Reply #3: Anyone who expects to see 5 mbpd out of the tar sands should send me the name of their drug dealer. [View All]

[GliderGuider]

They would appear to be smoking some really good shit.

Canada has a national treasure in the person of David Hughes. He's been working on energy issues for thirty years with the Geological Survey of Canada. His understanding of the global and national oil and gas picture is extraordinary. He presented two excellent talks at ASPO-USA in Boston, one on the oil sands (PDF) and one on natural gas (PDF).

These comments come from the one on oil sands:

- Oil from the oil sands is very energy intensive – Forecast four- to five-fold growth to 2025 will
require between 1.6 and 2.3 bcf/day of natural gas, which is approximately equivalent to the planned
maximum capacity of the MacKenzie Valley pipeline of 1.9 bcf/day, or about one-fifth of forecast Canadian
domestic consumption.

- Expansion of capacity is limited by natural gas supply and natural gas price, which could
destroy economics if there are shortfalls in supply, barring widespread application of non-thermal
processes, or switching to alternative fuels.

- Expansion of capacity is limited by water supply (1need average of 1-2 barrels of make-up water
for every barrel of oil, depending on recovery method and technology), let alone future expansion unless
technologies to reduce water consumption and/or further recycle water can be employed.

- Expansion of bitumen export capacity may also be limited by projected shortfalls of
condensate/light crude diluent for blending which are forecast to occur in the 2004-2006 timeframe
(National Energy Board, 2003), requiring other alternatives such as synthetic crude or conventional light oil.

And the following:

Summary

Reported huge reserves of unconventional oil are comforting
to some but largely meaningless as a means to offset declines in
conventional oil production because of the difficulty in growing
deliverability.

- Huge cost overruns in Canada’s oil sands suggest maximum
outputs of less than 2.5 MMbbls/day with the announced $90
billion of investment unless much of the bitumen is exported
without upgrading, in which case it could reach 2.8
MMbbls/day by 2020 – this is the most optimistic case.

- Issues surrounding inputs for oil sands production including
natural gas, water, diluents, capital, pipelines and politics add
additional uncertainties to meeting forecast outputs.

- Long term oil sands production forecasts for the 2015-2025
timeframe are not achieveable unless these issues are resolved.

From Hughes' presentation on natural gas we learn that the number of wells drilled annually in Canada has doubled since 2000 while gas production has stayed flat. Annual first-year decline rates in gas wells has gone from 26% in 1990 to 39% in 2001, and the number is probably higher today.

And lastly, here's a personal (but fact-based) fact-based opinion: crop based biofuels have the potential to wreck the world if they are used inappropriately. Given humanity's rather poor history of using technologies appropriately, I think crop-based biofuels should be resisted by every environmentalist who is capable of running a pocket calculator without adult supervision.