| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 5/24 |
| 2007/3/5-7 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:45879 Activity:kinda low 90%like:45867 |
3/4 So much for the peak oil myth
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2yovom (nytimes.com)
\_ I am NostraMotd. Oil price will peak in 2010. World War III
will happen in 2012 in a blink of an eye. -nostramotd
\_ So you went into a trance and your assistant recorded your
ramblings a la Casey or you hid in your attic scribbling little
rhyming poems with insufficient detail to ever be sure that any
of your predictions actually came true? Or did this come out of
the hidden messages in the Bible? Nostradamus didn't need no
stinkin' URLs!
\_ Yeah, I'm sure when gas price reachs $10/gal, much more oil will
become financially feasible to be extracted. No worries.
\_ It is certainly true that the amount of oil in the ground is
much larger than what we're currently able to extract. The
problem is, at some point it's not possible to ramp up new
production quickly enough to keep up with ever-increasing
demand. We won't run out of oil, but supplies will be
increasingly constrained. The only question is when that
will happen. -tom
\_ Refineries are easy but yes getting a new field started takes
several years. The fun part of all this is when you have an
.org like OPEC where members are allowed to sell a certain
amount based on their _claimed_ reserves. So by lying and
claiming higher reserves they can sell more. Their actual
honest estimates of their reserves are secret and likely
much lower than their public claims. Thus, unless new fields
are started sooner than the Saudis and friends would have us
believe we need them, then yes we'll be hosed.
\_ It's not only a question of how long it takes to start a
new field now; it's also that, as we start getting into
fields which require more effort/energy to extract
(like the Canadian oil sands), it will take even longer to
ramp up new fields. -tom
\_ The Canadian oil sands turn gold into lead. Clean
burning natural gas and freshwater are used to
create synthetic oil, sludge and greenhouse gases
on an insane scale.
\_ What is the process used to extract from oil
sands?
\_ In short, natural gas is burned in
conjunction with water to cook the oil.
It has produced a giant waste pool and
it creates as much greenhouse gases as
1/3 the california automobile fleet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands
\_ Either way, OPEC is not a pro-Western friendly .org and
won't provide honest estimates of usable reserves so it
doesn't matter much if the world falls 5 years short of
getting new production online or 7 or 9 or 12.
\_ It's nice to know that our supply of greenhouse-gas-producing
petrolium is ever growing.
\_ its not that the supply is growing -- it isn't -- it is that as
the price goes up, we can use more efficient means to extract
all of it, and go beyond the easy-to-pump oil. It is still a
limited resource that will eventually run out.
\_ Then why did the production of oil in the United States
peak back in 1970, and go down every year since
then, while prices have gone up and down and extraction
technology has greatly improved? I mean, it goes down
every year like clockwork (there was a tiny blip around
1986 due to Alaska but that's it). Note that there are
more oil wells operating in the United States than the
rest of the world COMBINED (500,000 pumping out of
2,000,000 drilled). Oil production is no longer an
economic problem, it is a problem with physics and geology.
\_ You may have noticed that the US gets a large percent of
oil from outside the US. Even if the US never had a drop
of native oil (like Japan, France, etc), then we'd just
be using nukes for power and likely have more advanced
electric cars.
\_ We don't burn oil to generate power (except in a
few places like Hawaii) very much, it provides a
tiny sliver of our electrical production.
\_ We need oil to run cars. If everything was
nuclear and electric the need for oil would
drop dramatically.
\_ Because it's still cheaper to get oil elsewhere. If
prices get high enough, then US oil production will
climb. In real terms, I would bet oil prices are
not at record highs. In fact, I remember just a few
years back I was buying gas for $1/gallon, which is
probably less than any time over the last 30 years
when adjusting for inflation. It is not that cheap
at the moment, but not much has changed over the
last 5 years except for politics.
\_ No it's because there are no new finds in the United
States, wells are running dry. Oh wait, are you
one of those people who thinks our massive twin
deficits are proof of the vitality of our markets,
because "everyone wants to invest in America?". In
that case there is no point trying to use logic.
Oil prices WERE the highest ever during the 1970s
crisis, yet oil production dropped. And it
continues to drop. You can't drill 200,000 new
wells overnight, and besides there are no new
giant oil fields being discovered to drill anyhow.
http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/chartimages/d/d2oilprodusa.gif
\_ What incentive is there to explore and drill
when oil is easily obtained elsewhere and
prices have done nothing but fall since 197x? |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels. Reports of Oils Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated In Indonesia, Chevron has applied the same technology to the giant Duri oil field, discovered in 1941, boosting production there to more than 200,000 barrels a day, up from 65,000 barrels in the mid-1980s. Exxon Mobil expects to double the amount of oil it extracts from its Means field, which dates back to the 1930s. Exxon, like Chevron, will use three-dimensional imaging of the underground field and the injection of a gas in this case, carbon dioxide to flush out the oil. Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the worlds reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before. In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the US Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 33 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 48 trillion barrels. That higher estimate which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow reflects how new technology can tap into more resources. Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100. There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has peaked, but the theory has been fading. Equally contentious for the oil companies is the growing voice of environmentalists, who do not think that pumping and consuming an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuel is in any way desirable. Increased projections for how much oil is extractable may become a political topic on many different fronts and in unpredictable ways. By reassuring the public that supplies will meet future demands, oil companies may also find legislators more reluctant to consider opening Alaska and other areas to new exploration. On a global level, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has coalesced around a price of $50 a barrel for oil, will likely see its clout reinforced in coming years. The 12-country cartel, which added Angola as its newest member this year, is poised to control more than 50 percent of the oil market in coming years, up from 35 percent today, as Western oil production declines. Oil companies say they can provide enough supplies which might eventually lead to lower oil and gasoline prices but that they see few alternatives to fossil fuels. The oil industry is well known for seeking out new sources of fossil fuel in far-flung places, from the icy plains of Siberia to the deep waters off West Africa. But now the quest for new discoveries is taking place alongside a much less exotic search that is crucial to the worlds energy supplies. Oil companies are returning to old or mature fields partly because there are few virgin places left to explore, and, of those, few are open to investors. At Bakersfield, for example, Chevron is using steam-flooding technology and computerized three-dimensional models to boost the output of the fields heavy oil reserves. Even after a century of production, engineers say there is plenty of oil left to be pumped from Kern River. Were still finding new opportunities here, said Steve Garrett, a geophysicist with Chevron. Its not over until you abandon the last well, and even then its not over. Some forecasters, studying data on how much oil is used each year and how much is still believed to be in the ground, have argued that at some point by 2010, global oil production will peak if it has not already and begin to fall. That drop would usher in an uncertain era of shortages, price spikes and economic decline. Tips To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry. |
| preview.tinyurl.com/2yovom -> nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/03/05/business/20070305_OIL_GRAPHIC.html March 5, 2007 Reports of Oils Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated Close Window Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Print This Image &t=10&s=0&ui=&r=&u=nytimes%2ecom%2fimagepages%2f2007%2f03%2f05%2fbusi ness%2f20070305%5fOIL%5fGRAPHIC%2ehtml%3f DCSIMG |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands bitumen is neither oil nor tar, but a semisolid, degraded form of oil that does not flow at normal temperatures and pressures, making it difficult and expensive to extract. Between them, the Canadian and Venezuelan deposits contain about 36 trillion barrels of oil in place. This is only the remnant of vast petroleum deposits which once totaled as much as 18 trillion barrels, most of which has escaped or been destroyed by bacteria over the eons. See also below notes about limits to production capacity. Florida, and hold at least 175 billion barrels (17510^9 bbl) or 28 billion cubic metres (2810^9 m) of recoverable crude bitumen, which amounts to three-quarters of North American petroleum reserves. oil price increases of 2004-2006, there were several dozen companies planning nearly 100 oil sands mines and in-situ projects in Canada, totaling nearly $100 billion in capital investment. With 2006 crude oil prices significantly in excess of the current cost of production, all of these projects appear likely to be profitable. citation needed Expanding production capacity is also limited by several factors. Any expansion of capacity carries risks: infrastructure is expensive, and oil prices are unpredictable. academic, the extra-heavy crude oil deposit of the Orinoco Belt represent nearly 90% of the known global reserves of extra-heavy oil. Bitumen and extra-heavy oil are closely related types of petroleum, differing only in the degree by which they have been degraded from the original crude oil by bacteria and erosion. Celsius versus freezing for northern Canada), making them easier to extract by conventional techniques. Although it is easier to produce, it is still too heavy to transport by pipeline or process in normal refineries. Lacking access to first-world capital and technological prowess, Venezuela has not been able to design and build the kind of bitumen upgraders and heavy oil refineries that Canada has. The resulting product, called Orimulsion, can be burned in boilers as a replacement for coal and heavy fuel oil with only minor modifications. Unfortunately, the fuel's high sulphur content and emission of particulates make it difficult to meet increasingly strict international environmental regulations. Further development of the Venezuelan resources has been curtailed by political unrest. Venezuela is much less politically stable than Canada, and a strike by employees of the state oil company was followed by the dismissal of most of its staff. As tensions resolved, strike leaders pointed to the reduction in Venezuela's domestic crude output as an argument that Venezuela's oil production had fallen. However, Venezuela's tar sands crude production, which sometimes isn't counted in its total, has increased from 125,000 bpd to 500,000 bpd between 2001 and 2006 (Venezuela's figures; The largest of these deposits, the Tar Sand Triangle as it is known, covers an area of 148,000 acres and is located in Wayne and Garfield Counties, between the Dirty Devil and Colorado Rivers. The Utah Tar Sands have been quarried since the early 1900s primarily for road paving material. Several pilot extraction tests have been operated by oil companies at various times since 1972. The most recent reported pilot tests at Asphalt Ridge were conducted by the Laramie Energy Technology Center of the US Department of Energy. In 1975 through 1978 they completed experimental testing of a combined reverse-forward combustion and steam injection scheme. It was concluded that additional testing of these methods was necessary. Efforts to develop Utah's heavy oil primarily ended with the sharp drop in oil prices in the mid-1980s and the high costs of extraction due to inefficient processing technologies. After excavation, hot water and caustic soda (NaOH) is added to the sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is agitated and the oil skimmed from the top. Oil Sands Discovery Centre Provided that the water chemistry is appropriate to allow bitumen to separate from sand and clay, the combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from the oil sand, and allows small air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets. The bitumen froth floats to the top of separation vessels, and is further treated to remove residual water and fine solids. crude oil, so it must be either mixed with lighter petroleum (either liquid or gas) or chemically split before it can be transported by pipeline for upgrading into synthetic crude oil. naptha from the froth, Inclined Plate Settlers (IPS) and disc centrifuges. These allow the extraction plants to recover over 90% of the bitumen in the sand. Three oil sands mines are currently in operation and a fourth is in the initial stages of development. sand filters from the wells and produced as much sand as possible with the oil, production rates improved remarkably. This technique became known as Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS). Further research disclosed that pumping out sand opened "wormholes" in the sand formation which allowed more oil to reach the wellbore. Celsius for a period of weeks to months, then the well is allowed to sit for days to weeks to allow heat to soak into the formation, and then the hot oil is pumped out of the well for a period of weeks or months. Once the production rate falls off, the well is put through another cycle of injection, soak and production. This process is repeated until the cost of injecting steam becomes higher than the money made from producing oil. The CSS method has the advantage that recovery factors are around 20 to 25% and the disadvantage that the cost to inject steam is high. directional drilling technology that made it quick and inexpensive to do by the mid 1990s. In SAGD, two horizontal wells are drilled in the oil sands, one at the bottom of the formation and another about 5 metres above it. drilled in groups off central pads and can extend for miles in all directions. In each well pair, steam is injected into the upper well, the heat melts the bitumen, which allows it to flow into the lower well, where it is pumped to the surface. oil reserves and allowed Canada to move to second place in world oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Most major Canadian oil companies now have SAGD projects in production or under construction in Alberta's oil sands areas and in Wyoming. OSUM Corp has combined proven underground mining technology with SAGD to enable higher recovery rates by running wells from underground within the oil sands deposit, thus also reducing energy requirements compared to traditional SAGD. This particular technology application is in its testing phase and has stranded oil and other carbonate applications as well. edit Vapor Extraction Process (VAPEX) VAPEX is similar to SAGD but instead of steam, hydrocarbon solvents are injected into the upper well to dilute the bitumen and allow it to flow into the lower well. It has the advantage of much better energy efficiency than steam injection and it does some partial upgrading of bitumen to oil right in the formation. It is very new but has attracted much attention from oil companies, who are beginning to experiment with it. It is becoming common for wells to be put through one CSS injection-soak-production cycle to condition the formation prior to going to SAGD production, and companies are experimenting with combining VAPEX with SAGD to improve recovery rates and lower energy costs. edit Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) This is a very new and experimental method that combines a vertical air injection well with a horizontal production well. The process ignites oil in the reservoir and creates a vertical wall of fire moving from the "toe" of the horizontal well toward the "heel", which burns the heavier oil components and drives the lighter components into the production well, where it is pumped out. In addition, the heat from the fire upgrades some of the heavy bitumen into lighter oil right in the formation. Historically fireflood projects have not worked out well because of difficulty in controlling the flame front and a propensity to set the producing wells on fire. However, some oil companies fee... |
| nytimes.com The New York Times On The Web News Newspaper Current Event |