Carl Friedrich Schmidt was a Baltic German geologist and botanist in the Russian Empire. He is acknowledged as the founder of Estonian geology. In the mid-19th century, he researched Estonian oil shale, kukersite, and named it as kuckers.
Viru Keemia Grupp (VKG) is an Estonian holding group of oil shale industry, power generation, and public utility companies.
The oil shale industry is an industry of mining and processing of oil shale—a fine-grained sedimentary rock, containing significant amounts of kerogen, from which liquid hydrocarbons can be manufactured. The industry has developed in Brazil, China, Estonia and to some extent in Germany and Russia. Several other countries are currently conducting research on their oil shale reserves and production methods to improve efficiency and recovery. Estonia accounted for about 70% of the world's oil shale production in a study published in 2005.
Environmental impact of the oil shale industry includes the consideration of issues such as land use, waste management, and water and air pollution caused by the extraction and processing of oil shale. Surface mining of oil shale deposits causes the usual environmental impacts of open-pit mining. In addition, the combustion and thermal processing generate waste material, which must be disposed of, and harmful atmospheric emissions, including carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Experimental in-situ conversion processes and carbon capture and storage technologies may reduce some of these concerns in future, but may raise others, such as the pollution of groundwater.
Oil shale gas is a synthetic non-condensable gas mixture (syngas) produced by oil shale thermal processing (pyrolysis). Although often referred to as shale gas, it differs from the natural gas produced from shale, which is also known as shale gas.
Kukersite is a light-brown marine type oil shale of Ordovician age. It is found in the Baltic Oil Shale Basin in Estonia and North-West Russia. It is of the lowest Upper Ordovician formation, formed some 460 million years ago. It was named after the German name of the Kukruse Manor in the north-east of Estonia by the Russian paleobotanist Mikhail Zalessky in 1917. Some minor kukersite resources occur in sedimentary basins of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Oklahoma in North America and in the Amadeus and Canning basins of Australia.
Oil shale in China is an important source of unconventional oil. A total Chinese oil shale resource amounts of 720 billion tonnes, located in 80 deposits of 47 oil shale basins. This is equal to 48 billion tonnes of shale oil. At the same time there are speculations that the actual resource may even exceed the oil shale resource of the United States.
There are two kinds of oil shale in Estonia, both of which are sedimentary rocks laid down during the Ordovician geologic period. Graptolitic argillite is the larger oil shale resource, but, because its organic matter content is relatively low, it is not used industrially. The other is kukersite, which has been mined for more than a hundred years. Kukersite deposits in Estonia account for 1% of global oil shale deposits.
The Kiviter process is an above ground retorting technology for shale oil extraction.
Paul Nikolai Kogerman was an Estonian chemist and founder of modern research in oil shale.
The Galoter process is a shale oil extraction technology for a production of shale oil, a type of synthetic crude oil. In this process, the oil shale is decomposed into shale oil, oil shale gas, and spent residue. A decomposition is caused by mixing raw oil shale with a hot oil shale ash, generated by combustion of carbonaceous residue (semi-coke) in the spent residue. The process was developed in 1950s and it is used commercially for the shale oil production in Estonia. There are projects for further development of this technology and for expansion of its usage, e.g. in Jordan and USA.
The Alberta Taciuk process is an above-ground dry thermal retorting technology for extracting oil from oil sands, oil shale and other organics-bearing materials, including oil contaminated soils, sludges and wastes. The technology is named after its inventor William Taciuk and the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority.
NPM Silmet AS is a rare-earth processor located in Sillamäe, Estonia. It is a subsidiary of Neo Performance Materials.
Ahtme Power Plant was an oil shale-fired power plant in Ahtme, Kohtla-Järve, Estonia. It was owned by VKG Soojus, a subsidiary of Viru Keemia Grupp. Until the end 2012, it supplied with heat Ahtme district of Kohtla-Järve and Jõhvi.
The Kohtla-Järve Power Plant is an oil shale-fired power plant in Kohtla-Järve, Estonia, about 15 km to north-west of the Ahtme Power Plant. It is owned by VKG Soojus, a subsidiary of Viru Keemia Grupp. It consists of Põhja Power Plant and Lõuna Power Plant.
Graptolitic argillite is a marinite-type black shale of sapropelic origin. It is a blackish to greyish lithified claystone. The known occurrence of this rock is a graptolitic argillite of the Türisalu Formation in northern Estonia and northwest Russia. It is correlated with Swedish alum shale being its younger facial eastward continuation, and both being a part of the Baltoscandic Cambrian-Ordovician black shale, together with black shales in the Oslo region in Norway, Bornholm, Denmark, and Poland. Other known occurrences are in North America, the Malay Peninsula, and New Zealand.
Esimene Eesti Põlevkivitööstus was an oil shale company located in Kohtla-Järve, Estonia. It was a predecessor of Viru Keemia Grupp, a shale oil extraction company.
Spent shale or spent oil shale is a solid residue from the shale oil extraction process of producing synthetic shale oil from oil shale. It consists of inorganic compounds (minerals) and remaining organic matter known as char—a carbonaceous residue formed from kerogen. Depending on the extraction process and the amount of remaining organic matter, spent shale may be classified as oil shale coke, semi-coke or coke-ash residue, known also as oil shale ash. According to the European Union waste list all these types of spent shale are classified as hazardous waste.
Nikolay Pogrebov, was a Russian and Soviet hydrogeologist and an engineering geologist. In 1884–1887, he studied in and was graduated from the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute. In 1897–1919 he worked as the librarian and archivist of the Saint Petersburg Geology Committee. He was a professor at Leningrad Mining Institute from 1931 to 1936.
Ilmar Öpik was an Estonian energetics scientist, academician.
