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BNS - Estonia's power company Eesti Energia signed on Tuesday a concession agreement with the Jordanian government that allows it to utilize a part of the Attarat Um Ghudran oil shale deposit for the production of shale oil and electricity.
Jordan's Prime Minister Samir Rifai pointed out that his country at present imports 96 percent of the energy it needs, Eesti Energia said. "We are one of the few Middle East countries that lacks energy resources of its own except for oil shale. Jordan's oil shale resources would easily cover the country's energy needs for both electricity and oil. Thus, oil shale is for us too the cornerstone of our energy security," Eesti Energia quoted the prime minister as saying.
After the signing of the deal Eesti Energia will carry out additional geological and hydrological surveys of the said deposit, as well as test and develop oil shale processing technologies and conduct an environmental impact assessment.
In four years at the latest the decision will be made whether to continue with an industrial phase and start building an industrial complex. The right of using the resource in the industrial phase after the studies runs for 40 years under the concession agreement and it can be extended for another 10 years.
The Attarat Um Ghudran deposit is located in central Jordan and it is the largest of the known deposits. It is estimated to hold 25 billion tons of oil shale.
Eesti Energia's roughly 40 square kilometer concession area contains an estimated two billion or so tons of oil shale. The area could be extended at certain conditions which would put four billion tons of oil shale at Eesti Energia's disposal, the company said.
Eesti Energia is working on two projects in parallel in Jordan: a shale oil factory with a daily capacity of 38,000 barrels and an oil shale-fired power plant with a capacity of 900 megawatt. The role of Eesti Energia is that of developer of the projects and supplier of the Enefit technology to the shale oil factory.
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