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Alberta tar sands hold about as much oil as Saudi Arabia
The oil that is technologically retrievable today from Alberta's tar and oil sands is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). (The Wall St. Journal says "at least 174.") Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are listed at 240Gb. Total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700-2,500Gb.
The cost of producing oil from Alberta tar sands is about $25 per barrel.
Tar-sand oil leads to more CO2 production
From Wikipedia: "for every barrel of synthetic oil produced in Alberta, more than 80 kg of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere." A barrel of oil weighs 130 kg, and that's about 80% carbon, so that's ~110 kg carbon. CO2 weighs 12 for carbon plus twice 16 for oxygen equals 44 compared with pure carbons's 12. So, 110 kg of carbon in a barrel of oil produces (44/12)*110 kg, or about 400 kg of CO2. Getting energy from tar sands instead of light crude means emitting 80 kg extra for every 400 kg normally emitted, or about 20% more CO2 per unit of energy.
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As Prices Surge, Oil Giants Turn Sludge Into Gold
Canada To Process Tar-Like Sand; Toxic Lakes and More CO2
Production cost of $25/barrel
By RUSSELL GOLD
March 27, 2006; Wall St. Journal, Page A1
FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta -- In February, engineers from French oil giant Total SA fired up colossal drum boilers to generate steam that will be pumped to a depth of 300 feet under the frozen ground here. If all goes well, by May, the steam will marinate a tar-like mix of oil and sand until the crude begins to flow.
Nearby, Total will go after the oil-soaked sands closer to the surface, scraping away an ancient forest of spruce and poplars and shoveling the black soil into two-story dump trucks. Fully loaded, the trucks weigh as much as a Boeing 747. Total will then use industrial versions of giant washing machines to remove the oil, generating enough liquid waste to create vast toxic lakes.
... A Florida-size section of sandy soil beneath the boreal forest in this sparsely populated area of Northern Canada is loaded with bottom-of-the-barrel petroleum.
... Thanks to rising global oil prices and improved technology, most oil-industry experts count oil sands as recoverable reserves. That recalculation has vaulted Venezuela and Canada to first and third in global reserves rankings, although Venezuela's holdings in extra-heavy crude are a rough guess. Saudi Arabia is No. 2. ... nearly every major Western oil company as well as their Chinese and Indian brethren are gearing up to go after the deposits here. In all, they plan to spend more than $70 billion in the next decade unlocking the oil from the sand.
Alberta map ... The world isn't about to run out of oil, it's running low on readily accessible light, sweet crude -- oil that flows like water, has few impurities and can be easily turned into gasoline. ...
But heavy oil ... costs more to produce and takes more energy to turn into gasoline than traditional light oil. Recovering and processing Fort McMurray's heavy crude releases up to three times as much greenhouse gas as producing conventional crude. And upgrading it into refined products, such as gasoline or diesel, will require a gigantic investment to retool global refineries.
"The light crude undiscovered today is getting scarcer and scarcer," says Jean-Luc Guiziou, president of Total's Canadian operations. "We have to accept the reality of geoscience, which is that the next generation of oil resources will be heavier."
....
Higher energy prices have unleashed a bevy of heavy-oil projects that will increase emissions of carbon dioxide, suspected of causing global warming. ... "We're now getting into the dirtiest sources of oil anywhere." To be sure, rising energy prices have spawned more interest in renewable fuel sources, but those investments pale in comparison to what's going on here.
Canada, which exports more oil to the U.S. than any other country, already is having trouble meeting its pledge to cut CO2 emissions largely because of its mushrooming heavy-oil production. By 2015, Canada's Fort McMurray region, population 61,000, is expected to emit more greenhouse gases than Denmark, a country of 5.4 million people.
Canada's northern forest contains at least 174 billion barrels of recoverable heavy oil, equivalent to five years' supply for the planet... Venezuela has perhaps even more in the Orinoco River delta. By comparison, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of more traditional crude, or 8.5 years.
In northern Alberta, the oil-sands boom is remaking the landscape. The mining operations have clear-cut thousands of acres of trees and dug 200-foot-deep pits. The region is dotted with large man-made lakes filled with leftover waste from the mining operations. To chase off migratory birds, propane cannons go off at random intervals and scarecrows stand guard on floating barrels.
....
"The pace of development is outstripping our ability to manage the environmental issue," says Mr. Raynolds of the Pembina Institute. "Our unwritten energy policy is dig it up and sell it as fast as possible."
...
It costs about $25 a barrel to produce crude from Canada's oil sands, ... By comparison, it can cost as little as about $5 a barrel to produce crude in the Middle East and $15 in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Total's first foray into heavy oil was in Venezuela's Orinoco belt. In 1997, the company's giant $4.2 billion Sincor project there began producing market-grade crude. Sincor, which Total owns with Norway's Statoil ASA and Petróleos de Venezuela SA, now produces 180,000 barrels of oil a day.
...
The solution was steam. In 1978, Roger Butler, an engineer with Imperial Oil Ltd., an independent company majority-owned by Exxon Mobil, hit on the idea of drilling two wells that start off vertically, then slowly bend until they are horizontal and located one on top of the other. The top well would pump steam into the reservoir while the other pumped oil out.
...
The steaming is slated to begin later this year, with production expected to grow to 27,000 barrels a day next year. Future expansions could bring it to 200,000 barrels a day -- a good-size oil field but not the biggest in the area.
....
Becoming an operator, Mr. Guiziou needed to confront environmental problems. Mining oil sands generates enormous volumes of liquid waste that are stored in toxic lakes that have concentrations of naturally occurring naphthenic acid, an odorless liquid used to help paint dry quickly. The prospect of cleaning up these lakes is "daunting," the Canadian National Energy Board, a federal regulatory body, noted in a 2004 report. "There is currently no demonstrated means to reclaim fluid fine tailings," it said.
....
Total is also trying to figure out ways to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at its Fort McMurray facilities by using pure oxygen instead of air in its combustion engines. The company is running a pilot project in Lacq, France, to capture carbon dioxide in exhaust flues more effectively. If the technology proves workable, it could be used in Fort McMurray as well.
Despite the environmental concerns, there is a strong economic incentive for Alberta's free-market-oriented government to let oil-sands development gallop ahead. Alberta added nearly 26,000 jobs in resource extraction in the past two years. That 25% jump helped drive the province's unemployment rate down to 3.1%, a 30-year low, according to the government. For the first time, every Albertan received a 400 Canadian-dollar ($340) check from the government earlier this year from an unexpected fiscal surplus.
Total and other oil companies are continuing to announce new oil-sand projects and shovel money into the region. Said Tom Ebbern, executive managing director of Tristone Capital, a Calgary-based investment adviser, "Without a doubt, we can become the next Saudi Arabia but it will take 10 years longer than the market thinks."
WSJ
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http://zfacts.com/p/218.html | 01/18/12 07:18 GMT
Modified: Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:12:09 GMT
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