Robert,

Somehow I get the idea you don't sleep much. I was looking back at the oilsands EROEI posts yesterday, and find you there late, and here again early.

Most of what I found on the subject so far, Hanson, Heinberg, Kurt Cobb, refers to what Youngquist said 9 years ago?!, and even then not conclusive. They vary from "more in than out", to 2 barrels to produce 3.

I would like to find out, being here in Canada makes it all the more relevant. We'll keep digging. Numbers from Suncor et al. are not ideal, I think. Exact figures on natural gas use would be useful.

I would like to politely press the issue regarding RR's and Suncor's claim that the EROEI for tarsands is 8:1, because it seems to me that this is based on taking into account only one energy input, namely, the energy contained in the natural gas itself.  As such, this accounting neglects the following factors which, if included as energy inputs in the overall equation, might indeed make the final EROEI closer to 3:2 than 8:1:

1)  RR assumes hat natural gas represents the lion's share of needed energy input for the process itself, and that other types of energy input are negligible.  
1a)  This is questionable since my impression is that the necessary start-up infrastructure costs per barrel obtained are much higher for tarsands than for conventional oil.  
1b)  In addition, there are other mining and mechanical processing costs for each EACH ADDITIONAL BARREL OBTAINED that cannot be negligible either.

2.  RR's calculations neglect entirely the matter of energy inputs required for environmental remediation.  But Is it really fair to leave environmental remediation energy costs out of the picture?  I would argue not; restoring open-pit mine to a condition resembling their original pristine state takes lots of energy, as does cleaing up the tremendous amounts of fresh water used in the process.

3.  Additionally, RR's calculations have left out the following energy inputs:
   

3a) The energy cost of obtaining the natural gas itself; if MacKenzie Delta natural gas becomes necessary for future tar sands extraction, that alone represents a pretty considerable energy input, does it not?
3b) The energy required to obtain the very large amounts of fresh water supposedly required.  

If all of these energy input factors are taken into account, then the final EROEI might indeed be far closer to 3:2 than to 8:1.  In addition, there may be other energy input factors that I haven't even thought of.

More broadly speaking, it seems to me that there are some basic principles of energy accounting at stake in my dispute with RR that have considerable significance in many concrete and controversial contexts besides tarsands: for example, nuclear fission, ethanol from corn, ethanol from Brazil, heavy oil from Venezuela, etc.  It is very easy to present all of these as viable substitutes for conventional oil based upon superficial EROEI calculations that take into account only the most obvious forms of necessary energy inputs.

Well, it's a slow day in Drumbeat, so let me throw out a recent e-mail exchange that may be mildly entertaining. I kicked around the idea of turning this into an essay, but at this point it is more of a personal feud. Just posted on my blog:

Fan Mail - Part I

The opening section (I felt like the entire exchange was too long to post here, so the rest is on my blog):

Warning: If you send me an e-mail, in which you proceed to waste my time and make a fool of yourself, consider it fair game for publication. When I get these e-mails, I have always asked permission for publication, but I will no longer extend that courtesy for flagrantly rude, over-the-top e-mails, like the exchange I am about to highlight. If I am going to waste time on this sort of stuff, others should be able to learn from the exchange. I don't have time to answer too many e-mails in detail AND post essays to my blog and The Oil Drum.

I get all sorts of e-mails, but inevitably get some that disagree with my position on some point or another. Those are fine. We can discuss the point or points of contention. Most of these exchanges are courteous and respectful. But occasionally I will get one from someone who has vastly overestimated their debating skills, and then they start digging themselves a hole when that becomes clear.

The exchange started out reasonably enough. I got an e-mail from Jim Paris, who calls himself President of Paris Innovation, LLC. (I should have signed my e-mails: Robert Rapier, CEO of Rapier's Refutations).

I am going to post Part II, where Jim really starts lashing out irrationally, in a couple of days. Part I was long enough, and Jim explicitly denied me permission to post it (because I asked). But I can be a jerk just like you, Jim. :-) And I don't pull punches with jackasses.