[extropy-chat] OIL: Albertan tar sands, was Peak Oil?

[Mike Lorrey]

http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/oil.html

Wired had this article last year.

Furthermore, it turns out that the Athabascan sands are only one oil
sand deposit in Alberta: 
http://www.osern.rr.ualberta.ca//Images/old/AOSD_Full.gif

In total, Albertan oil sands amount to over 2.54 trillion barrels. At a
10% recovery factor, thats 254 billion barrels, or about nine years of
total global oil supply (at an 84 million bbl/day rate of production).
With current technology, 30% should be feasible, giving 27 years, and
with nanotechnology to be developed in the next 27 years, recovery
percentage should grow to over 70% or more.

Now, lets look at its exploitation from a more realistice point of
view. Lets say oil companies invest enough to create a daily output of
6 million bbl/day.

The US imports 13.12 million bbl/day from 15 countries. Of these, I'd
say we'd want to keep importing oil from eight or nine of them,
representing 42-46% of our oil imports. Ending imports from all African
nations, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, possibly Iraq, would free us from
 terrorism profiting on oil prices.

6 million bbl/day from Alberta would replace all of our imports from
troublesome nations. Currently, according to Syncrude, its recovery
costs for the heavy crude they get out of their extraction process, is
$10/bbl, far less than what they used to be, and there are technologies
for reducing this more. One alone will drop it by $1.50/bbl. So lets
assume $8.50/bbl within a few years. While its 4.5 times more than
Saudi's $2/bbl recovery costs, its still eight times less than the
current spot price, which should give ample room for refineries to
refine even this heavy crude instead of lighter crudes from foreign
sources.

At a 6 million bbl/day production rate in Alberta, the oil sands would
last 42333 days of production at a constant rate and recovering only
10% of the bitumen. That is 115 years of freedom from muslim extremist
oil per 10% of bitumen deposits extracted from Albertan oil sands at a
current dollar cost of $8.50/bbl. If we were to make an assumption that
each additional 10% would cost 50% more to extract than the previous
10%, the 70th percentile would cost $96.00/bbl to extract. The 80th
would cost $145.00, the 90th would be $217.00, and the last percentile
would cost $326 in current year dollars. The last percentile would be
extracted in 1150 years, assuming a constant rate of extraction. With a
3% average inflation rate and a 4% average growth rate, the real cost
of this oil in 1150 years should be about $0.32/bbl relative to the
current cost of living.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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