water consumption, CO2 production, etc.) 3. Development of a regulatory roadmap for oil shale developments 4. Defining of the physiographic extent of the natural resource reserves that comprise the Western Energy Corridor 5. A review of the Unconventional Fuels Task Force Report to Congress for ideas, concepts and recommendations that crosscutting plans 6. Program development with stakeholders, including industry, academics, state and federal agencies, and non government organizations. This task also includes project management, strategic development and reporting.

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