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Secret to cheap petrol is coal
Jason Dowling, The Age
A $5 BILLION proposal to turn some of Victoria’s abundant brown coal into diesel moved a step closer after the State Government revealed it was about to grant a mining licence to the company behind the project.
Energy Minister Theo Theophanous told The Sunday Age that the project aimed to produce about 60,000 barrels a day of high-quality diesel fuel at a much lower cost than present world prices. He said an announcement on a mining licence for Monash Energy was likely to be made before the November 25 state election.
The first stage, which will cost between $300 million and $400 million, would be a demonstration plant that could be up and running in six years. The entire project should be operational in 10 years. The project has the backing of Shell and the big mining company Anglo American.
A key aspect of the project, promoted as “clean energy”, would be the minimising of greenhouse gas emissions by separating the carbon dioxide from the brown coal and storing it underground – a project known as geosequestration.
About $1.5 billion of the $5 billion project would be spent on the geosequestration process, Mr Theophanous said. ..
(10 Sept 2006)
The coal to liquids lifecycle is generally always going to be at least as greenhouse gas instensive as crude oil, as tailpipe emissions are not captured. See also the thought-provoking article Important! Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Save Us over at TreeHugger.
-AF
BP was warned on intimidation
Richard Mauer, Anchorage Daily News
PIPELINE CORROSION: Congress informed of harassment that occurred while the company was on probation.
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WASHINGTON — Three times between early 2003 and late 2004, BP officials were warned that a “chilling atmosphere” made workers engaged in critical pipeline-corrosion work in the North Slope oil fields afraid to report environmental and safety concerns.
One of those reports said the fear was justified: At least one worker was summoned for firing because his bosses thought he was responsible for a formal complaint that his inspection crew had been cut by 25 percent with no matching reduction in workload. The man denied any role in the complaint and kept his job, the report said.
The harassment of corrosion workers, reported in testimony before Congress on Thursday and in confidential BP documents subsequently released by the House Energy & Commerce Committee, occurred while BP was on felony probation from a federal court in Alaska and under strict rules to prevent reprisals against workers with environmental concerns.
The company finally removed its corrosion manager, Richard Woollam, in January 2005 and shipped him to Houston, where he no longer supervised anyone. A BP spokesman said the company put him on paid leave last week, just as he was preparing to plead the Fifth and refuse to testify before Congress.
(10 Sept 2006)
Hat tip to Kate Shepphard, who has a summary and commentary: The fall of King Richard at Gristmill. -BA
Oil supplies ‘could last 140 years’
Aljazeera.net
A Saudi oil executive has challenged the idea that supplies are running out, saying that just 18 per cent of the global supply of crude has been tapped.
Abdallah Jumah, president and CEO of the state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Company, better known as Aramco, said the world has potentially 4.5 trillion barrels in reserves – enough to last 140 years at current levels of consumption.
“The world has only consumed about 18 per cent of its conventional potential,” Jumah said, rejecting fears that supplies will run out in a few decades.
Experts have estimated that the Earth’s recoverable oil resource is between three trillion and more than four trillion barrels. If consumption rises about two per cent a year from today’s levels of about 85 million barrels a day, the low end of that range would only be enough to last until 2070. ..
(13 Sept 2006)
Contributor comments: This and continued optimistic opinions about oil reserves is to be expected since the Gulf of Mexico’s “Jack” discovery. Where did Mr. Jumah come up with “… only consumed 18 percent of conventional potential…”? This is an unknowable number until global peak-oil is passed and seen in rear-view. It would be nice to hear “experts” in high places provide a balanced point of view based on facts instead of speculation. Reserves are strictly proprietary speculation, are they not?
Canadian crude oil production drops
James Stevenson, Halifax Chronicle Herald
Canada’s oil production dropped in 2005 for the first in six years as conventional supplies wane, but that should change as oilsands operations continue their rapid ramp-up.
According to a Statistics Canada report released Monday, companies pumped out 858 million barrels of crude last year, down 2.3 per cent from the year before. One of the key reasons for this drop was a major fire at Suncor Energy, which cut production at Canada’s second largest oilsands operation in half for three-quarters of the year. ..
Capital expenditures by the industry also rose by 16 per cent to nearly $37 billion as companies undertook numerous expansion projects, particularly in the oilsands. ..
(12 Sept 2006)
This is a summary of a Statistics Canada report released 11 Sept 2006 report on oil production and consumption through 2005. The original report is available here.
US DOE trumpets CO2 injection
Original title – Technology could recover ‘stranded’ oil
Ted Griggs, The Advocate
The U.S. Department of Energy calls it a “Game Changer,” a technological breakthrough capable of doubling the amount of oil a field can produce by conventional methods.
Current production methods leave two-thirds of a reservoir’s oil below ground, or stranded, according to DOE. In Louisiana alone, 12.1 billion barrels of oil are stranded onshore; nationwide, 374 billion barrels of oil are considered stranded.
A process developed by Dandina N. Rao, an LSU petroleum engineering professor, would allow energy companies to recover 65 percent to 90 percent of the stranded oil. At today’s prices, that would be at least $550 billion worth of oil, just in Louisiana.
“We have done some looking at that, and in the right type of setting, it is certainly a viable type of technology,” said Michael Godec, vice president of Advanced Resources International and one of the contributors to the DOE Game Changer study. “The real question is, how many fields have the right type of geology to do that?”
In Rao’s process, carbon dioxide is pumped into the top of the reservoir forcing the oil down into horizontal collectors, or wells, where it is drawn out. “When CO2 builds at the top, liquids being heavier have to drain down,” Rao said. “They come running down like rain, and we collect the drain of oil and produce it from these horizontal wells.”
Rao’s technique, known as gas-assisted gravity drainage, will get a field test in October or November in an abandoned oil field owned by Alabama-based Nelson Oil & Gas. The company licensed Rao’s technique and contributed nearly $500,000 to his research.
(8 Sep 2006)
“The major production expense is the CO2, Rao said.” Producing CO2 so as to get more oil – wonderful.
I couldn’t quickly discover if this is the same or just a very similar project. -LJ
