unconventional oil

Although considerable discussion surrounds unconventional oil's ability to mitigate the effects of peaking conventional oil production, very few models of unconventional oil production exist. The aim of this article was to project unconventional oil production to determine how significant its production may be. Two models were developed to predict the unconventional oil production, one model for in situ production and the other for mining the resources. Unconventional oil production is anticipated to reach between 18 and 32 Gb/y (49–88 Mb/d) in 2076–2084, before declining. If conventional oil production is at peak production then projected unconventional oil production cannot mitigate peaking of conventional oil alone.

Published in: Energy Policy, Volume 38, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 265-276
Available from: ScienceDirect

A review is presented of the use of algae principally to produce biodiesel fuel, as a replacement for conventional fuel derived from petroleum. The imperative for such a strategy is that cheap supplies of crude oil will begin to wane within a decade and land-based crops cannot provide more than a small amount of the fuel the world currently uses, even if food production were allowed to be severely compromised. For comparison, if one tonne of biodiesel might be produced say, from rape-seed per hectare, that same area of land might ideally yield 100 tonnes of biodiesel grown from algae. Placed into perspective, the entire world annual petroleum demand which is now provided for by 31 billion barrels of crude oil might instead be met from algae grown on an area equivalent to 4% of that of the United States. As an additional benefit, in contrast to growing crops it is not necessary to use arable land, since pond-systems might be placed anywhere, even in deserts, and since algae grow well on saline water or wastewaters, no additional burden is imposed on fresh-water - a significant advantage, as water shortages threaten. Algae offer the further promise that they might provide future food supplies, beyond what can be offered by land-based agriculture to a rising global population.

Published in: Science Progress, Volume 92, Number 1, May 2009, Pages 39-90
Available from: IngentaConnect

A review is given of the nature and origins of crude oil (petroleum) along with factors relating to its production and demand for it. The modern globalised world economy and its population has grown on the assumption of limitless supplies of cheap crude oil. Almost all agriculture now is completely dependent on available oil and natural gas to run machinery and to make chemical fertilizers. Our complacent regard for oil is however invalid and a gap between the relentlessly rising demand for oil and its supply is expected to appear at some time in the period 2010 - 2015. The global peak in oil production "peak oil" predicted by M. King Hubbert in 1956, will exacerbate the situation, and the world must seek to run and organise itself in an imminent reality where supplies of conventional crude oil are both limited and increasingly expensive. Providing the equivalent of 30 billion barrels of oil a year as is currently used across the globe, by unconventional kinds of oil, e.g. from oil shale and tar sands is not realistic. Since most of the oil produced in the world is refined into liquid fuels to run transportation, human survival will depend on devising localised economies and communities that necessarily rely far less on personalised transport (cars).

Published in: Science Progress, Volume 91, Number 4, December 2008 , Pages 317-375
Available from: IngentaConnect

A critical exposé of the open-pit mines that have made Canada one of the worst environmental offenders on earth.

While the world goes green, Canada has elected to go black into the tar. The frenzied development ($100 billion and counting) of the tar sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the last six years has made Canada the world’s fifth greatest global exporter of oil and turned the country into “an emerging energy superpower.”

Combining extensive scientific research and compelling writing,

Andrew Nikiforuk takes the reader to Fort McMurray, home to some of the world’s largest open-pit mines, and explores this twenty-first-century pioneer town from the exorbitant cost of housing to its more serious social ills. He uncovers a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, aimless bush workers, American evangelicals, and the largest population of homeless people in northern Canada. He also explains that this micro-economy supplies gasoline for 50 percent of Canadian vehicles and 16 percent of U.S. demand. Readers will learn that tar sands:

• burn more carbon than conventional oil,
• destroy forests and displace woodland caribou,
• poison the water supply and communities downstream,
• drain the Athabasca, the river that feeds Canada’s largest watershed, and
• contribute to climate change.

The book does provide hope, however, and ends with an exploration of possible solutions to the problem.

Available from: Amazon Online