SPS doubts

--- In ssi_list@... "Arthur P. Smith"
> >Just curious, why would you call the Tar Sands dubious? They have
> >been in production for decades; Alberta's Tar Sands produce 780000
> >bbl/day of crude oil. More than half of the world's oil supply is
> >in the Alberta Tar Sands, 1.3 trillion bbl.
> >
> Well, I'm no expert, but I've been told (A) they require natural
gas to
> convert to oil, which is itself in limited supply; without that the
> processing is energy inefficient, and (B) while the reserves are
> enormous in principle, practical extraction seems likely to be less
than
> 10%, even with sufficient natural gas. That's still a lot of
course. The
> only reason they're actually in production now is government
subsidy -
> which is also behind ethanol and wind installations so far of
cousre,
> but could they really be a stand-alone energy resource?

It's not that they need natural gas, but you need to collect the sand
and heat them, first to seperate the bitumin from the sand, and then
to turn it into synthetic crude oil (heating to over 500 C). This is
a net energy production process, and you could use the output of the
tar sand processing to provide energy for more production as well as
usable synthetic crude.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/Chapter10.pdf has a summary of the
production process for tar sands as well as other type of alternative
oil sources (oil shale, etc.)

But the problem is economics -- to make this work as a business you
probably need oil prices in the $40-50 dollar per barrel, whereas
prices in the last decade have averaged in the $20-25/ barrel range,
with some higher and lower spikes. (See
http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm for historical oil prices.)

http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/Chapter10.pdf