[shortonsense]

Some interesting posts in that thread:

Hubbert Linearizations may not account for these resources correctly. We may end up with a very fat tail.

[...]

I thought Robert over at TOD had already thoroughly discredited the HL nonsense?

[shortonsense]

I thought Robert over at TOD had already thoroughly discredited the HL nonsense?

Why not take a stroll over there with your buddy "abundance" and find out?

I hardly need your encouragement.

You're funny. Last week you were all over Hubbert, quoting him, practically drooling on his paper. But now you dismiss a simple algebraic tool, a model that illuminates Hubbert's methods quite reasonably (designed and tested by another Shell geologist) and shown to be an accurate facimile of Hubbert's complex calculus. As nonsense?

Rapiers work a few years back stands on its own, your understanding, or lack thereof, of calculus notwithstanding.

[Tanada]

The single comment to the article:

Amoco tried fire flood in the early 1970s. What is the difference?

None?

Pete you are the only one I know who makes ME look like a wild eyed optimist.

Technology has advanced a little bit since the early 1970's. Our understanding of the geological structures that make up source rock and reservoir bands are enormously more advanced now. THAI works, and quite efficiently too. You don't have to like it any more than you like shale gas formations, but closing your eyes and denying it exists and makes a profit will not make it go away.

The only thing that will prevent us from burning every ounce of fossil carbon we can get our mitts on is a total system collapse. I am uncertain if even that would prevent the climate from flipping to the hothouse state. If the climate flips it will collapse the system, if PO occurs too rapidly for substitution the system will collapse, if human behavior follows its normal path the system will collapse at some point because dark ages always come back around.

[Blacksmith]

By the same arguement I guess, water flood, immisible flood, and most secondary recovery techniques don't, work, cann't work, etc.

The remarkable thing is that it does work, particularly in sandstones though the degree of perfection may vary like anything else in nature. In carbonates the rock breaks down so some other method is required.

[TheDude]

THAI works, and quite efficiently too.

All I read is that some independent agency concluded that it "works" up to this point, with better RF than SAGD. Perhaps it won't scale up; a risk of out of control fire fronts could still be there, and one massive accident could put their whole operation on hold.

CTV News | He could sit tight but he wants a tech legacy

So what explains the resistance to THAI in some quarters?

Young entrepreneurs have no problem talking about it. But there's a bunch of guys - and I'm guilty of this - who tend to colour their thinking with their own history. THAI uses fire-flooding, which has been done for ages, a lot of it unsuccessfully and sometimes catastrophically - people have been killed in Venezuela, for example. So the thinking is: "If it's fire flooding, I'm not going to get deep into it. I won't try to understand how good it is or how different this particular technology is." And some people are just resistant to change.

How much capital is tied up in THAI?

It's probably less than 10 per cent of our total corporate investment. In terms of all-in costs, Whitesands [the oil sands property that is testing THAI] has cost less than what we spent on each of PetroBakken and Petrominerales just last year. So it is a small investment but the payoff on that lottery ticket is big. We will start making money this year on 11 wells in Saskatchewan.

[TheAntiDoomer]

Little THAI Q&A

http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/sta ... 15427.html

Petrobank is working on toe-to-heel air injection (THAI), a process using underground combustion to achieved higher heavy-oil recovery rates with a lower environmental footprint. But Petrobank has been dogged by production glitches at its test site that have delayed development. With the technology facing both fans and detractors, Mr. Wright argues that THAI is in the home stretch to commercial use.

Back to THAI: Why should I believe this will work?

The coolest thing I can show you is at our Conklin project in the oil sands, where you go to the injection wells and just hear the air going in. Then you walk 800 metres to the production wells and you can hear the oil coming out. Air is going in and oil is coming out; it is that simple.

[TheAntiDoomer]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/toe-to ... .html#more

SharePetrobank Energy and Resources is buying out its partners in two joint ventures that are to use its innovative fireflood heavy oil recovery technology (Toe-to-heel air injection - THAI). If THAI is fully successful it could increase oil recovery from the oilsands to 80% of oil in place.

[ian807]

The discussion on energy return using this method is here: http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/5183

[dixonge]

If

Could

Key words...

[dolanbaker]

Even "if" and "could" are achieved, there is still the issue of extraction rates to contend with. It would need to ramp up quicker than the decline rates from other fields elsewhere, to avoid an energy "crunch" within the next 2-5 years.

[Xenophobe]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/toe-to-heel-air-injection-update.html#more

SharePetrobank Energy and Resources is buying out its partners in two joint ventures that are to use its innovative fireflood heavy oil recovery technology (Toe-to-heel air injection - THAI). If THAI is fully successful it could increase oil recovery from the oilsands to 80% of oil in place.

Interesting stuff Anti. Its the application of technologies like this which have so changed the oil landscape over the years. Lets face it, peak happened about 5 years ago now, and certainly something has been keeping oil supply up where it is with no visible sign of decline. This might be the technology which drives world oil supply to the next peak oil.

[Serial_Worrier]

YES, my $3.20/gallon gas will continue another 5 years. I can breath a sigh of relief that my cornucorpian existence rolls on...

[copious.abundance]

Lots of THAI updates in Petrobank's February presentation!
http://www.petrobank.com/wp-content/upl ... es-Web.pdf
^
Several projects started up recently which will gain steam this year and next.

Also interesting is the map on pg. 24 - lots of heavy oil and bitumen all around the world, and Petrobank is licensing their technology up the kazoo. Particularly interesting is, I didn't know there was so much heavy oil left in western Siberia.

[Tanada]

Petrobank is to reveal details of its strategy to make THAI work in early 2014.

The company’s patents for the one-well injector, one-well producer setup expire in 2015, which means anyone can use the technology at that time, Cheung said. He added patents on other combustion-based configurations discovered over the past seven years are in force well into the 2020s.

Petrobank shares closed 3.5 cents higher at 36.5 cents on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It started 2013 at $1.19 after distributing its shares in PetroBakken Energy Ltd. (now renamed Lightstream Resources Ltd.) to its shareholders.

In a note to investors, analyst Mike Dembicki of TD Securities said the deadline for THAI is welcome.

“Looking at the recent share price performance, we believe that the market has largely discounted the THAI process,” he wrote.

“We view the change in corporate strategy focus to stopping negative cash flow operations and potentially using conventional thermal techniques as positive.”

Much more http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Petro ... story.html

It looks to me as if the tight sand boom is negatively impacting this and other alternative/experimental recovery techniques. Time will tell.

[ROCKMAN]

Pstarr – “These new "unconventional processes" require energy to operate, ever-increasing amounts that leave less and less for the mall ride.” THAI is actually just one subset of the “fire flood” methodology. The really successful examples of in situ combustion (ISC) are in high quality reservoirs with light oil. Actually Texaco was one of the leading researchers in back around 1960. In fact the Texas A&M petroleum engineering dept has an ISC research lab named the Texaco hand that led the charge. And despite folks thinking CA was the king of thermal recovery techniques Texas and La. both had more success but that was about 50 years ago. I unsuccessfully tried to get a project started in Texas 12 years ago. But two factors made it difficult: low oil prices and almost everyone with ISC experience was dead. LOL. Seriously. ISC is probably the most complex EOR technique around. I spent hundreds of hours trying to explain the method but just very difficult for many to grasp. With current oil prices I know where I could recover 100+ million bbls of oil very profitably. But that would take a very long time to find someone to pull the trigger and put the lease holds together. I’m too busy with current projects…and too freaking old. LOL. The main reason THAI has a chance of catching on IMHO is the huge amount of oil sand resources and the fact that much is buried too deep for surface mining.