"Making Gold Into Lead" - One Barrel Of Tar Sands Oil Takes Enough Gas To Heat House For Two Days

[hatrack]

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Describing “the rush into the oil sands” a Wall Street Journal analyst writes: “For years, environmentalists have argued that higher gasoline prices would be good for the Earth because paying more at the pump would promote conservation. Instead, higher energy prices have unleashed a bevy of heavy oil projects that will increase emissions of carbon dioxide.” Rather than deter exploration, rising prices have led to increasingly unconventional and hazardous oil exploration exemplified by the Alberta tar sands.

The tremendous energy required to bring the sand to the surface for separation is largely provided by natural gas. (Oil sands consume about 500 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, an amount likely to increase to 1.25 billion cubic feet daily by 2016. The process is so inefficient that the natural gas required to produce one barrel of tar sands oil could heat a family home for two to four days. This process uses a relatively clean fuel to assist in the production of a dirtier one, prompting oil analyst Matt Simmons to describes the process as “making gold into lead.” With over a hundred billion dollars projected in oil sands investments between 2006 and 2016, the industry is looking for a long-term, cost-effective energy source. High natural gas costs have the tar sands companies thinking big and looking north.

Not everyone is happy about this increasingly sticky situation. “Don’t ruin our land to fuel the US gas tank,” demanded Grand Chief of the Deh Cho in response to the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, which, if built, would ship natural gas almost exclusively for use in northern Alberta oil extraction.

The natural gas pipeline seems almost benign compared to some of the ideas being floated by some oil companies who are described in the National Post as “warming to the idea of nuclear power as a source for their massive energy needs.” This is not the first time nuclear power has been proposed to liberate crude oil from the tar sands. In 1959 California's Richfield Oil drew a plan approved by the US Atomic Energy Commission to separate bitumen from sand by detonating a nine-kiloton atomic bomb. It was argued that the heat and energy created by an underground explosion would free the oil from the sand, but after the success of initial tests in Nevada, the idea was shelved due to concern among Canadian officials over the use of the A-bomb.

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http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1472

[Hydra]

1. Pff

the oil barons make their money twice- natural gas to extract, and oil to sell afterward.

Is it solar/wind/tidal yet?