Sign of Impending Apocalypse

WesternGuy · Jan 4, 2015

I am also not sure why all the fuss about "fracking". It is expensive oil, any one well doesn't produce that much and only for a relatively short period of time when compared to conventional oil, but it is the "source de jour" and that is one reason. The other reason that it is getting so much attention is the environmental impact - whether it impacts or not and for how long and to what extent are questions that I don feel have been answered adequately. You question why are we producing "fracking" products today. One answer - profit!

The thing that scares me a bit is the situation that you have alluded to in your last few sentences about what is going to happen in 10 to 15 years. Hopefully, by then they will have some pipelines built and the heavy oil sources, now being labelled as environmentally unsound or whatever, will be in full production and abled to fill any gap left by depleting overseas sources. Regardless of what folks are saying about it, oil from the oil sands is the only source of safe oil for North America and it costs a bit more than $50 /bbl to recover. Even Canada has to rely on oil from the oil sands for a part of their requirements. This reliance can only increase as conventional crude starts to "dry up".

We shall see...

WesternGuy

bribrius · Jan 4, 2015

photoguy99 said:
I hope my grandkids think we were idiots for burning these useful long hydrocarbon chains for fuel. Energy comes from all over. It is literally falling from the sky. Long hydrocarbon chains, on the other hand.

we really dont have anything to replace gasoline i dont think never mind oil. diesel, and jetfuel and cng are about the only actual energy equivalents but none with the same makeup to actually replace it and all still derived from fossil fuel sources. cng the most energy per unit. hydrogen and electric sound good in theory only development, costs, wide scale implementation is problem-some. . If i had my choice it would probably be hydrogen then electric for me personally. cng would be great but then we would just drive up cng prices. why all the forecasts lists multiple alternative fuels replacing oil. If you pull the iea reports going years back they always have had a increase in alternative energies from varying sources to make up for fossil fuel shortfalls in production. The reason for so many alternative sources is they couldnt find one comparable source that would work on the same wide scale implementation and the way of use. Dont think there is one particular fuel we have that can replace oil in use, energy equivalent, and quantity.

old article, some might still be applicable.
Alternative Fuels to Gasoline - Cost of Alternative Fuels - Popular Mechanics

WesternGuy said:
I am also not sure why all the fuss about "fracking". It is expensive oil, any one well doesn't produce that much and only for a relatively short period of time when compared to conventional oil, but it is the "source de jour" and that is one reason. The other reason that it is getting so much attention is the environmental impact - whether it impacts or not and for how long and to what extent are questions that I don feel have been answered adequately. You question why are we producing "fracking" products today. One answer - profit!

The thing that scares me a bit is the situation that you have alluded to in your last few sentences about what is going to happen in 10 to 15 years. Hopefully, by then they will have some pipelines built and the heavy oil sources, now being labelled as environmentally unsound or whatever, will be in full production and abled to fill any gap left by depleting overseas sources. Regardless of what folks are saying about it, oil from the oil sands is the only source of safe oil for North America and it costs a bit more than $50 /bbl to recover. Even Canada has to rely on oil from the oil sands for a part of their requirements. This reliance can only increase as conventional crude starts to "dry up".

We shall see...

WesternGuy

agreed.
Canada Heavy Oil Nearing $40 Threatens Oil Sands Projects - Bloomberg

I actually like the idea of tar sands better but for barrels per day just they cant seem to produce it fast enough.. Also it is such crap I guess there is more involved to refine to make usable. Above article has it trading at a discount. You know much about that? is the fity dollars just extraction or is there a price including the refining costs for it? Makes me wonder too the quality of what is being pulled out of shale and refining costs. Reality Is I guess beggars cant be choosers and unless we push hydrogen or hopefully a even better alternative fuel hard we are sifting sand and drilling rock.

WesternGuy · Jan 5, 2015

I don't want to seem like I am "picking" on you, but I, together with a lot of others, get a bit upset when the oil sands are referred to as "tar sands". If they really were tar sands, then we would not be able to get any oil out of them. Tar is a mixture of hydrocarbons and free carbon which you get from a variety of organic materials by destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum or peat. The so-called "tar sands" of Alberta are actually sandstones with bitumen or heavy crude oil in the pores. You can compare them to conventional sandstone oil reservoirs where the oil is contained within the pores of the sandstone. In the case of the "oil sands", the organic material is just slightly heavier than conventional crude which is why it can be mined rather than pumped from the ground. I have worked in the oil sands and you can rest assured that if they were really only tar, then they would probably be of little use to the oil industry, although I suspect someone would find a way to use them for something.

Just had to clarify that because so many folks really do not understand what they are.

I looked at the article you provided and there are two ways to produce from the oil sands. The first, which is the oldest process, is to mine the sandstone that the oil is in and then grind it up and remove the oil using a caustic soda process. The resulting bitumen is then upgraded a bit and sent through a pipeline to refineries for further upgrading and refining. The second approach is where steam is forced into the "sandstone" to heat up the bitumen so that it will flow. this "hot bitumen is then brought to the surface and goes through the same process, more or less, that the mined stuff does. This is a bit of a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.

Oil sand projects are capital intensive, in that they require a very large investment for the mining and processing facilities to be in place before any production can begin. Investments up front are in the order of billions of dollars. This is unlike a conventional well where you can drill a well for a few million dollars. If you find oil, then you can borrow against the found oil to drill your next well and so on. Financially this is quite different from oil sands. One major difference is that with oil sands, you know where they are before you start, whereas with conventional oil, you may or may not find oil when you drill the well.

Hope this helps.

WesternGuy