LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - US-focussed oil shale exploration and development group TomCo Energy updated the market on the work it had been undertaking since completion of the field test programme at its Holliday A Block in Utah on Thursday.
The AIM-traded firm had confirmed on 5 September that the field test had been effective at heating shale, though further optimisation of TurboShale's RF technology was required to develop the system to a commercial production level.

Together with Continental Electronics, the manufacturers of the RF transmitters who were also on site during the field test, the company said it believed it had identified the areas of the system needing refinement, and work had begun to address those.

The board said the areas needing refinement included the transmission of the RF power from the RF transmitter through the wellheads onto the antenna, and the thermocouples in the antenna wells also needing to be protected from the RF energy.

To accommodate those changes, it said it was likely that there would have to be changes to the design of the wellheads.

Continental Electronics said it had already started to model the data recovered during the field test to identify the optimum design of the antenna.

That work was expected to take around a month and on completion, the results would be used to develop the transmission connection from the RF transmitters to the antenna through the wellhead.

The company said it would then seek to optimise the wellhead design.

Initial solutions identified for the thermocouple revision included using fibre optic lines, and the company said it was in the process of assessing various systems to ensure their suitability to operate in the environment of the antenna wells.

Two 20 foot-long cores were taken nine feet and 18 feet from antenna well one during the plug and abandonment work.

Those cores were collected in the event the firm needed to perform any further tests while the revisions to the antenna were being made, TomCo explained.

"Continental Electronics have confirmed they are confident that upon completion of the modeling work they will have identified the optimum design for the antenna and the transmission lines from the transmitter," said TomCo Energy chief executive officer John Potter.

"This will allow the maximum power to be delivered by the antenna and so heat the shale formation in a more defined and efficient manner."

Potter said the modeling would be invaluable moving forward in optimising the antenna design.

"We, along with our partners, remain committed to the continuing development and are confident in the technology and its capabilities."

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