The Mineral Sources and Mining Industries Authority (MRMIA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with New Valley Firm for Mineral Sources and Oil Clay (Wadico) to cooperate in finishing geological, technical, and financial research to evaluate oil shale reserves in Egypt and develop an built-in plan for his or her optimum exploitation, famous an announcement issued by the Ministry of Petroeum an dMineral Sources.
The MoU stipulates {that a} joint process power between the 2 events is shaped to develop, implement, and monitor an motion plan utilizing particular mechanisms. Underneath the settlement, MRMIA will present geological knowledge, licenses, permits, and the mandatory technical help, whereas Wadico might be liable for conducting technical research and financial assessments to help the environment friendly exploitation of oil shale and related uncooked supplies.
The MoU, in keeping with the assertion, represents a severe step throughout the state’s path in direction of different vitality and diversifying vitality sources. The undertaking additionally contributes to fulfilling the native want for oil shale and different related uncooked supplies whereas exploring the financial feasibility of the excellent exploitation of those assets.
This cooperation additionally underscores the state’s and the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources’ (MoPMR) dedication to offering a sexy setting for extra native and international investments, enhancing the mining sector’s contribution to the nationwide output, and producing new jobs. This additionally aligns with Egypt’s imaginative and prescient for complete improvement. It additional reinforces its place as a regional hub for the vitality and mining industries.
The MoU was signed in the course of the actions of the fourth version of the Egypt Mining Discussion board (EMF), held below the patronage of the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources, affirming the Ministry’s keenness to help partnerships and nationwide our bodies to maximise the added worth from pure assets.
Previous to this MoU, Wadico signed a strategic cooperation settlement with world BCM Group. This settlement is ready to launch the primary undertaking of its form in Egypt for the exploration and manufacturing of oil shale. Wadico pressured that the settlement represents a qualitative leap in direction of exchanging technical and geological experience with one of many largest firms within the sector. It additionally opens the door to using oil shale as a substitute vitality supply, whether or not by means of its use in energy era or as a sustainable vitality supply in cement factories, which considerably enhances Egypt’s capability to diversify its vitality sources.
Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock characterised by its wealthy content material of kerogen, an natural materials composed of paraffin hydrocarbons, sulfur, and nitrogen, from which oil might be extracted by means of heating. This distinguishes it from shale oil, which is crude oil already current inside shale rock that may be extracted with out thermal processing.
The extraction technique for oil shale can range considerably primarily based on its depth. Shallow deposits might be mined utilizing typical methods, much like these employed for oil sands. Nevertheless, deeper deposits necessitate extra complicated approaches, corresponding to in-situ retorting or underground mining. Whereas the room-and-pillar technique of underground mining can get better roughly 60% of shale from smaller seams, its effectivity plummets for bigger, deeper deposits, usually recovering as little as 10% of the obtainable shale.
