THE Tar Sands Thread (merged)

[gampy]

"Certified Organic Produce" Hmmm...yes. This produce has carbon, and hydrogen in it.

Another newspeak misnomer. Although I don't think it's so much to do with government, as it is to do with advertising, and marketing.

Sounds better than..."produce grown without fertilizer, pesticides, or GM seeds.

BTW. Who "certifies" organic produce? ADM? USDA?

How did organic come to mean what it does today?

[shortonoil]

When you have a species whose primary survival mechanism is the development and implementation of technology; technology which is founded on an instinct, an instinct which they are, for the most part, unaware of completely - what do you expect?

[Temperedoil]

I have noticed that there is an assumption made among many in the general public that technology will save the day. It is automatically assumed by all, or most, that humanity can continue to consume ever greater quantities of resources, that economic growth is eternal within the confines of the accepted economic cycle, and perhaps also that the Earth is ours to do with as we please.

It is not easy trying to point out to such people that we, and the species we share this planet with, cannot afford to continue with our wasteful ways, cannot afford to continue the growth in consumption of finite resources. The common refrain will be that technology, and the market, will save the day.

I wonder if it would have been better for the tar sands in Canada to have never been discovered. They seem to serve mainly as "proof" that there is plenty of oil, that we will be able to continue to consume ever greater quantities of oil for many decades to come, that anybody suggesting that we should be actively seeking to conserve and to change to a resource-lean lifestyle is anti-progress, perhaps even a danger to society if listened to by enough people.

[Gazzatrone]

Here's one that those in control use

"Carbon Footprint"

The phrase that substitutes "Oil Depletion"
you can imagine it

Government Spin Doctor: Well there it is, we are running out of oil fast and it doesn't look like its going to slow down.

G.P.S 2: Yes I know tricky situation to be in. But we can't tell the public as a: they won't believe us or b: the myth about sustainable growth will be blown wide open society will be in uproar as the realise their whole existence based on a Capitalist ideal is a sham.

G.P.S 1: Damn business this oil depletion. And of course we'll get the blame for it all. As if we didn't have enough to worry about with Global Warming

G.P.S 2: Thats it, we'll do both at the same time and lay the blame at the feet of general public. but we need something personal. Global Warming is to general, we need something new.

(paces around in thought)

I've got it. Carbon Footprint. Course we'll have to lay on a huge guilt trip and make it sound worse than it actually is. People will be quicker to believe that Nature can collapse before our sham lifestyle. Throw out pictures of the Tsunami, and Katrina. you know NATURE BITES BACK type stuff. People always fall for that bullshit.

G.P.S 1: And we can start lots of initiatives that sound as though they are good for the environment but are actually delaying the inevitable. High fuel taxes. Green driving, that type of stuff.

G.P.S 2: Yes. We have to get across to people that it that burning oil is bad, not because of oil depletion but because of the environment. Pictures of dying seal pups and polar bears are winner as well. We can't have people realise the truth, else there will be hell. If they are to busy looking at themselves they won't be busy looking somewhere else.

G.P.S 1: And in the mean time we look for a solution to the problem of oil depletion.

G.P.S 2: Well I'm sure the scientists will come up with something.

[deMolay]

You guys are really out of date on the Oil Sands. The technology is moving very fast. Only Suncor and Syncrude two of the early players are open pit mining the oil. The actual deposit is bigger than the State of Texas and then some. The water is now recycled, they only make up what is evaporated like steam. The newer projects produce their own synthetic gas from the bitumen and do not use natural gas at all. The latest method is to light a fire underground and suck up the crude without water or natural gas at all. The biggest problem is lack of refineries. The crude itself is put through upgraders which makes it better than natural crude oil. They are also proposing 4 or 5 Nuke plants. Most of what you read on the subject is hogwash especially what is written by so called experts.

[Nicholai]

Foreign workers are brought in from both Latin America and Asia. I can explain a great deal about the tar sands if you wish although this post has to be short due to time constraints. I live in Edmonton, Alberta and can provide quite thorough information about the tar sands if you so wish. As well, I read the Edmonton Journal everyday and can likely pass any forum-worthy information forward.

[Nicholai]

Foreign workers are brought in from both Latin America and Asia (2 Chinese workers were killed quite recently). I can explain a great deal about the tar sands if you wish although this post has to be short due to time constraints. I live in Edmonton, Alberta and can provide quite thorough information about the tar sands if you so wish. As well, I read the Edmonton Journal everyday and can likely pass any forum-worthy information forward.

[WildRose]

Here is a recent article by Dan Woynillowicz (Pembina Institute, Alberta). I found it to be an excellent summary of the environmental effects of tar sands production, probably the most thorough I've read to date.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/62325/?page=1

While hiking along the Athabasca River this past weekend in the Hinton and Jasper Park areas, I was again reminded of the issues concerning the river and the northern Alberta forests in general. However, as is noted in this article, some of the effects of oil sands production, especially as they relate to the projected increases in this activity, are global.

[Tanada]

Published: Friday, November 16, 2007
CALGARY -- Canada's energy regulator yesterday lowered its forecast for Alberta oilsands production over the next decade because of rising costs.

The National Energy Board, at a briefing in Calgary, said tar-sands output will reach about 2.8 million barrels a day by 2015, down from a forecast of three million barrels last year.

The tar-like deposits contain the largest oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia, the provincial government estimates.

A surge in oil prices, which touched a record $98.62 US a barrel in New York futures trading on Nov. 7, spurred a boom in oilsands projects by companies including Royal Dutch Sell Plc, Chevron Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

About $80 billion will be spent over the next decade to boost tar-sands output from the current 1.3 million barrels a day, said Bill Wall, an oil-markets analyst at the energy board.

ARTICLE

[evilgenius]

Postman,

Are you thinking about the heavy oil upgraders? It seems to me they will play a swing role in the game. If the upgraders can discover huge efficiencies in the step from bitumin to pipeline which bring down the costs then a lot of other costs will drop as well. Equally a mistake in choosing the wrong kind of upgrading technology, one that offers promise but doesn't deliver vs one that would have, and the whole cost structure would be increased across the board. I see a lot of potential for progress there. I also see a lot of potential for following 'common sense' into oblivion.

[WildRose]

From the same article Tanada just referenced above, natural gas exports from Canada to the US are expected to decline 30% by 2015 - that's just 8 years from now. I didn't think it was going to be that much of a decline, that soon. Can anyone remember what percentage of the natural gas used in the US comes from Canada?

Sorry it that question is a bit off topic.

[Oil-Finder]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 201431.htm

Making Gas Out Of Crude Oil: Discovery Could Lead To Dramatic Improvement In Fossil Fuel Processing

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — An international team that includes University of Calgary scientists has shown how crude oil in oil deposits around the world -- including in Alberta's oil sands -- are naturally broken down by microbes in the reservoir.

Their discovery could revolutionize heavy oil and oil sands production by leading to more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly ways to produce this valuable resource.

Understanding how crude oil biodegrades into methane, or natural gas, opens the door to being able to recover the clean-burning methane directly from deeply buried, or in situ, oil sands deposits, says Steve Larter, U of C petroleum geologist in the Department of Geoscience who headed the Calgary contingent of the research team.

The oil sands industry would no longer have to use costly and polluting thermal, or heat-based, processes (such as injecting steam into reservoirs) to loosen the tar-like bitumen so it flows into wells and can be pumped to the surface.

"The main thing is you'd be recovering a much cleaner fuel," says Larter, Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology. "Methane is, per energy unit, a much lower carbon dioxide emitter than bitumen. Also, you wouldn't need all the upgrading facilities and piping on the surface."

Biodegradation of crude oil into heavy oil in petroleum reservoirs is a problem worldwide for the petroleum industry. The natural process, caused by bacteria that consume the oil, makes the oil viscous, or thick, and contaminates it with pollutants such as sulphur. This makes recovering and refining heavy oil difficult and costly.

Some studies have suggested that biodegradation could by caused by aerobic bacteria, which use oxygen. But Larter and colleagues from the U of C, University of Newcastle in the U.K., and Norsk Hydro Oil & Energy in Norway, report in the journal Nature that the dominant process is, in fact, fermentation. It is caused by anaerobic bacteria that live in oil reservoirs and don't use oxygen.

"This is the main process that's occurring all over the Earth, in any oil reservoir where you've got biodegradation," Larter says.

Using a combination of microbiological studies, laboratory experiments and oilfield case studies, the team demonstrated the anaerobic degradation of hydrocarbons to produce methane. The findings offer the potential of 'feeding' the microbes and rapidly accelerating the breaking down of the oil into methane.

"Instead of 10 million years, we want to do it 10 years," Larter says. "We think it's possible. We can do it in the laboratory. The question is: can we do it in a reservoir?"

Doing so would revolutionize the heavy oil/oil sands industry, which now manages to recover only about 17 per cent of a resource that consists of six trillion barrels worldwide. Oil sands companies would be able to recover only the clean-burning natural gas, leaving the hard-to-handle bitumen and contaminants deep underground.

Understanding biodegradation also provides an immediate tool for predicting where the less-biodegraded oil is located in reservoirs, enabling companies to increase recovery by targeting higher-quality oil. "It gives us a better understanding of why the fluid properties are varying within the reservoir," Larter says. "That will help us with thermal recovery processes such as SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage)."

The research team also discovered an intermediate step in the biodegradation process. It involves a separate family of microbes that produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen from partly degraded oil, prior to it being turned into methane. This paves the way for using the microbes to capture this CO2 as methane, which could then be recycled as fuel in a closed-loop energy system. This would keep the CO2, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming and climate change, out of the atmosphere.

The petroleum industry already has expressed interest in trying to accelerate biodegradation in a reservoir, Larter says. "It is likely there will be field tests by 2009."

[FireJack]

Ya heard this on the cbc was thinking ya that would be kind of nice. Then there is the catch, field tests by 2009. Uh ya good luck with that. By 2025 mabey we'll see results, lots of time before the oil starts peaking.

[Oil-Finder]

Well in the meantime there's no reason why they can't continue to process the oil sands using their current methods.

[lightman]

You're right. They can and they will. But there is more than one good reason why they really shouldn't:

1) It is not economical (energy-wise, not financial).
EROEI is quite low for tar sands (generally less than 3, but almost never more then 5). This doesn't even take into consideration the energy consumption (buildup and maintenance) of the infrastructure required to support the operations.

2) It is not ecological.
In the case of surface mining, large "modifications" of the natural landscape occur (e.g. destruction of boreal forest in Alberta).

3) It is making large areas inhabitable (and even kills people).
The extraction of synthetic crude requires large quantities of water (generally 3-4 times the amount of oil produced), which (despite recycling) ends up in tailing ponds. Even so, enormous quantities of toxic material may end up in the environment and eventually in our food chain (like in the case of the Athabasca River).

<sarcasm>On the other hand it generates a lot of jobs, may help reduce energy dependency from overseas and contributes to the economy by keeping large quantities of money flowing. What more could you want?</sarcasm>

[Grifter]

another article on the same technique

Sounds very interesting to me. Can Nitrogen Fertilizer be made out of Methane?

Thats the first thing that occured to me. If its a simple low tech method of converting dirty fuel to clean(er) fuel then surely this is a little peice of possitive news.

Hooray

[pstarr]

Of all the hair brained schemes this one has got to take the cake. This is right up their with JD's methane space-elevator and the Missouri Turkey-Gut Depolymerzation gambit. The only methane coming out of this project is the brain-fart emmited from this 'science.'

How is the geologic structure prepared for the microbe? How will it be penetrated down to the granular level? How are the bugs inserted into the geologic mass? How are biologic processes supported under the ground and immense pressure? How is oxygen supplied and CO2 removed? Other waste products? How is proper pH, temperature, humidity, etc. maintained in the culture? How is the finished product removed?

Or is this is another one of those virtual and cornucopian schemes that will be sure to make money and sense the moment crude reaches $60. Oh wait that happened Oil-Finder, the devil is in the details you know.

[highlander]

There you go again pstarr. Asking about the elephant in the room that nobody seems to notice. Stop it . News like this is suppose to make you rush out and buy more stuff.
A scientist said it works, so who are we to question.

[pstarr]

There you go again pstarr. Asking about the elephant in the room that nobody seems to notice. Stop it . News like this is suppose to make you rush out and buy more stuff.
A scientist said it works, so who are we to question.

Hiya Highlander. How ya doin?

I love how this cornucopean nonsense brings out the gullibility in folks. Can't get enough, but darn, if it isn't in such short supply these days.

[Grifter]

There you go again pstarr. Asking about the elephant in the room that nobody seems to notice. Stop it . News like this is suppose to make you rush out and buy more stuff.
A scientist said it works, so who are we to question.

Well....as opposed to what? A scentist said it might work so it obviously doesn't

I don't know how phosphorus is manufactured yet, if it is simple then I don't understand how this theory is dismissed out of hand.

And just because something might work (IE be of some use) does not automatically mean that anyone is suggesting everythings fine and business as usual will continue forever.

Man this place doesn't like anything that suggest we're not dead yet.

Sheesh.