Stories tagged with "sagd"

Canada's Oil Sands - Part 1

Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 25, 2009 - 10:56am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: alberta, american petroleum institute, bitumen, fort mcmurray, oil sands, sagd, steam assisted gravity drainage, tar sands, upgrading [list all tags]

This is the first in a two-part series about Canada's oil sands. In this post, I will talk about a recent American Petroleum Institute (API)-sponsored media trip I made to see Canada's oil sands, and give a little background on material being extracted. In the second part of the series, I will talk about future oil sands production and some issues related to future imports, including environmental questions.

I should mention that while I went on the trip with API, the sources I am using in these two posts are broader than just information on the trip. I will link to some of these sources as I go along. Arguably this post is mostly from the point of view of oil companies, but it seems to me our knowledge base regarding oil sands is so poor that we need to start somewhere.

The group that went on the trip was a mixed group of bloggers and a conventional reporter--Elizabeth Brackett from PBS. This is a photo of some of us.


Left to Right: David Skyuta (Illinois Petroleum Council), Elizabeth Brackett (PBS), Gail Tverberg (The Oil Drum), Byron King (Whiskey and Gunpowder), Brian Westenhaus (New Energy and Fuel), Jane Van Ryan (API), Student (Assisting Margot Garritsen from Stanford Univ.), Kate Shirley (Assisting Jane Van Ryan)

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EROI Update: Preliminary Results using Toe-to-Heel Air Injection

Posted by David Murphy on March 18, 2009 - 9:27am in The Oil Drum: Net Energy
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: alberta, bitumen, daveinmarinca, eroi, horizontal wells, net energy, original, petrobank, sagd, tar sands, thai, toe-to-heel [list all tags]

In August 2007, a post titled Extracting Heavy Oil: Using Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) introduced readers of The Oil Drum to a technology for producing an upgraded extra-heavy oil from Alberta Tar Sands without the environmentally messy and energy-intensive surface mining procedures that currently dominate extraction. The post provided a first-look at producing and partially upgrading Alberta bitumen in situ. In this post we make preliminary estimates of the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of the THAI process.

The Alberta Tar Sands continued to garner interest through the first half of 2008 because of declining conventional oil production in Canada, the apparent success of the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process and the increasing price of crude oil. Today they are still of interest as the countries of North America (and around the world) desire cheap, abundant crude oil from politically stable regions (See Unconventional Oil: Tar Sands and Shale Oil - EROI on the Web, Part 3 of 6). However the subsequent financial collapse during the second half of 2008 has caused many tar sand projects to be deferred. In fact, Canada's oil-sands industry has hit the skids, spreading a deepening gloom over Alberta's economy, and to some degree, across the country. Some expansion projects that were under way in the Fort McMurray region have been put on the shelf, as oil companies slash their budgets to reflect the new economic environment in which they operate – that is – a world of lower oil demand and, at least compared to the summer of 2008, low oil prices.

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When CHOPS are not a dinner menu, but for heavy oil production

Posted by Heading Out on July 30, 2008 - 10:46am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: alaska, canada, chops, orinoco, sagd, venezuela, very heavy oil [list all tags]

When the weather in the mid-West gets hot and humid, as it does at this time of year, it is pleasant to have the chance to head up to Maine, (along I might note with two solid streams of traffic from Boston all the way North). Thus it was that I could get up, this morning, and pick fresh raspberries for breakfast from the bush outside the window. Raspberries are, like cherries, one of the transient crops that one savors each year when they are in season and then waits until they appear on the bush again next year.

In this way they are a food resource when they grow, but if we don’t put additional work into their condition, they cannot be considered as a reserve for the longer haul. Unless that is, we are willing to make the time and money investment, by canning them, or making them into jam, they don’t count much toward the family food reserve (and note that I have, in the past, helped make raspberry jam).

The difference between a reserve and a resource is a relatively important distinction that often gets overlooked in the debate about our energy future. Some sources of energy are fairly easy to describe and to understand. Place a wind turbine in an area with a recognized wind pattern, or a solar collector array in the American South-West, and we can run tabulated data through simple calculations to understand the value of the returning energy on the initial investment. It is however, the amount of heavy oil that can be justified as a reserve volume that drives today’s post, and with very heavy oil we have to go the other way - in other words turn the consistency from something closer to jam back into something closer to juice.

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The needs and use of water for power, industrial plants and people

Posted by Heading Out on November 6, 2007 - 10:10am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: cap, consumption, evaporators, original, process water, sagd, south africa, southern california, water [list all tags]

I was recently in a meeting with some State officials, and representatives of a large fossil energy supply company. The meeting was largely focused on State-centered efforts to increase the amount of renewable or sustainable energy. In the course of the discussion the company representatives raised the issue of water availability, and how this might impact some of the options. It is a subject that is starting to raise its head in more than just this type of discussion. If we look at the current drought status of the United States, for example.




The exceptional drought in the South East and the extreme drought in the South West are both evident. The growing impact of the sustained lack of water, or the need to provide water to an increasing number of people or a growing industrial base, from a fixed resource, is one that will have an impact that goes beyond just the immediate short term. And so, being curious, I looked at the major users of water, and what they did with it. And it was in this light that I then looked at one of the promising new technologies that Dave Rutledge had mentioned at the ASPO conference, the use of concentrated sun power (csp), and in the process I also looked at how they are handling process water in the oil sands of Alberta.

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It's greaves time again

Posted by Heading Out on November 20, 2006 - 1:35am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: canadian oil sands, reserve calculations, sagd [list all tags]

I have been musing, over the weekend, a little more about the problem about what you consider a reserve. And, just being mischievous, I got to thinking a little about the Canadian Oil Sands. At the present time a very significant part of the production of the deposit comes from the surface mining of the sand. As I noted in an earlier post , the relatively simple way of getting the bitumen from the sand, merely requires breaking the material into individual grains as it is carried, in a hot water pipeline, to the initial refinery. The first stop along the way is a rather large tank, where the clean sand sinks to the bottom, while the bitumen is taken from the top to be treated.

Now the point is this, that process is relatively simple and does not cost huge amounts of energy (and the water is recycled). Virtually all the oil in the deposit is recovered, and the sand is dropped into ponds where, after the water is drained away, it can be covered with the original top cover, and restored to its original condition. Except only that the bitumen is gone, and it won't get your feet dirty if you walk in the streams.

Grin, well now that I have several folks blood a little warmer, let me get to my point.

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Mining Canadian Oil Sands into the future

Posted by Heading Out on June 19, 2006 - 11:40pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: alberta, bitumen, fort mcmurray, huff and puff, oil sands, sagd, suncor, syncrude [list all tags]

Well, let's see I have put on the helmet, the breast plate, the greaves and all that stuff, and so perhaps I might be armored enough to tip-toe into the debate about oil sands and oil shale. Tonight will be oil sand, if I survive and recover, then (after reading a few more scientific papers) I will tackle oil shale.

Just recently there has been increasing attention paid to the heavy oil sands of Alberta. Perhaps, as in the case of the Washington Post more negative than positive. And it is interesting to note, from the tone of those pieces, that it is now apparently more desirable to have your rivers flow over and through tarry sand, than to have the sand cleaned and replaced, along with the river. But it is not that argument that I would follow, but rather, OGJ having come out with a Supplement on Canadian Oil and Gas, to briefly comment on one or two of the features of that report. (Which apparently will take a while before it appears in the electronic version of the magazine).

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