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 SQUEEZING OIL FROM STONE
For centuries there has been interest in what shale could offer. In the late 18th century in the United States, around 200 plants extracted kerosene and oil from that rock. In Brazil, the first extraction was in 1884 in Bahia. In 1935 a plant set up by Roberto Angewitz - popularly known as Peg-leg - marked 318 liters of shale oil a day.
In 1949, the Brazilian federal government decided to scientifically investigate the potential of shale and the economic feasibility of its production. A year later the Oil Shale Industrialization Commission (CIXB) was set up to study the construction of a plant in the town of Tremembé, São Paulo state, with a daily production capacity of 10,000 barrels of shale oil. When Petrobras was incorporated, the assets of that Commission were included in Petrobras, and in 1957 and 1958 specialists in the company developed a new shale production process called PETROSIX. Today, this process is known the world over as the most advanced in industrial shale production.
Most of the shale to be found in Brazilian territory is part of the Irati formation, covering the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás. Petrobras concentrated its operations on the São Mateus do Sul deposit, where the ore is to be found in two layers: the top layer of shale is 6.4 meters thick with 6.4% oil content, and the bottom layer 3.2 meters thick with 9.1% oil content.
In 1972, the Irati prototype plant (UPI) started operating. It confirms the technical feasibility of the PETROSIX process, tests equipment and collects basic data for industrial plant design.
The consolidation process of the PETROSIX technology was completed in December 1991 when the Industrial Module (MI) went into fully operation.
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