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

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sun Sep 4 18:02:18 UTC 2005


On 9/4/05, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

Latest news is that 6 million bbl/day from Alberta is not expected
until 2030. Current production is around 1 million bbl/day and even by
2012 they only expect 1.6 million bbl/day.

<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=aGEiywJ8Yr8s&refer=canada>

Quote:
  A 15-year-long decline in oil reserves and crude-oil prices of more
than $70 a barrel are pushing companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc,
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. to spend $76 billion in the next
decade to boost supplies of oil from tar sands and diesel fuel from
Qatari natural gas.

Output at the Alberta fields, which cover an area about the size of
Belgium, will probably approach 1.6 million barrels a day in 2012 and
2.8 million barrels by 2016, Drzymala said. Production costs will fall
to about $7 a barrel from $11 in the next five years because of new
technological developments, he said.

-------------------------------

I would recommend economising on your oil usage. 

BillK



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