The Oil Drum

This year. I follow drillings stats pretty closely and we are not going to expand 10% this year.
Robert since you reading this.Have you seen this?
http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm

Has this been evaluated on TOD or elsewhere?
This is the first thing I do not feel despondent about since becoming peak oil aware a few years back.
TIA,

In the same vein, how can tar sand deposits be a solution to anything if NG is required to process it.

Any of the following (unless they are FAQs).

What do you consider the best & worst estimates for:

- water needs (as in gallons or liters of water / barrel of oil produced)
- energy needs (as Joule of input / barrel of oil produced)
- environmental damage (as in ground displacement, topsoil removal, groundwater contamination risk or whatever factors come into play)

for North American (e.g. Alberta) oil sands projects?

What do you see as significant barriers to large scale production from these resources?

What are the most optimistic projections for practical maximum production (barrels of oil/day) in future using current known tech?

When do you foresee production from oil sands scaling up to significant numbers (i.e. what year/time span or price level)?

On a related natural gas question: The NPC (National Petroleum Council) report "Balanced Options" in 2003 said that the U.S. would face a natural gas shortfall and have to import LNG at a rapidly growing pace, even if we opened up all moratoria areas in the U.S. to natural gas drilling. This would include the Western Rockies and the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) being opened for drilling.
(a) If we are really in such a dire position on natural gas need, what are the chances that these areas will be opened up for at least exploratory and then possibly production drilling? What do see the environmental issues to be and is it worth the risk?
(b) Is even discussing the issue of natural gas drilling in these areas politically acceptable, or is it "a third rail" that politicians won't touch, no matter what shape we aer in on natural gas supply
(c) Given the resistance to LNG handling facilities almost anywhere they are considered to be placed, what are the odds of building enough LNG handling and offloading facilities in time to provide needed natural gas imports?

Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

Do the members of the API have bugout plans and if so would they mind sharing them the peasants?

Reformulate the question (if you chose). After the same intro on $4 to $40 billion; What price range of natural gas would be required in, say 5 years, to support 60% more rigs drilling for natural gas ? (Adjusting for increasing unit costs, labor shortages, etc.) 60% more rigs appear to be needed to support level NA natural gas production.

1.1^5 = 1.61

Best Hopes,

Alan

Great question...seconded.

Has he read the GAO report? What comments does he have on the various peak oil studies and dates cited in the report? Similar to above, are some more credible than others, or are they all equal (which would I suppose be another wa to concur that we have trmendous uncertainty). In the case of this much uncertainty, what is the right risk mitigation step to take ?

Question #1: If the US used fossil energy at the rate of Europe, how low will the imoport rate of fossil be ?

Question #2: How many mpg should the present US vechicle fleet go in order to reduce US fossil import rate to zero?

Question #3: How low will the US fossil energy import rate be, if all powerplants were state of the art in energy efficiency. 60% efficiency. combined electricity and district heating?

Question #4: If all US homes were of average European size = ½ of US average and with European state of the art construction: i.e. Passive house design, > 1 foot Insulation, triple glazed windows, ventilation with energy recovery and with average European aircondition = Zero. And annual total primary energy consumption for (heating, cooling,all electricity below 120 kWh/m2 How low would the US fossil energy import rate be?

Question #5 If #1,#2,#3,#4 were implemented fully, How much natural gas and oil could the US export every year.

Question #6 Can the API confirm, that energy efficiency actions in the world since 1980 each year saves more energy than the present annual oil production in the world?

Question #7 Which actions can the API recommend for making the fossil energies of the world last longer ?

kind regards/ And1

Brilliant observation! I hope Robert can work Woolsey's comment into his questions somehow. Woolsey's comment is extremely insightful.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

My, Mr. Woolsey must never have sent his people to China and looked around. They are already the second largest energy system in the world. There's no building "from the beginning".

Robert, I would ask what API feels is the long-term outlook for IOCs given their lack of access to resources and rising resource nationalism.

I have a good friend who worked for a metro city in the SF bay area for the last 25 years. He managed the whole vehicle fleet for the city, which included not just cars but all city vehicles: dump trucks, street sweepers, heavy equipment, etc.

Two years ago he went to a special meeting that was set up in CA for all important city/county/state functionaries that had major energy concerns and my friend was an attendee. They were not allowed to speak about the event, were essentially gagged, but he did tell me that Woolsey was the headline speaker (and helped create the event) and the sum of what he said was, "We are screwed." I left CA and ELP'ed a few months later.

LNG shipments were increasing.

Natural gas was close to a dollar per mcf (m = thousand) in some areas like Malaysia recently. Australia had on paper reserves enough to last about a hundred years at current levels of Australian consumption.

There is quite a lot of gas in the Mackenzie Delta, offshore Arctic Ocean, and Alaska. Russia has enormous supplies of natural gas, but will not develop LNG plants unless prices will stabilize at high enough levels. The cost of building an LNG cooling plant has tripled in recent years. Qatar had stopped issuing new LNG development licenses. U.S. natual gas storage levels are above the five year average after one of the coldest Februaries in a decade.

Suncor estimated that tarsands synthetic oil processing costs about a quarter of barrel of oil energy equivalent. They might be able to use diesel of gasify their coke if natural gas prices move higher than diesel prices. Cannot remember if the cost of processing was caloulated for in-situ or open pit mining projects. Supposidely Venezuela had potentially lower in-situ Orinoco tarsand operating costs, but stakeholders who invested in Venezuela risked great losses due to the seizure of private properties by the socialist government.

Regarding EROEI, would the API care to offer an industry wide graph of past, present and future oil EROEI?

Thanks

directly very little, and if that was the only effect it would have no long term impact as the extra heat would be radiated to spave, however the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has set up a roughly 1 watt/m2 energy imbalance, which (at current consecrations, assuming no feedback to alter atmospheric gases, and sufficient time to achieve equilibrium) will result in about 1.2 degrees warming, even if we stopped burning all FF and forests today.

In reality the actual amount of thermal energy created by combustion is relatively trivial compared to the 1000w/m2 that the sun puts out. (the us receives 46,700 quads of energy from the sun each year)

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/20/2/3/1
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm

http://rredc.nrel.gov/tidbits.html

neither of those was the link i was looking for, there are better ones out there