By Taylor Luck

AMMAN - The Kingdom is close to finalising a mega-deal with the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company to tap the Kingdom’s vast amounts of oil shale resources, an energy official said.

“We are close to finishing negotiations and we expect the agreement to go before Parliament for approval within the next month,” Natural Resources Authority (NRA) Director Maher Hijazin told The Jordan Times on the sidelines of the 10th Arab Conference on Mineral Resources.

According to Hijazin, Shell will survey and develop 22,000 square metres of land, nearly one-quarter of the country, in the central and southern regions of the Kingdom. The project will be transferred to the government after the end of the concession.

Under the potential concession agreement, which is expected to be between 15 and 20 years, Shell will use their patented In-situ Conversion Process, under which the ground is heated over several years, to extract oil shale in oil form.

If approved by Parliament, it will mark the first large-scale application of the firm’s In-situ Conversion Process, according to the company’s website.

Shell officials could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Hijazin noted that some oil shale mining and exploration activities have been temporarily suspended in areas rich in uranium reserves.

“The Jordan Nuclear Energy Commission has been surveying areas where there are both oil shale and uranium,” he said, noting that if the amount of uranium found is economically viable, the commission would receive priority.

If the amount of uranium is deemed insignificant, however, the area would remain under the NRA’s jurisdiction for oil shale mining and extraction, he said.

According to NRA and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, some 40 billion tonnes of oil shale exist in 21 sites concentrated by the Yarmouk River, Buweida, Beit Ras, Rweished, Karak, Madaba and Maan districts.

While the resource can be found as shallow as 40 metres below the surface in the west and south, in the east and north of the Kingdom, oil shale is at very deep levels, some 900 metres, and cannot be mined.