The Costly Compromises of Oil From Sand

[DainBramaged]

A major source of oil for the United States must now confront another problem: its carbon footprint.

Canada, in large part because of the production capacity of its oil sands, is now the largest oil supplier to the United States. But environmental groups in both countries are pushing for a slowdown or even a halt to further oil sands development, which is concentrated in northern Alberta.

Not all oil is alike when it comes to environmental impact, and many environmentalists single out production from the oil sands as the epitome of “dirty oil.” In a recent study, the RAND Corporation estimated that oil from the oil sands generates about 10 to 30 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional crude.

That may place oil sands exports in a precarious position when Barack Obama becomes president this month and moves forward with a climate change program.

Operators of oil sands projects and Canadian governments are eager to point to its potential to reduce America’s dependence on oil from politically unstable regions. Canadian oil sands produce about 1.2 million barrels a day, or about 9 percent of the total consumption in the United States.

Production was headed toward 3.5 million barrels a day by 2015 before the economic slowdown; with the vast reserves available, Canadian oil sands have the potential to produce the equivalent of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil.

Lots at link
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/business/07oilsands.html?hp

[Blaze Diem]

1. Wasn't this Palin's 'Pipeline to Nowhere' project? Better to extract the light, amber oil from the

Bakken Field in Montana & the Dakotas, rather than the dirty Canadian tar sands.
There are fields here in the USA that are better suited and offer a light, sweet, amber colored crude.
They are also offering job opportunities for American citizens and directly under the huge Bakken Shale Field lies the pool that supposedly feeds the shale field. The Sanish Three Forks.
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Didn't Palin have a deal to transport the tar sands oil to south Texas to be refined and then back across the border?
Suppose some Bush-bot would profit from this method. Stands to reason that this would be a Palin-GOP pet project.

[DainBramaged]

2. The Bakken field holds great promise, I hope it develops soon

simply to create more jobs in that region.

[Blaze Diem]

4. Keep jobs in the US. I read about a similar oil field in Pa./Va. area of the country.

Yes the Bakken Field is vast and still being developed as the Sanish Three Forks Field is being discovered. Drilling technology is being improved as to extraction through the layers of shale. Its interesting to read how this has all come about.

As long as the price of oil is at least around $50 per barrel, things continue to move forward. Under that it may slow, but Companies are willing to lay down rigs and wait it out till the price rises again.

Its worth the wait or the big players in this region would not be there at all.
The Bakken is enormous and it is employing many many people.

[happyslug]

6. The problem is how much oil can be recovered, the estimates can be as low as 1%

For more details see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

The latter report above sites USGS reports that suggest that the recoverable oil in the Bakken Field is about the same as the US uses in Six months (I.e. ALL of the oil expected to be pumped from the Bakken would be equal to what the US uses in six months today, even through the oil will be pumped out over a 20 year period). The Author estimates are even lower, 23 days worth of oil, over a 20 year period (The Caribou refuge in Northern Alaska is believed to be able to pump conventional oil equal to about Six months of US usage over a 20 year period. These are NOT anywhere near the super fields which most of the world's oil is being pumped from today).

An upbeat report on the Bakken field, it ignores the problem of recovery:
http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/bakken-oil-field/1244

With a 1% recovery rate (i.e. of the oil in the field, we can get only 1% of it out of the ground) the tar oil of Alberta looks better and better (It also has a low recovery rate, of about 12%).. The Bakken field promises a lot, but it is no North Slope, North sea or even Cantarell oil field. IT can help doing the upcoming decline in world wide oil production, but it will not reverse the drop in world wide production of oil (but neither will Alberta oil shale).

Report on Cantarell:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/1651

http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/energy/oilsands/alberta_oil_sands.html
http://canada.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/20/142436/03
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3568/beyond_propaganda/

One last comment, "Extra heavy oil", which what we are discussing, requires not only the addition of water but heat to get the oil to move, thus steam is added to this wells instead of water. This increases the cost of recovery of "heavy oil" (But the rate is so poor that when it is possible it is better to mine the rock the oil is in and take it to a plant to heat the oil out of it then to add steam. The problem is mining stops being profitable from an energy point of view, at about 250 feet down. Thus Alberta is mining its oil at the present time, but that is expected to end within about 20 years and drilling will resume, and with drilling increase cost of production as we have to pump in heat via steam to get the oil to move to the pump.
USGS report on how heavy and shale oil is to be recovered (and the increase cost of doing so over light oil);
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs070-03/fs070-03.html

More on recovery of Bitumen (Shale oil and other "Extra heavy oil":
http://www.rigzone.com/howitworks/heavyoil/

Report that only 12% is presently recoverable:
http://www.rwbeck.com/insights/insightpdfs/O&GBulletin_OilSands_FINAL_0907.pdf

[GliderGuider]

7. A related comment on Bakken shale oil

There's a very thorough analysis of Bakken in an April keypost on The Oil Drum: The Bakken Formation: How Much Will It Help?. Here are the conclusions:

Conclusions

1. The Bakken shale has produced about 111 million barrels of oil during the last 50+ years in Montana and North Dakota.

2. Total Bakken production is still rising, and producing at the rate of 75,000 BOPD in October 2007.

3. Because of the highly variable nature of shale reservoirs, the characteristics of the historical Bakken production, and the fact that per-well rates seem to have peaked, it seems unlikely that total Bakken production will exceed 2x to 3x current rate of 75,000 BOPD.

4. The latest boom in Bakken production is driven by the application of horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing technology, which has added about 70 million barrels of production in 7 years. Ultimate recovery of the already-drilled wells should be at least double this volume.

5. The USGS estimates the mean volume of technically recoverable hydrocarbons to be 3,649 million barrels of oil. This is roughly 7 to 12 times the size of already known resources.

6. Based on current production and areas likely to be drilled, the USGS estimate of technically recovery resources seems optimistic.

7. The Bakken potential resource, while large by US onshore field standards, will have only a minor effect on US production or imports. Using 2006 US imports and consumption for comparison, the Bakken undiscovered resource of 3,649 million barrels of oil, if subsequently discovered and fully developed, would provide us with the equivalent of six months of oil consumption or 10 months of imports, spread over 20 or more years. In reality, the reserves developed are likely to be many times smaller than this value.

8. The October 2007 production rate of 75,000 BOPD amounts only 0.4% of US oil consumption, or 0.6% of imports.

9. Per-well Bakken production peaked in August 2005 at 116 barrels a day, and was down to 79 barrels a day in October 2007. If the Bakken production history in the 1990s can be used as a guide, the peaking of per-well production may portend a peak in total Bakken production.

As always, it's not the size of the keg, it's the size of the tap that matters.

[excess_3]

3. better than oil from the middle east .n/t

[Nihil]

5. Wrong. (n/t)

:eyes:

[hunter]

8. The difficult oils are subsidized by the easy oil and gas.

This subsidy is not directly related to the price of oil or profits, but to overall economic activity. As the easy oil and gas becomes scarce it becomes less likely these difficult oils will ever be extracted because the overall level of economic activity will not support this extraction.

Tar sands and other difficult to extract oil such as the Bakken Field simply cannot support an economy such as ours. Devoting more economic resources to the extraction of these oils will only accelerate the current economic collapse.