The Energy Returns of Unconventional Oil
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Chris Popoff returns to talk unconventional oil with a focus on oil sands. What is it? What are its energy economics? How is it like a battery? What does it have to do with peak cheap oil and how does nuclear fit into the picture?
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🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:04 🛢️ *Oil Sands Unconventional*
08:07 ⛽ *Liquid Hydrocarbons Challenge*
14:39 🌍 *Unconventional: New Normal*
17:55 💡 *Energy Delivery Challenges*
19:47 🌋 *Geologic Processes Biomass*
23:08 Oil *sands formation.*
23:38 Open-pit *mining extraction.*
24:08 In-situ *recovery methods.*
25:05 Sideways *drilling challenges.*
26:31 Steam *chamber and geological challenges.*
28:52 Economic *cutoff in recovery.*
29:46 Challenges *in unconventional gas recovery.*
30:45 Concerns *about peak cheap oil.*
32:13 Oil *sands energy return.*
33:40 Bitumen *as a chemical battery.*
36:33 Economics *vs. energetics in oil sands.*
39:00 Geopolitics *and oil sands economics.*
40:53 Light *vs. heavy oils and refining.*
46:33 Alberta *oil quality penalty.*
47:33 Higher *cost for heavy distillates.*
48:03 Alberta's *heavy crudes for distillates.*
48:27 Gasoline *and diesel value.*
49:23 Alberta's *refining challenges.*
50:21 Regional *dynamics in energy trade.*
50:51 Fission *easier than fusion for diesel.*
51:47 Fusion *reactors' energy potential.*
52:43 Steam *distribution challenges.*
53:39 Economics *of central plants.*
54:39 Steam *distribution distance limits.*
55:37 Nuclear-produced *steam for bitumen.*
56:33 Fossil *fuel alternatives for steam.*
57:56 Nuclear's *long-tail advantage.*
59:54 Molten *salt reactor's efficiency.*
01:05:06 Challenges *with large nuclear deployment in Alberta.*
Made with HARPA AI
We've been spoilt by a wide range of cheap and available energy sources. Not enough people have traveled widely enough to appreciate the life-saving benefits of burning tyres or camel dung to keep a ger warm when the temp is -40 deg C below in Mongolia. In many location "coal" becomes a loose definition of any rock that will burn including carboniferous shales with ash content as high as 60% - 70& as it is in parts of Siberia where it can be below -50 deg C. Throughout Africa, diesel fuel is stolen from minesites and sold in bottles by the roadside as the only available cooking oil as the trees have already all been burned by previous generations.
cooking fuel or cooking oil? You can't eat diesel.
Making "hard" choices is very different from making stupid/senseless choices without any cost/benefit analysis amounting to economic vandalism. Bit tired of conversations based on Nudge Theory - covert psychological manipulation of thought. I'm an Aussie mining engineer who has been to the Athabaska Oil Sands operations. Impressive operations producing low sulphur fuel. The main environmental problem I saw was the surface stockpiles of elemental sulphur. With our current knowledge of technologies there are no alternatives to gas, fuel oil and petroleum products and all of the products which flow out of same.
The US should have expanded Keystone pipeline to send more crude to Texas for refining and export. Instead it will go to west coast of Canada and PRC. Now Biden is playing political games with future LNG export plants. The stupidity of Us politics boggles the mind.
That sulphur is needed in some regions as fertilizer because their soils are deficient in it. It's shipped out by the trainload.
So rarely than an Aussy talks straight. Shure you not South African?
I totaly share your view of reality.
Sulfur shouldn't even be separated out. If acid rain is a problem, the population is too dense, and fuel use is too great in the region. Sulfur is the change agent necessary for growth. Grow or shrivel. Civilizations crumble. Consequences happen. No exceptions. Put the sulfur back in fuel. Where it belongs...
Your math does not check out as current technology and gas/oil and replacement by renewables. Only reason things have stuck with Gas/Oil even this long is the machines they feed -- just variations of Internal Combustion Engines -- which exist, but are working through their Service Life. When an ICE ages out or dies off, replace it with an Electric Motor for 1/2 or less the cost of an ICE. The Electric Motor can run fully on Renewable Electricity, which is 1/4 or less the operating cost of the prior ICE. All on existing technology, and take out 70% or more of Oil use -- right up front. You all are smart enough to figure this out? Have you never done this math?
Our society has developed, over the last couple of centuries, due predominently to oil. Imagine where we'd be had it not been for the energy that oil has given us. Wind/solar/hydro just hasn't given us that same amount of energy that oil has and won't for decades to come. But here we are turning our backs on the very source of energy that got us here regardless of the reason why. I believe that this transformation will come at the cost of a less convenient way if life - the standard we have become accustomed to. Certainly impressive strides have been made in producing "greener" energy but it won't achieve what oil has given us despite all the hoopla spread by the environmentalists in the news media. I'm glad that I lived at the time of oil and utilized what benefits it yielded for my generation. Life won't be as easy (relatively speaking) for subsequent generations. The most significant development that will mitigate such a future decline in convenience will be nuclear generated energy. It will allow us to use electricity to divide H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. We will use the hydrogen to fuel our vehicles. There will be the greatest reduction in fossil fuel generated "greenhouse gas emissions" for right now 70% of oil is used for motive fuel.
If we could just harness the energy density of those two mustaches, we could power the entire Eastern Seaboard.
Fascinating discussion. My understanding of the oil sands was fairly basic. I used to fly over Fort McMurray in 747-400 freighters from Louisville to Anchorage. I’ve done a lot of reading on hydraulic fracturing and been around some fields during my upland bird hunting between eastern Montana and New Mexico. The technology advances are remarkable. There is no substitute.
Nuclear power has been slowed down and resisted for too long. Nuclear needs to grow as quickly as possible. TerraPower reactor is going to be built about. 4 hr. drive from me in Wyoming . Hope it works out.
The first customers for industrial heat from Terrestrial Energy's MSR are oil sands companies. That's also where much of their development money came from. Cheap industrial heat is great for oil extraction and guess what, it's also great for making electricity. Cheaper than a combined cycle natural gas plant.
An excellent discussion. Very informative.
There is a 17km steamline from Christina to Narrows…we find ways to improve steam quality…
It is possible to create high pressure steam using solar concentration
Looks like the guy on the right ist captaining a ship - looking into the distance, trying to avoid collisions with other ships-
If the benefit of Oil Sands is still 3-5 times the input cost of production they still sound like a good investment to me. The benefit of fuel oil is that it gives us energy where we want it with a great amount of flexibility. Wind & Solar are fickle and only work with grid scale batteries (which currently do not exist).
Wind and solar are infinitely-expensive, on a sustained basis, even *_with_* storage.
3 to 5 times the input is a good thing for the job market in Alberta.
Terrestrial Energy is about to drop those input costs dramatically.
@@chapter4travels Cut-off date?
@@aliendroneservices6621 I don't know exactly, ask the CNSC.
Is this the decouple media channel or the recouple modern mustache channel?.. lol
Great chat gents!
I was waiting for this to drop!!
That's a very low energy return for tar sands. While still useful, it's probably below the threshold to sustain complex society in itself. His analogy of more like a battery seems apt.
It becomes economical if prices are $100 a barrel that's why Saudi Arabia keeps the price where it is,. Keep the price of oil low enough so unconventional sources become non viable, if the price is $100 a barrel or more coal can be turned into crude oil
What happened to the efforts to ship bitumen in solid form via rail? Bitumen polymer “pucks” could be sent via rail and ship - it wasn't a spill hazard or a fire hazard because it stayed solid (not as volatile) and containers could actually float on water if there was an accident. Then they could be refined at their destination...
Had to tune out. The big mouth host is doing all of the talking. Good luck with this show. You will need it.
The issue with higher priced energy is that it has a negative feedback loop and makes the cost of getting that energy higher over time.
Great conversation. SMR Nuclear and molten salt SMR for oil sands is a killer app IMO. You can eliminate most of the emissions from oil production and support further upgrading of that heavy oil lighter low sulphur/no sulphur grades suitable for end use. And nuclear cogens can be engineered to limit the excess electricity production that current cogens have. All that electricity is nice, but it is far from the major population centers forcing the expensive upgrade of grid infrastructure required to transport it.
No one in any real industry wants to deal with Nukes.
He had viscosity inverted. Around 34 minutes he is talking about adding hydrogen to the oils, hydrogen that is sourced from natural gas. The synthetic oil flows easier and the process also reduces sulfur content. Of course the heavier oils have more energy but create more CO2 on combustion, where carbons become CO2 and hydrogens become water.
Maybe it'll still come up but it's too bad carbon capture wasn't part of this discussion. I remember Chris mentioned that they were utilizing cc quite extensively. Given all confusion out there about this topic I'd really like to hear what he has to say on it. There isn't enough information on it
It was just greenwashing. It’s going nowhere.
shell oil carbon capture is doing testing for new areas to put it under ground. we have had the shell workers around all winter. 80 km southeast of Edmonton Alberta
Carbon Capture is no silver bullet, it is expensive from a capex, opex and energy perspective. You also have the challenge that there is always some carbon slip, so it's a reduced emissions option, not a zero emissions option.
Just for fun I did some calculations the other day looking at integrating a BWRX-300 SMR into a carbon capture system supporting a nominal 900 MW gas fired combined cycle plant. It turned out to be a remarkably good fit, the nuclear plant supplied all of the electricity and steam demand of the CCS plant with quite a bit of electricity left over that could be easily exported from the site.
@@lindsaydempsey5683 Saying 'Carbon capture is no silver bullet' is a vast understatement, it's almost completely ineffective without even factoring in cost and scaling it up.
I could imagine each unit taking decades of operation just to cover the carbon involved in its manufacture. Decades is an optimistic guess as well btw, it would probably never break even (Carbon offset) when you factor maintenance and operation.
It's hopium, techno-optimism. Greenwashing is like a religion of science at this point. We're fcked
@@SamWilkinsonn, "I could imagine each unit taking decades of operation just to cover the carbon involved in its manufacture.". This part is not a practical problem, that aspect is fine. I don't think that scaling will be an issue either. The big challenges today are, the technologies that are ready to deploy are expensive, bulky and take a huge amount of energy to run them. That in turn means much more cost spread over many fewer MWh available to sell, that's the key challenge I see. I have NOT run the numbers, but off the cuff I expect the cost of electricity production would increase by 50 - 80% using CCUS on gas fired combined cycle power generation. That may be price competitive with other forms of low emission firm capacity, especially if the cost of carbon is set at $170/CO2e. Regardless of the details, the cost of electricity delivered from a low carbon electricity system is going to be far more expensive that we've been used to.
Great episode
Semantically, would you prefer "classical oil", versus "conventional oil"?
Industry standard is Conventional -- drill a hole, pump Oil out. Secondary recovery is flooding with water to float the remaining easy Oil up, Tertiary (3rd) is typically high-pressure CO2 down-hole to blow out the remaining Oil out. Unconventional is Tar Sand, Frack, and Deep Off-shore. As noted -- Unconventional is where things are at in North America. All this is just pointing to End-Times for Oil.
We apply technologies by merit. If a better technology is available, well, thats what we end up using. Now the conversation is more about betterment and availability.
Sounds like a whole lot of rationalization around the continuation of the tar sands. Clearly I am not in the Alberta cult and find the language manipulative. The only real issue here that is relevant, the EROI or EROEI. One must recognize the global efforts to reduce FF use by 2050. We have a budget that is important and there are repercussions for exceeding our budget. Important issuse releated to leakage, make coal better than natural gas. Tar sands oil has the lowest EROI of the energy options we have. Draw whatever equivalencies you will, our poor start to reducing emissions will demand more radical reductions in the near future. It isn't something you can avoid. We should be doing better. Canadians shoulder the highest per capita emissions due to the tar sands carbon footprint.
It is easy math. The EROI for tar sands is one barrel of oil required to produce 1.9 barrels of oil. I have heard that has been increased to 2.4 in recent years. Still, we are comparing in some ways to Saudi oil. The Alberta cult goes nutz over Saudi oil, but that is the number I know. They used to produce 100 barrels with the same one barrel going in. Now they are down to 24 barrels for that one barrel. Which makes that oil, 12x better return. It carries a lower carbon cost which improves the return on the budget we have. Maybe the talk isn't there yet, but that day is close at hand. Then what do you do eh?
The demand for oil and all of its byproducts will not go away until there is a realistic substitution. Advanced nuclear can handle the energy side but there is no substitute for all the rest. So, finding a cleaner, more efficient way of extracting those products from oil sands is very important. That's where advanced nuclear comes in here as well.
@@chapter4travels interesting assertion that doesn't comport with reality😆
The upfront Fail with EROEI was assuming that All Energy is Equal. It is not. EROEI was a misunderstanding of ROI (Return on Investment) -- a Money or Industrial Engineering concept. In the Real World, it is all a money thing, not an energy thing. IF you can throw Cheap (money) Energy Down-hole -- like Electricity and Frack Gas, and have Valuable (again, money) Energy come out -- like Oil . . . . then it can keep going into EROEI of less than 1. Not a good thing, but that is it how it turns out the Real World works. Anyway, replace the Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) with Electric Motors, and the premium value of Oil goes away.
@@chapter4travels Electric Motors are replacing ICEs. ICEs are where most of the Oil goes. But no real need for New Nukes, as Renewable has the Electricity Market covered.
@@philtimmons722 That sounds great all except for one part, renewables can not possibly replace fossil fuels. Germany is proving that right now in real-time. One moment of critical thinking shows just how dumb it is. Replace a 24/7/365/anywhere in the world, high energy dense fuel with an intermittent, only works in some places, very low-density fuel = failure, expensive, waste of time and money failure.
Great conversation about many issues on regard with recovering bitumen and on addition to these using nuclear reactors. It is great advancement that bitumen industry developed SAGD and other technologies which produce 3-4 mm bbl/day. It is sobering fact that bitumen oil industry produce these bitumen and burn natural gas which is cleaner but to save, they burn and coke which is residues from bitumen and certainly increasing pollution. Mining extraction is even worse for environment.
It is good idea using cleaner energy, on bitumen recovery, nuclear which produce heat energy and electricity can be good solution. However it is good environmentally but have a bitter pill for energy consumers, high capital cost, which will be charged to consumers together with operating costs.
If we will keep production of 3-4 million bbl/d the energy need daily are 4.5-6 B scf/d, and to generate the same heat the industry will need 55-82.4 GW power from SMR (300 MW or 200 MWh and 100MWe). Here we are that industry will need 275-367 plants to keep production. This is really a business scenario to dig because may be beneficial to monetize. True, the use of nuclear will decrease the emission significantly, but will need minerals to keep running nuclear plants and these minerals, with low concentration will need huge escalation. But here we are for work, protect the environment and produce goods peoples need. The problem or challenge is on initial capital the nuclear need on traditional plants or SMR?
However solution are around us, to find effective solution the industry together with government must open centres where inventors enter in partnership with industry and government together, if these centres are not a reality, real inventors will never materialize their inventions and the industry may always seat on old technologies with marginal improvement and high cost. More can be debated on private.
Consider the potential of using solar concentration To create steam
Hi pretty when we were out of oil they'll figure out a way how to extract oil from plastics and then all the plastics in the ocean will be sought after, just a guess though
That's like unbaking a cake to retrieve the eggs
@@HonestSonics well if there are no more chickens and all that's left are stale cakes to get eggs from, I guess
So clearly the energy markets are very complex. Do we want governments to put a heavy thumb on it (other than simple anti-pollution regs)? The government guys in the US retire in their 40-50 age range and bring their "expertise" over to the private energy production sector...
Engineer here and I will grant to the fossil fuel industry that we can't just flip away from it. Its simply going to take a long time and then even if we can flip every car, truck, plane and bus off fossil fuels there will still be many other things we need hydrocarbons for. The most obvious being lubricants and plastics. Even a Tesla car has hydrocarbon derived items all through it from all the plastic items including the plastic insulators on all the wiring. Then Teslas still have wheel bearings and they need grease. *So there's almost no way to have a modern technological society without hydrocarbons.*
I can assure every farmer and truck driver does not need to worry about their diesel tractor or diesel truck because we just don't have any PRACTICAL way to replace them. If you consider the known Lithium reserves we barely have enough to do 1/3rd of the cars in the world. So there's just no PRACTICAL way to replace diesel engines in trucks, tractors, buses and a few other things.
My degree is in aerospace and there's NO PRACTICAL way to replace Jet Fuel in passenger & freight jets and except for planes operating ONLY over the airfield they took off from there's no practical replacement for AVGAS for general aviation except with diesel. There was a massive effort on the 1990s to make jet engines operate on Hydrogen. The made great progress and got past the technological issues of running a gas turbine on hydrogen. Then they hit a set massive technological issues with creating, storing, and fueling aircraft with liquid hydrogen.
BUT MY QUESTION TO EVERY PERSON IN THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IS -
When are you going to shut up, stop lying about climate change and stop interfering with moving on from fossil fuels?
There's some massive hurdles to jump over with the energy transition. They aren't easy and will take time. So there's plenty of money to be made from oil & gas *AND THERE'S NO NEED TO INTERFERE.*
*So when are the Oil & Gas crowd going to just SHUT UP and let us get on with the job?*
Lithium is ridiculously abundant
@@ryccoh You've missed the point. Lithium can't replace hydrocarbons and all of the products which flow on from its production. I really want to see lithium road surfacing.
@@andrewgrubb9268 sure but OP mentioned reserves specifically being a problem
@@ryccoh Really????
Being abundant DOES NOT MEAN its useable.
If you have a look at Wikipedia for Lithium about 1/2 way down there's a table in the section for PRODUCTION.
There's 3 columns:
The first is obvious - production is what those countries are actually producing.
The other 2 are less understood unless you have worked in mining WHICH I HAVE.
Reserves are what they KNOW ABOUT and can extract.
Resources are just ESTIMATES of what MIGHT be there NOT what is there. Plus those resources do NOT mean that any of it can actually be mined or extracted. For instance there's an estimate the Salton See has resource of 18 million tons of Lithium. 1) that's just an estimate and 2) nobody yet has the proven technology to extract it from the brine at an industrial level.
We can only go on what is in reserves and at the moment the worlds RESERVES are only enough for about 400-500,000 cars at the rate used by Tesla S (63kg) and there's 1.5 Billion registered cars on the planet.
Plus current production of 130,000 tons is good for about 2 million cars and last year 85 million cars were made.
Sorry buddy, I do want to see the energy transition move forward but we NEED A BETTER PLAN.
I agree but oil has the mantle of power and do not want to let it go. They pay politicians far more than any other industry does. I also don't know what they are afraid of. It's like Putin. What the F is he so afraid of? He's a paranoid nut.
Reads 'The Ministry for the Future'. by Kim Stanley Robinson.
The term 'our modern economy' is extremely loaded. In the US it implies Detroit - dependent on massive government subsidies on cars and energy - wasteful and bankrupt. In the Netherlands it means pleasant, efficient, clean, and walkable ( bikes, rainbows and butterflies). Lots of people pay good money to travel from the US to the Netherlands every year. Nobody goes to Detroit.
The Netherlands couldn't have been developed into what it is today with bikes and butterflies. Nor do the tractors run on unicorn farts.
Hi. Remember the Netherlands grew to a wolrd power on wind power and horses and unicorn farts. Tractors are switching to battery power. So I don't entirely accept your argument.@@ricin82
State or private ..
I've noticed that PepsiCo are getting out of diesel power semi's diesel is cost so much and it's price's go higher everything is produced with diesel involved
❤
Do you only allow guests on that have mustaches? Lol
Vite Libertarian 💯 n00bs 🔥🔥🔥
The UAE and Russia have huge supplies of Oil . The oil flows freely from the ground. The countries in the western hemisphere USA, EU, Canada claim to be producing oil enough oil for personnel consumption. I do not believe that is true. The USA and Canada are reduced to squeezing shale rocks and sand just to claim production levels. Shale oil and Oil sands are not Profitable. $80 is claimed to be the break even point. Funny how the price of oil doesn't seem to make it above that level. The shift towards electric vehicles seems to be proof that our governments realize that we might have to have an alternate fuel. The UAE and Russia are aware of this disparity. The fight for oil seems to be intensifying.
Russian oil is not easy to extract and doesn’t often just flow from the ground. They often need lift. Pumping. They have to deal with sub arctic conditions and permafrost. Vast distances are also a factor. Not easy or cheap. Saudi and Persian Gulf is far easier and cheaper.
CNRL spends $16 a barrel to produce a barrel of oil. Even Fort Hills is around $30 a barrel and that is because its a new plant that they are still paying off.
Yeah, whoever quits Oil first wins bigly.
Sweet crude no.tar, no fummes
Oil companies are welling to go high and low for oil what ever it takes
Of course, they are because the demand is there and is not going away for a very, very long time.
Drill baby drill. Norhing helps poor working families more every day than cheap gasoline. Everything else keeps rising. We need cheap gasoline for cars. O e break could be given if gasoline was much cheaper.
tell me more about WSC:
"Nudge" Psychopathology, a new term for Terrorism in political persuasion?
What will be will be done by the most ignorant self indulging volunteers who get away with extreme self centered greed because of the politics of envy, apparently it's the principal qualifying characteristics of (un)leadership and nuke weapons scale brinkmanship.
The discussion is logistically interesting, but the strategy is common as muck MADness.
Leave in ground waist of money .....eh
iknow EVERYTHING about Oil.
Sadly,
a lot of simply false statements, which lead to false conclusions.
F.e. LNG is cooled down, not pressurized (max. allowed transport pressure 3.6 psi or 0.25 bar).
Mr. Kiefer is a doctor by profession, so it is ok when he has no freakin idea what he is talking about in regard to energy. But the interview guest should have at least some knowledge.
I am pretty disappointed about the inacceptable low level of this interview.
Waste of time, sorry.
Yeah, as soon as folks start any of the EROEI nonsense -- you can figure out they be dummies.
Global Clim Cha ,native lndian ..
Um and uhhh um!!
So this is the face of doomberg?
How do you come to that?
@@jaygunter3828 you know doombergs voice is electronically altered, I just immediately thought that the guest had the same speech pattern and intonation as doomberg. Just my speculation though.
Uh. Um
i come from sarnia,...it is tar sands,...its worth a fortune,...stop burning it
SOURCE for informatiuon SEE: oil muesuem oil springs petrolia
where my grandfather walked cows to make money to go and play hockey and stones.
Rachel maddow with a moustache is boring.
Too much babble. Get to the point. Stop talking around all the time.
if you focused Your attention to Our DOMESTIC ECO)NOMY i would believe you ,...but i dont.
all the nonesense you talk about is,....well nonsense
Lol this guy, ...the real big challenge is why Your Dollar is worth 56 cents
74 cents.
swe set the Great Lakers on Fire a Long time ago,...KNOW Your history.
Your lip beards are a beautiful, you are homosexualist?
pretty much i call BS,...
mdsg for more info
He mentions 'thats why most refineries crack with hydrogen rather than GTL - gas to liquid'
Perhaps Oil has been mined 150 longer?
Perhaps GTL is a relatively new technology?
Perhaps the tail end of cheap oil & the emergence of abundant gas will make GTL more & more prevalent.
Cavitation bubbles make Steam 🚂 a drum that spin with pits in it then a couple mill gap and case also other ways plasmoids cold fusion charge cluster ball lightning the thunderstorm generator there is stuff on RUclips Bob greener has everything and the thunder genarator but engine can run on water with Nano bubbles cavitation I just see water and lithium or other metals were doing mw over unity closed loop with cavatation patents ran out just a blade water metal but temp in return needs to be right but looks simple vortex energy water is the one plus the exhaust gas form fuel ⛽ is pure air emm
Screw doe Trude.doe