Tar sands Elixir?

Unlike conventional oil, tar sands don't have the viscosity to be pumped directly from the ground. If the sands are close enough to the surface they are dug out, much the way coal is strip mined, and then processed to separate the bitumen from sand, earth and water.

Figure 1: Map of Alberta

According to the Wall street Journal: "Heavy oil has big, economic and environmental drawbacks. It costs much more money 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 has gasoline or diesel, will require a gigantic investment to retool global refineries."

"Canada, which exports more oil to the U.S. than any other country, already faces problems 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."

"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 oil sands industry already gorges on a quarter of Alberta's scarce fresh water -- each barrel of oil needing six barrels of water to flush it out -- and burns up to a fifth of the entire nation's natural gas supply. Thick and tarry, tar sands oil can't be easily bundled off down a pipeline to the refinery. It must be first treated with natural gas and other petroleum products, in order to flow. The tar sands require over five times of these precious petroleum products than regular heavy ( didn't say light sweet) crude.

Figure-2: Bitumen in its raw state after being extracted from the oil sands

According to chart from Figure-3, taken from a research report published by Raymond James, the Canada's oil sands production is expected to peak at around 4 million b.p.d towards the end of next decade. Mind you, North American oil production is more than 13 million b.p.d as of 2005.

Figure-3: Tar sands, projected oil production

To produce a single barrel of oil ,it requires digging out four tonnes of materials and leaves you with 80 kg of greenhouse gases and 3-5 barrels of waste water as well as the sand residue. It consumes two to five barrels of fresh water, 250 cubic feet of natural gas to mine and 500 cubic feet of gas to upgrade to synthetic crude oil. This gas is enough to heat a Canadian home for 4.5 days. The tar sands industry consumes about 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily, enough to heat 3.2 million Canadian homes each day. The result also totally destroys the forests and bogs there.

Most what has been said about Canada's tar sands is also applicable to Orinoco tar sands in Venezuela. Except, the availability of technology and investment dollars, due to political risks in that part of the world. So, the heavy oil from Athabasca and Orinoco could definitely help, it does not come close to making a significant impact on the eventual peak of oil production world wide.

Oil Shale: The Emperor has no clothes

The term oil shale generally refers to any rock that contains solid bituminous materials called kerogen. Oil shale is a misnomer since these rocks does not contain any oil nor is it commonly shale. Kerogen is chiefly organic material while shale is relatively hard rock. Kerogen is released as petroleum-like liquids when the rock is heated in the chemical process of pyrolysis. Oil shale was formed millions of years ago by deposition of silt and organic debris on lake beds and sea bottoms. Over long periods of time, heat and pressure transformed the materials into oil shale in a process similar to the process that forms oil; however, the heat and pressure were not as great. It has not gone through the "oil window" of heat (nature’s way of producing oil) and therefore, to be changed into an oil-like substance, it must be heated to a high temperature. Oil shale generally contains enough oil that it will burn without any additional processing, and it is known as "the rock that burns".

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world’s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah.

Current data indicates the enormity of US oil shale resources: estimated at 3,340 billion tonnes of proved oil shale in place, with a shale oil content of 242 billion tonnes, of which about 89% is located in the Green River deposits and 11% in the Devonian black shales. Recoverable reserves of shale oil are estimated to be within the range of 60-80 billion tonnes, with additional resources put at 62 billion tonnes.

Figure 4: Map of Oil Shale deposits in U.S.

Oil shale can be mined and processed to generate oil similar to oil pumped from conventional oil wells; however, extracting oil from oil shale is more complex than conventional oil recovery and currently is more expensive. The oil substances in oil shale are solid and cannot be pumped directly out of the ground. The oil shale must first be mined and then heated to a high temperature (a process called retorting); the resultant oil-like liquid must then be separated and collected. An alternative but currently experimental process referred to as in situ retorting involves heating the oil shale while it is still underground, and then pumping the resulting liquid to the surface.

Not withstanding all the staggering statistics about resources, oil shale track record is less than encouraging - promising much and delivering little. Primary reason for the failure of oil shale lies in its poor quality as a fuel. Coal seams a few feet thick are worth mining, sometimes at depths exceeding 1,000 feet, because coal contains lots of energy. Dense forms of energy like coal and crude oil invented prosperity; they are industrial oxygen. If coal is good, oil is better. Petroleum contains 50% more energy than the best coal, twice that of the hardest oak. There’s a lot of “grunt” in a gallon of gasoline, enough to propel a 3,000 pound car thirty miles. Pound per pound, oil shale contains just one-tenth the energy of crude oil, one-sixth that of coal, and one-fourth that of recycled phone books.

Figure 5: Photo of a piece of Oil Shale.

Above photo alone speak volumes about the energy that would need to be expended to wring oil from these rocks.

Other downsides of all this are that oil shale production creates more than four times as much greenhouse gases as conventional oil production, it uses vast quantities of water (which are not always available where the shale is), and wastes something like 40% of its initial energy in production.

Oil shale production is expensive, net energy loser, wasteful and environmentally hazardous. It is only now, when conventional oil prices are high, that oil shale production has come to the discussion table. It will no doubt make an insignificant contribution to the oil shortfall in the future but it is no panacea.