The Oil Drum

25 comments on Making up the difference

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westexas on January 11, 2006 - 4:41pm

In my local Peak Oil presentations, I have a slide that shows fossil fuels as a continuum, from methane on the left to coal on the right. The progression goes from methane to NGL's, to condensate to light sweet crude to heavy sour crude to bitumen to coal (gas to liquids to solids).

We are after liquid transportation fuels--gasoline; diesel and jet fuel. We can make liquid transportation fuels fuels from any of these fossil fuel sources, but the capital and energy required to convert the fossil fuel go liquid transportation fuels increases as we move to the left and right from light, sweet crude.

Therefore, it makes sense that light sweet would be the first to peak--which it has done. We are increasingly looking at the lighter end--methane, NGL's and condensate--and the heavier end--heavy sour crude, bitumen and coal--for liquid transportation fuels.

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dp1 on January 11, 2006 - 5:29pm

Sounds like a good clear way to think about it.

How much effort (money, energy) does it take to turn NGL's or condensates into gasoline products, compared with heavy crudes? There's some asymmetry, because I assume it's easier to turn NGL's and condensates into useful non-gasoline/diesel products, whereas heavy/sour crudes pretty much are destined for gasoline or diesel products.

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Nate Hagens on January 11, 2006 - 6:28pm

Westexas - anyway I could borrow/look at those slides? My email addy is listed on my account here. Is there a public way to view them? Thanks.

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Solaris on January 13, 2006 - 1:16am

westexas - interesting point.

I would like to see more analysis of both CTL and GTL technologies. Costs, EROEI, scalability, expected growth rates, years to peak production, etc. In particular, GTL has seen very little discussion compared to the competing technology of LNG.

Qatar is currently receiving huge capital investments for both LNG and GTL facilies. I've seen a few analysts briefs that conclude that in most circumstances it acutally make more sense to build GTL plants rather than LNG supply trains. The end product of GTL is ultra low sulfur diesel that requires no further refining. No specialized LNG tankers or controversial LNG regassification terminal are needed for GTL. It will be interesting to see which of these once obscure technologies, LNG, GTL, or CTL, will grow fastest as it becomes clear that the easy oil has peaked.