Endowed with one of the world’s largest deposits of oil shale, a rock in which petroleum is trapped, Jordan is embarking on an ambitious program to boost regional energy security.
Jordan announced a $2.1 billion contract with the Estonian firm Enefit to construct and operate a power station that would burn oil shale starting in 2017. The plant would occupy the site of the Attarat Um Ghudran oil shale deposit, about 110 kilometers south of Amman, and provide close to a fifth of the country’s electricity needs.
Even more ambitiously, Enefit and other energy companies are proceeding with projects in Jordan to extract the oil directly from the rock at competitive prices. If done cheaply, the process could deliver a reliable source of synthetic fuel to a kingdom that imports up to 97 percent of its energy.
Geologists estimate that Jordan possesses the fifth largest deposits of oil shale in the world. Historically, the high cost of freeing the oil from the rocks has hindered production. In some cases, extraction means cooking the rock with electrical coils underground. But with oil prices hovering near highs, the expensive process appears to be more economically sound.
Enefit’s synthetic fuel project promises to deliver to Jordan as much as 38,000 barrels of synthetic oil a day, replacing much of the country’s need for imported fuel. Unlike its neighbors Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Jordan’s territory holds scant oil reserves. The shale power plant alone could save the country hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
“Oil shale and the nuclear program are both very much needed to produce electricity, in addition to natural gas,” Energy Minister Mohammad Hamed told The Jordan Times in June 2014.
Sources: The Jordan Times, The Economist, Estonian Public Broadcasting