Oil Sands: Burning Energy to Produce It

[4dsc]

What a waste..

http://www.energybulletin.net/18624.html

Everything about the Alberta oil sands development is impossibly big. Monster-sized trucks and giant excavators are carving up hundreds of square kilometres of land, thousands of kilometres of pipelines and roads have been laid, and millions of litres of water are being super-heated to process millions of tonnes of rock and sand.

Producing oil from oil sands also uses impossibly large amounts of energy.

The mining-extraction process requires about 750 cubic feet of natural gas for every barrel of bitumen, according to the non-governmental Pembina Institute report "Oil Sands Fever". The "in situ" process that pumps super-hot steam 1,000 metres underground requires 1,500 cubic feet of natural gas to produce a single barrel of oil.

Currently, about 0.6 billion cubic feet of gas is used every day in the oil sands region -- enough to heat 3.2 million Canadian homes, the report says.

In total, two Bcf of gas will be needed each day for the entire oil sands operations by 2012. That's almost enough gas to heat every Canadian home, according to the Pembina report.

"Oil sands are the largest industrial emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada," said Lindsay Telfer of the Sierra Club of Canada from Edmonton, Alberta.

[lapfog_1]

1. Yeah, I hear that they have a plan to fix this

they are going to replace the natural gas with nuclear power.

Seriously.

So the idea is to create a huge nuclear reactor to heat the water and destroy tens of 1000s of acres of wilderness plus cause an entire river system to convert to steam... just so we can have some oil... and not very good oil at that.


which we will process into gasoline and then burn, creating more greenhouse gases.

Just insane.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Wow.... what a fanatical, strike that, fantastic idea! n/t

[liberal N proud]

3. Not very good oil that will cost consumers more at the pump

[populistdriven]

4. We hate the Earth so Much we Dig it up and Burn it

There will be no one who feels sorry for the human race after we destroy our Earth's ability to sustain us.

We are a rabid immature hominid species.

This will end with piles of burning bodies the likes of which the Earth has never witnessed.

[eallen]

5. It's not a waste at all. The EROEI is significant.

A 1000 cubic feet of natural gas delivers about 1 million BTU of energy. A single barrel of crude delivers about 6 million. So the numbers you quote describe a 6 to 8 fold return on energy used. That's not as good as traditional drilling, but it's still a significant return.

Every energy resource takes energy to exploit. As the saying goes, a wood stove heats you twice. The first is when you go out and chop the wood, burning energy from the food you ate. If you want a water wheel to run a mill to grind your corn, you first have to build the wheel.

A salient question in energy production is how much energy is produced, for the energy consumed? If the ratio is less than one, then the business isn't really producing energy, but just transporting or transforming it. (That also isn't useless. You buy batteries, right?) According to the article you quote, Canadian oil sands provide a significant energy return on energy invested. Not nearly as good as traditional drilling, of course. But the opportunities for traditional drilling are declining.

[NickB79]

6. But natural gas production is peaking in the US

The cost of that natural gas is going up, and soon will be in direct competition with people reliant upon it for electricity generation and home heating. A decent EROEI return will not mean much when there simply isn't enough natural gas to go around.

[eallen]

7. It will be interesting to see how the global NG market develops.

What you wrote is true. NG is different from oil, in that it is non-trivial to ship it from where it is to where it is needed. There are two barriers to turning natural gas into a commodity that has a smooth, global market. First, there is significant "stranded" gas in fields to which there are no pipelines. Oil is typically picked up from collection tanks by trucks. Can't do that with NG. Second, even once it is collected, there is the problem of getting it from the nations that want to export it to the nations that want to import it. That requires liquification plants outbound, special, refridgerated tankers, and regasification terminals, inbound.

The US now has only five regasification terminals. There are plans to build a couple dozen more. Of course, there is a very large NIMBY factor there. We'll see how that works out.

:hippie:

[depakid]

9. It's already peaked in North America

and is now in depletion.

http://www.highnoon.ws/interviews.php

This is going to be a big problem not far down the line- because under NAFTA, Canada is required to sell its natural gas to wasteful Americans to heat their inefficient and poorly constructed homes and McMansions.

[Strelnikov_]

8. Tar Sands EROEI Of Around 2:1 Seems To Be Reasonable

Based on articles I have read.

Energy for trucks, excavators, construction of massive industrial facilities, development/pumping/disposal of water, upgrading of bitumen, etc. etc. needs to be accounted for.

Best description I have heard for tar sands: Using cheap natural gas to make expensive oil.

[NNadir]

10. Irrespective of fetishes like EROEI, this "resource" is an enormous threat

to humanity.

Doesn't anybody get it?

The problem is not whether we have too little oil. The problem is that we have too much.

[Ready4Change]

11. The energy gain is minimal, the continued GHG gas emissions deadly.

While I scoff at the "hydrogen economy" I live in fear of the "tar sands economy." Both of them use their namesake more as a means of transporting energy, rather than as a source of energy.

But at least hydrogen could be relatively benign, depending on how it is generated. Oil from tar sands, however? We know what burning the comparably clean ME oil is doing to our environment. Tar sands, from what I've read, are worse.