How Much Time Will the Tar Sands Buy Us?

Terence R. Wilken wrote in the latest issue of the Right Wing Wacko Newsletter that:

“North Slope Oil does not matter, as there is plenty of crude in the Tar Sands of Alberta, Venezuela, Russia, and the Arctic Islands.  There is also Arctic Offshore  and Artic islands Oil (not yet drilled for).  There is an estimated 7 Saudi Arabias in the Canadian tar sands at present grades.  The cost to obtain this oil is currently $11-12 per barrel.  Suncor and Syncrude will invest approximately $6 billion in these tar sands over the next few years.  The amount that is currently known should last us for the next 125 years.  Does that make you feel better?  Of course this does not mean that we should not reduce our useage, and not worry about conserving energy, but it does buy us some additional time to prepare.”

In follow up I asked him if he was aware of Jay Hanson‘s comments:

CANADIAN OIL SANDS (BITUMEN)

Canada’s conventional oil production peaked in 1973. By 1999, Canada’s oil total production was about 2.6Mb/day of which 0.5Mb (20%) was from oil sands. The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board estimates that production from Canada’s oil sands will be extremely slow (100 to 200 years for all of it).

It has been estimated that Alberta oil sands contain about 300 billion  barrels of recoverable oil. Syncrude is producing over 200,000 barrels of oil a day right now.

Oily waste water is a byproduct of the process used to recover oil from the tarry sands. For every barrel of oil recovered, two and a half barrels of liquid waste are pumped into the huge ponds. The massive Syncrude pond, which measures 22 kilometers (14 miles) in circumference (25 sq. km.), has six meters (20 feet) of murky water on top of a 40-meter-thick (133 feet) pudding of sand, silt, clay and unrecovered oil.  ( More by Jay Hanson)

To replace conventional crude — 70 million barrels a day — would require about 350 such plants. If each of the 350 plants were the size of the present plant, they would require a waste pond of 8,750 sq. km. Or about  the half the size of Lake Ontario.

But oil sands are less than half as “energy efficient” as conventional oil, so perhaps one would need 700 plants and a pond 17,500 sq. km — almost as big as Lake Ontario — to replace conventional oil.

The above numbers assume that all economic “growth” stops at present levels. Moreover, that does not allow for the increasing energy cost feedback as existing nuclear plants are decommissioned and another 80% of our existing energy sources — oil, gas, and coal — become sinks.

If global energy use continued to double every 30 years or so, five more doublings would put Alberta entirely under oily waste water. But even at 100% efficiency, 300 billion barrels of oil sands would only last 12 years at 70 million barrels a day.

At, say, an average of 25% efficiency over all 300 billion barrels, Alberta could supply about 3 years of oil for today’s economy. However, because of the decreasing energy efficiency of existing energy sources, and because the mining of oil sands is so environmentally destructive, it seems unlikely that all 300 billion barrels will ever be recovered:

“Since opening its operation in 1978 one company, Syncrude, has excavated 1.5 billion tons of so-called overburden, the 20 meters deep layer of muskeg, gravel and shale that sit atop the actual oil sands. More soil has been excavated by Syncrude than from the construction of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal and the 10 biggest dams in the world combined. Syncrude has possibly created the largest surface mine in the world.” (Source)

“Much of the oilsand is too deep to be reached by strip mining. Other  methods are being tried to recover this deeper oil, but the economics are  marginal. With the strip mining and refining process now in use, it takes the energy equivalent of two barrels of oil to produce one barrel. To expand the strip mining operation to the extent which could, for example, produce the 18 million barrels of oft used each day in the United States would involve the world’s biggest mining operation, on a scale which is simply not possible in the foreseeable future, if ever. Canada will probably gradually increase the oil production from these deposits, but until the conventional oil of the world is largely depleted these Canadian deposits are likely to represent only a very small fraction of world production. The production will always be insignificant relative to potential demand. Oilsands are now and will be important to Canada as a long-term source of energy and income. But they will not be a source of oil as are the world’s oil wells today.” [ GeoDestinies, by Walter Youngquist; National Book Company, 1997.  (More from Jay Hanson)

Terence R. Wilken responds:

Yes, I have read Jay Hanson’s articles.  They are true to an extent.  We are currently processing heavy crude in this country.  It is a dirty business.  The by-product is converted to a black powder, and carried off on huge conveyer belts.  It is dumped in a  pile.  They have found another use for this material.  No, the tar sand oil will not replace the current drilled oil supply, but it can supplement it, and make it last much longer.  This is true if only we can keep the environmental wackos out of the picture.  The current technology in the oil and gas industry is moving forward at a very rapid pace.  After all, they want to become bigger and richer. 

The alternative is to cut back on the population, drive less, and learn to live in the cold.  Maybe that is a good idea.

We are currently processing Venezuelan “heavy” crude here in this country.  It is being processed in Texas, the dirty filthy state where George Bush came from.  He cannot even clean up his own state.  This work is being done as a joint venture, and Venezuela is paying for all the extra equipment necessary to deal with the problems associated with the process.  We are currently driving vehicles with this product.

Additional links I found interesting:

The main center is in Tulsa Oklahoma.  http://www.unitar.org/office4.htm

A side use of the material:  http://www.gstt.org/publications/news/Newsletter19/tar%20sand.htm

More info and views from scientists. http://www.pch.gc.ca/csp-pec/english/about/multimedia/projects/tar_sands.html

One more cool place to go:  http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/Chapter10.pdf