Peak Oil, the DOE and interesting times ahead

There is a certain sector of public opinion, including the President, that apparently feels that for the sake of taking appropriate precautions, even if the current scientific thinking on climate change is wrong, we should act as though it is right. The problem that there is, however, in the way that the argument has been accepted, is that it has led to demands for dramatic change in the way that the Federal Government is looking at future energy supplies. I was talking with a colleague today who commented on how much the conventional research funding for fossil energy fuel production is being cut. And the problem with that is that you can’t have a baby in a month by making nine women pregnant.

What do I mean by that? Well the production of energy at the level of scale that is needed for the United States (let alone the world) is difficult for many people to grasp. And making a change that will have a significant impact on that supply, in a positive sense, requires an effort that is correspondingly large. Changes do not happen overnight. As the Hirsch Report noted, it will take up to 20 years to find and install a replacement for the falling world production of oil. Yet the technologies that were advocated in that document, written in 2005, were not that revolutionary.

Besides further oil exploration, there are commercial options for increasing world oil supply and for the production of substitute liquid fuels:
1) Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) can marginally increase production from existing reservoirs; one of the largest of the IOR opportunities is Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which can help moderate oil production declines from reservoirs that are past their peak production:
2) Heavy oil / oil sands represents a large resource of lower grade oils, now primarily produced in Canada and Venezuela; those resources are capable of significant production increases;.
3) Coal liquefaction is a well established technique for producing clean substitute fuels from the world’s abundant coal reserves; and finally,
4) Clean substitute fuels can be produced from remotely located natural gas, but exploitation must compete with the world’s growing demand for liquefied natural gas.
However, world-scale contributions from these options will require 10-20 years of accelerated effort.

And they certainly aren’t being given a crash priority for funding from the Department of Energy. The Department, sadly, still seems to feel, complacently, that there is no critical need to be concerned about fossil fuel supplies, and that it is only the need for precautions to guard against producing too much greenhouse gas that drives the path forward with any urgency. There is nothing about taking enough precautions to protect against fuel shortages in the future.


Well, as I noted the other day, Asian and Third World use of coal is rising very rapidly, so that from that point of view I suspect that the Department is riding a crippled nag that is not going to help keep American industry competitive. Robert Rapier posted, the other week, on the costs of producing a million Btu from various sources. These were his numbers:

Powder River Basin Coal - $0.56
Northern Appalachia Coal - $2.08
Natural gas - $5.67
Ethanol subsidy - $5.92
Petroleum - $13.56
Propane - $13.92
#2 Heating Oil - $15.33
Jet fuel - $16.01
Diesel - $16.21
Gasoline - $18.16
Wood pellets - $18.57
Ethanol - $24.74
Electricity - $34.03

The electricity price is the EIA average retail price to customers. He provides both the sources for the quotes, and the energy conversion rates between fuels. (Powder River Coal from Wyoming runs at 8,800 Btu/lb or thinking of it another way a ton of coal produces 17.6 million Btu). You will note how cheap the coal is.

Is it any wonder that the Chinese are trying to negotiate a 20-year supply of coal from Australia to the tune of around $60 billion. The coal will come from the Galilee Basin in Queensland and will run at 30 million tonnes of coal a year for 20 years.

The China First project will be located in the Galilee Basin region near Alpha, west of the town of Emerald, and will include four underground mines, two surface mines, plus associated handling and processing facilities.

It will be linked to a coal terminal on the Queensland coast at Abbot Point by a new 490 kilometre railway line. The company says the project, which is awaiting final approval by the Queensland government, will create 6,000 jobs during construction and 1,500 when operational.

Some of the confusion in the current press is that while there is a letter of intent and a framework agreement, there is not yet a defined price for the coal.

Again, however, to put that in context, China uses coal both for industrial use (steel making) and for electricity generation with about half going to each at the moment. The EIA anticipates that in 2015 it will use 37 quads for electricity production, 30 quads for industry and 3 for other uses, for a grand total of 70 quads. A quad is a thousand trillion, or a million billion Btu’s. Dividing by the 17.6 million Btu’s per ton, means that by 2015 China will be using roughly 4 billion tons of coal a year. (The USA for reference produced 1.46 billion tons in 2008). So the Chinese are going to have a supply (though not that much of their needs) of relatively inexpensive coal. And there is a lot more coal in the Galilee Basin (more than 4.5 billion tons).

Here in the United States one of the current thoughts is to keep investing in ethanol production, which is impacting corn use – 5.56 billion bushels go to food, seed and industrial use, 11.12 billion goes to Ethanol; 2 billion bushels to exports; and there are 1.7 billion in year-end stocks.

The numbers that are being used are measured (coal or corn) in billions. The top producer of corn in the United States last year produced 314 bushels of corn from an acre (the national average last year was 162 bushels/acre so to produce that much ethanol requires a lot of acres. And it has taken a significant amount of time to plan, fund and install the refineries – and in poor economic times some of those have gone bankrupt.

But we are not looking for innovative fossil fuel production, this complacency flies in the face of an increasing number of voices, Richard Branson being one of the latest, who have discovered that we don’t have 20-years. His figure for Peak Oil is five years. That may be optimistic, and may be within the continued term of an Obama Administration. So how are they preparing?

Realistically they aren’t. What they are funding cannot be brought to the level of production that can have any impact on supply within the five or ten year period. And when the crisis comes you can’t find the answer in the short term by just throwing money at it, and getting the fast result (the baby model).

As they say, life is going to get interesting. (Wait a minute, wasn’t that part of some curse or other?)

Oil Shale, a future source of oil?

One of the large numbers that is often quoted in response to the concerns that some of us express over future energy supplies relates to the amount of oil that is present in oil shale. However, there seems to be a general consensus among many that write about world energy, that the 2 trillion barrels of oil potentially available out of the 4 trillion barrels locked in the United States oil shales are not, at the present time, a realistic source of supply. So for the next couple or more weeks these weekly tech talks will be discussing oil shale. The Federal Government is reviewing the leasing process for these lands, and so it might be timely.

After an eleven year hiatus, Colorado School of Mines reactivated their annual Oil Shale Symposia in 2006, and has been hosting them since then, with the last one being held last October. And the resource is not quite the nonentity that it may at first appear.

Japan started oil production at Fushun in 1929, and developed, in less than ten years, the world's largest oil shale industry. Shale oil was a principal source of fuels for Japan during World War II. Fushun production continued to expand under Communist China and may be 40,000 bpd presently.

That quote was from a paper in 1964, more recently the USGS have noted an annual production of around 415,000 barrels. it is therefore justifiable to take a little closer look at this whole issue and try to explain some of the technical state of affairs, point out a little of the disingenuousness of some of the statements that have been made, but largely leave the political discussion to others. I will largely, at least initially, deal with deposits in the USA, though there has been a significant industry in Estonia since 1916, though the deposits are anticipated to be exhausted within the next 30 years.


Unfortunately the last time that a serious look was taken at the US resource was back in the 1970's and 1980's, when at one time, under the Project Independence Blueprint, a shale oil production target of 1 million barrels of oil per day was projected, in line with President Ford's State-of-the-Union Message of 1975. That program, in turn, was based on the considerable amount of research that had been carried out, both in the US, and abroad, and on an initial evaluation of practical means to meet the target. But before one looks at that target, and its feasibility, perhaps it is better to look a little more closely at the information which led up to the prediction.

To begin with, while the basic definition of an oil shale suggests the fine-grained rock that is often called shale, and implies it is impregnated with oil, that might be easily recovered, Unfortunately, in most cases the rock is not a shale, and the organic material that it contains is not yet an oil that will not run out, or separate out with normal treatment. It has been described as a precursor to oil, in that, it was initially formed in the same way, but has not undergone the natural high-temperature and pressure regimes of deep burial in the earth that are needed to turn it into oil. (However, if additional kerogen were to be added to the shale it would through time more likely end up as a coal). The material is known as a kerogen, and to date the most successful methods of removing it from the rock has been to heat the rock until the contents volatize, and then to condense the hydrocarbons back out (in the same fashion that one cracks the oil in a refinery - though there are some significant differences that I will get to later). However, since the initial natural process was not carried as far as with oil, then the amount of energy that is required is generally greater. The greatest deposits of interest are those found in relatively thick deposits around the point where Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho come together.

From Donnell, 1st Oil Shale Symposium, 1964.Location of the major oil shale deposits. A section through the lettered points in the above figure gives:

Note that the scale for the vertical section is in feet.

The darker band shown is known as the Mahogany zone in which the Mahogany bed some 100 - 200 ft thick, is considered to be the richest layer, and is a marker for the deposit.

In oil shale from the Mahogany zone of the Green River Formation in Colorado, the ratio of oil yield to organic matter (weight percent) is 0.659; the ratio of oil yield to organic carbon (weight percent) is 0.818; the ratio of organic matter (weight percent) to oil yield (gallons per ton) is 0.580, and the ratio of organic carbon (weight percent) to oil yield (gallons per ton) is 0.467.

Shale oil has been used as a fuel source in a number of countries around the world, over the past 150 years, but only become of economic significance in the 1920's, as noted above. There have been over two thousand patents issued describing different ways to separate what, for convenience, I will call oil, from the shale (similarly called). Only a few have, however, been demonstrated, and later in this series of posts I will explain some of the peculiar problems that arise in retorting oil shale. But, as an illustration of the type of process that could be used, I will describe the Gas Combustion Process, as developed by the US Bureau of Mines for one of its original experiments. I thought it would be useful to describe this in a little detail, since it points out some of the potential benefits that can come from retorting the material.

Early Oil Shale Processing Retort (DOE )

The retort can be simply thought of as a vertical pipe with the raw shale fed into the top. As it moves down through the retort it passes through four zones. At the top of the retort the shale is cold, and the gasses rising from the lower parts of the process, mix with this shale. This has two effects, it pre-heats the shale as it drops into the next zone, while at the same time the oil is condensed into a mist, and the product gasses are cooled. (They are both then collected as they leave the retort). As the shale continues to move down the retort it reaches, about half-way down, a series of ports that inject air mixed with a portion of the produced gas that has been collected (call this the dilution gas). These two combine to cause ignition and to raise the temperature of the shale (to between 700 and 950 degrees F) so that the hydrocarbon contents vaporize and create the oil and gas combination that rises up out of the retort. The shale residue, continues down the retort, where it is now used to pre-heat a second supply of the collected gas (known as the recycled gas) that is moving up into the retorting zone. This cools the shale as it heats the gas, and the shale residue can then be collected and moved away. By using this form of heat transfer during the process a relatively high thermal efficiency can be achieved, and the retort can produce about 90% of the original oil in the shale, as well as a secondary volume of gas, beyond that needed to energize the retort. The retort has been shown able to handle shale particles ranging in size from 0.25-inch to 3-inch. By design it is possible to make sure that the oil mist that is the major product does not condense onto the shale particles that are being fed into the retort. You may note that this separation process does not require any additional external fuel, nor the addition of water to the process.

Using a slightly different method Union Oil Company ran a demonstration plant that ran at rates up to 1200 tons/day, using oil shale from the Piceance Basin. The crude produced was "a waxy, intermediate gravity, high nitrogen and intermediate sulfur crude" where the wax was removed and separately cracked, and the sulfur and nitrogen levels lowered before it could be considered a "commercial shale oil" with properties similar to that of a high quality Utah crude. A feed of crude shale oil at 26,900 b/d would yield 25,000 bd of commercial shale oil, and 500 t of green coke. The oil could then be cracked into 380 bd of lpg; 13,635 bd of gasoline; 1,300 bd of stove oil; 6,700 bd of diesel and 590 bd of fuel oil.

As I said at the beginning of the post, there is an awful lot of oil shale in the United States, the beds can reach up to 2,000 ft thick, and the oil content can reach 90 gallons/ton. Unfortunately these do not occur at the same time. Rather the highest grade is found in relatively narrow layers in the Uinta Basin, although the oil-shale sequence in the area can be up to 1,200 ft. And unfortunately not all the oil in the shale is made up of the same material, or has the same sort of properties. This can lead both to difficulties in mining and in retorting.

I will discuss those, and the issue of in-situ retorting, and some of its problems in the next post. But, given what happened, it is perhaps appropriate to close this first post with a comment by Harold Carver of Union at the first symposium.

It should be quite obvious that if imports to the coastal states and from Canada suddenly increase disproportionately after a shale industry is started, the embryo shale industry would be placed in a severe competitive bind. Unlimited cheap foreign crude imports would make shale oil as well as a large percentage of domestic crude oil production non-competitive. What is needed is assurance that shale oil production will face a stable economic environment in which it can share in the spectrum of raw materials for our future energy needs.

Given what happened later that was quite visionary.

Reading the Climategate books

The ongoing turmoil from the release of the Climategate papers continues. With the Guardian catching up with the rest of the British media and having finally got around to reading the e-mails, it begins to look as though the chances of this being swept under the rug, at least in the UK is becoming less likely. In the United States the administrators that were looking into the case against Professor Mann at Penn State have rendered an initial opinion. The fact that they did not completely exonerate him, but instead referred his conduct to a faculty committee is not quite as good a result for him as he appears to pretend. The quality of the judges means that they will be more disinterested in him personally, and likely more certain to consider the evidence. But it really depends on the individuals, and a couple of strong opinions either way can have quite an impact on the final outcome.

Were they wise they could do considerably worse than to read some of the books and articles that have now come out to explain both the background and some of the issues that have been revealed by the release of information. I was fortunate to get a copy of A.W. Montford’s book on “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” (not easily accessible yet in the USA) as well as Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller’s "Climategate: The CRUtape Letters.” Prior to reading these two I had just finished Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster,” and after reading that I read the “Climategate Analysis,” by John Costella . Then I read Climategate, and finished with Hockey Stick.


Now you might think that I oversaturated on information, but in fact each takes a somewhat different focus to the information, and two of them are more directed at events before Climategate, than the e-mails and programs themselves. So, as it happens, I was lucky in getting the books and reading them in the order that I did, because it gave a much better picture of some of the issues that are not all that evident in the day-to-day exchanges and comments that one see on the blogs and in the press. And, if you have the chance, I would recommend that you read them in a slightly different order to the one that I did. (And slightly guilty confession, both Booker’s and Montford’s books kept me reading far later in the night than I intended, until they were done). But start with Chris Booker’s.

One of the irritating habits of those who espouse the arguments of the AGW leading us to imminent catastrophe is that they claim that the issues are complex, and that you really have to be a climate scientist to understand them. Well, on a matter of fact, if you read these books you don’t have to have that pre-existing knowledge. For in reporting the stories, and explaining their impact and relevance, the information is clear, concisely given and explained in context. (On the other hand, to be mischievous, the critical papers on which much of the AGW crowd has fixated– the Mann, Bradley and Hughes paper in Nature of April 1998, and that in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999, which introduced the “Hockey Stick” shape to the historic global climate community– have been described as “obscure” in the Wegman Report, among other places).

Booker goes into some detail on the origins of the IPCC, and those who have moved it to the prominent place that it now holds in so many discussions relating to the global future. He goes through the operations of the IPCC, and their successive reports to the nations on the “state of the climate.” And he has some uncomfortable conclusions about the path that the British Government is following in its commitment to reducing the generation of greenhouse gases.

It is important that this issue be raised, because this is not some academic exercise, where a couple of faculty have been caught doing naughty things behind the potting shed. It is difficult to over-emphasize the impact that this topic has had on national governments around the world. And Europe has been in the forefront of modifying plans for its future, based on the predictions that have been presented, largely unchallenged, on the impact of the greenhouse gases. (And as a side note it is only this week that Ofgem, has warned that the planned future supply of energy to the United Kingdom is going to come up short, and sooner rather than later.)

One of the key pieces of information that has been used to justify the “precautionary principle” argument for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the MBH papers and their generation of the infamous “hockey stick” where global temperatures were shown to have declined since the year 1,000 AD until around 1900, when they suddenly started to rise at an ever increasing pace. This shape is not dissimilar to that of a hockey stick, with the shank being the slow decline over nine centuries, and the blade being the rising temperature. And it was assembled from a number of different proxies, one of which, a feature that the Penn State Review panel apparently missed, suddenly stopped working, but which was quickly hidden and glossed over in the formation of the telling image. A.W. Montford explains the criticality of this graph to the global warming argument.

As some of you may have noted from earlier posts, I am convinced that there was a Medieval Warming Period (WMP), and that it was warmer than the present. It was followed by a Little Ice Age, which we have been leaving, as the globe has warmed for the last 150 – 200 years. But that is an embarrassment to the AGW argument, and thus the adulatory reception (obscure language non-besides) for the MBH papers, since they did away with the MWP and the need to explain why this warming was remarkable. As I said Montford’s book was the second to keep me awake into the wee hours (and this is not as though I hadn’t earlier spent time at both Climate Audit and RealClimate web sites reading a lot of the background information that is covered here). Chronologizing the events that led to the widespread acceptance of the curve (few of whose acolytes likely understand how it was derived) and explaining its problems while interweaving the story of how Steve McIntyre fought to get the data to show that it was in error, it is, as others have said, a fascinating detective story.

The Hockey Stick Illusion explains the underlying science and what principal components are, and a bit about their use and misuse as it relates to the MBH plots. These are the useful things to know, and not difficult to follow, and because the world has yet to recognize how critical these issues are in the proper understanding of the use and mis-use of climate proxies, it really helps to have it explained. (Ed note – I know a bit about this, and would have explained it slightly differently, but this way may be the best for the layman). The Climategate e-mails were released almost as this book went to press, and so there is only one chapter on their impact, at the end, that points out how much of the conjecture in the earlier chapters was validated, once the e-mails were available.

The CRUtape letters is more of a detailed analysis of those e-mails. It puts them into contextual relevance, with short “cheat sheets” at the beginning of the Chapters, so that you are prepared to understand the ramifications of the selected quotations from the individual e-mails, and thus gives a greater grasp of their meaning. There is a considerable amount of background information given in the book, that gives a contextual understanding of why some of the e-mails have the importance that they have. This is certainly true about the way that the rules were manipulated to allow unpublished papers to be cited in the IPCC reports, which they were not supposed to be. It is a fascinating story of collusion and the ways that the small cabal that controls the climate science debate work to exclude contrary opinions. (And then, of course, they claim that they are the victims of unprecedented PR campaigns against them, when their position has dominated the debate for years).

The alternate approach to that used in the CRUtape letters is to rely on the e-mails themselves to tell the story. That is much more the way in which John Costella tells the story. He also includes more on the Tiljander story ( a pet peeve of mine) without actually using her name, but gives the most complete recounting of that little episode. (Oh, and that summary is free).

Both ways are informative, and there is a lot to be gained by reading both. The machinations behind the scene are somewhat disappointing to read, you realize that there are qualified folk out there who, as a result of this bunch of . . (well the ICO in the UK did say that there have been crimes committed) have had their careers blighted. And sadly the way that the processes, which rely on trust, were blatantly misused with the compliance of journal editors as well as paper authors is a damning record of a shameful period in the history of this young science.

If there is one e-mail that puts this in context, it is this one from Ben Santer

There has been some additional fallout from the publication of our paper in the International Journal of Climatology. After reading Steven McIntyre’s discussion of our paper on climateaudit.com (and reading about my failure to provide McIntyre with the data he requested), an official at DOE headquarters has written to Cherry Murray at LLNL, claiming that my behavior is bringing LLNL’s good name into disrepute. Cherry is the Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at LLNL, and reports to LLNL’s Director (George Miller).

Pity that there weren’t more folk with that sort of a concern.

The full stories are still a long way from being told, but reading these books will give you the understanding to follow, as the issues continue to play out. The Guardian stories, for example, have not yet got around to grasping the implications of the way in which the data, the press, the public and the science, were manipulated and the impact that this will have on the overall message. Unfortunately the e-mails also show the complicity of several of the main media reporters in selling the story that the cabal were promoting. And while the British press are now in active pursuit of the story, that hasn’t happened in the United States – yet!

Gasoline, crude, supplies and miles travelled

This winter has been a little harder, in the sense of snow on the road, than some I have experienced in the past. Which may explain, to a degree, the drop in gasoline demand that the EIA is reporting has happened over the past month.

Gasoline Demand (EIA )

If you look at this time last year the current curve seems to be tracking what happened back then, and the steady upward trend in demand that has occurred in the last two years as we move forward from this date will, I suspect, likely be repeated.

What is that going to do to gasoline prices, and with them the price of crude? Well prices have dropped back a little, bear in mind that it was this time last year that they bottomed out, and then there was a run-up until about August, which was the end of the summer driving season.


Average gasoline prices (EIA)

We have had the same sort of pattern with crude prices (and the change since last February is why I consider recent drops as relative inconsequential). Domestic crude, after a steady rise since last August, has taken a little drop, and with imports also falling, the inputs into domestic refineries are around 900 kbd off last year’s numbers.

Refinery inputs of crude (EIA)

There is still enough oil available through the market to cover an expected increase in demand over the short term, but I have a growing concern for supply on the summer of 2011.

Looking at traffic volumes, after a little hiccup in October, the numbers for November were more of a gain. The average traffic increased by 1.4%. While for the entire year through November traffic had risen by 0.3%. And this time all regions were showing an increase in traffic, although there was still a decline in urban traffic off the interstate.

Monthly changes in miles driven for 2009 relative to 2008 (FHWA )

The hiccup does show up in the running 12-month total, which has flattened, at around the levels that we were at in 2004, when the curve was merrily climbing upwards.

Cumulative miles driven through November 2009 (FHWA )

Given that car sales rose 6% last month (with the exception of Toyota) with some manufacturers showing double digit rises in sales over last year there is more promise for the economy in these numbers.

Saudi Arabia is maintaining higher levels of supply both to Asia and to Europe. And while Russia is still playing nice, as the Ukrainian election is on Sunday, and it still has a candidate or two in the race, it too has promised to keep supplies up to Western Europe. With the higher crude prices bringing a bit of stability back, perhaps we can get through this winter without any histrionics in that part of the world.

The THAI process for bitumen and heavy oil

For a while, when I was a student, I had an attic bedroom that was heated by a small coal fire, with a relatively short chimney up to the roof. I learned, fairly early on, that in starting the fire you needed a fairly high velocity air flow across the coals, and underlying firewood strips. And to get this I would rest a shovel over the front of the fireplace, and try and seal off the sides. I kept a small bellows beside the fire to help when this wasn’t particularly successful. When you are starting a fire underground the provision of air is critical, but when you are trying to burn the residual coke that is left, after the heat has cracked the rest of the oil and caused it to flow away, keeping that air flowing at a high enough rate to sustain the high-temperature burn becomes somewhat critical to most efficient operation, particularly if the air has to get through a sand layer to reach the fire.

This is the post on THAI – Toe to Heel Air Injection for the recovery of heavy oils, which is part of the ongoing technical post series that I write on Sundays. It is a subject that has been described several times in the past at The Oil Drum. I first mentioned it back in 2006 when the first underground test was underway at White Sands. I used this illustration at the time.

It is an artist’s impression of a side view of the site, with the blue dotted horizontal line representing the recovery well and air being fed in from a higher well into the formation. The test at White Sands in Alberta has been followed by a test at Lloydminster in Saskatchewan which got underway in a more conventional heavy oil last October.

The Kerrobert project followed much on the procedures from the earlier test, and the currently planned full scale production at May River (Large pdf file)

Petrobank, which is partnered with Baytex Energy Trust on the 50/50 joint venture, recently sunk two vertical air-injection wells and two horizontal production wells into the extensive Mannville conventional oil reservoir near Kerrobert.

Compressed air was added last week after a temporary steaming of the ground to mobilize the oil around the injector site. With the addition of the air, spontaneous underground combustion has begun.

"I think we will see some oil as early as today," Bloomer said.

Don and Gail described the THAI process in 2007 and have given some history on its use, THAI having been patented by Petrobank who have a 12 minute video on the process and the first trial and preparation for full scale production. It is well worth watching.

Dave Murphy had an update on the EROI costs in March of last year.
While watching the video is the best way to understand the process, it can also be illustrated with a picture from the plan for May River and I will lift some parts of that document to describe what is planned for that site.

Illustration of the key parts of the process.

The horizontal wells are drilled (a suite of eighteen wells, each with a 2,000 ft horizontal section, spaced 410 ft apart) some 7 ft above the bottom of the formation (or the water table if that becomes an issue). Above these the air injection wells are drilled directionally and offset from the toe of the well. (By using directional drilling air injection can be better controlled than with the original vertical wells).

Layout of the air injection (upper) and production wells.

Once the wells are in position steam will be injected and circulated for a period of 3 months to bring the sand and bitumen up to around 100 deg C, then air will be injected to start combustion. The part of the bitumen that burns as the process develops is the residual asphaltene that is left after the lighter fractions are either evaporated, flow away at reduced viscocity or are cracked by the high temperature (> 400 deg C). The residual material, apparently about 10% of the OOIP, provides the fuel, driving some 90% of the fuel into the production well.

To sustain production after ignition and flame front stabilization has occurred, the wells will carry some 4.4 million cf/day into the formation, and about the same amount of a mix of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrocarbon gas will be released. As the video notes that gas will be used on site to generate electricity to run the air compressors, and to provide site power. Based on the earlier tests the site is anticipated to generate some 10,000 bd of cracked bitumen, and about twice that in water production. The flame front will move forward at between 5 and 10 inches a day. The oil is projected to be a significant upgrade of the original bitumen. The water has the potential for being sold to other operators in the area for use in SAGD production.

Comparison of bitumen with THAI produced oil.

The energy efficiency of the site is anticipated to be 85.7%. It should be noted that the document I have taken this information from also contains a conservation and reclamation plan. (But at 653 pages long for the whole document I have only noted key passages for the theme of the post).

In response to my SAGD post both Rockman and RockyMtnGuy commented about using underground combustion to help with getting the bitumen from the oil sand.

One of the things that they were concerned about, as was I, is the control of the flame front which becomes more difficult as the height of the production zone is around 70 ft. However at May River they plan on burning from the outside in, so this may control the extent to which the fire overburns. In addition, as I noted at the beginning of the post, it is rather difficult sometimes to sustain the right temperatures without a high flow of air, and that may provide a further control.

The conditions are somewhat different at Kerrobert where the oil is less viscous and the formation is around 100 ft thick. This has caused some problems since the well flows exceeded what had been anticipated:

the original plan was to use temporary hydraulic pumps on each well to create a drawdown pressure across the horizontal well and, as combustion gas production increased, pumping would cease and wells would flow by produced gas lift.

Initial fluid production volumes were tested at 180 to 300 barrels per day per well, with oil cuts ranging from zero to 40%. However, during the transition phase to gas lift it was learned that liquid inflow to the production wells exceeded the pump's capacity, which limited the ability to draw down the wells and caused frequent pump failures. On Dec. 21, the pump in KP1 was re-configured to improve its pumping capacity. Now KP2 is being re-configured and is expected to be producing at similar rates to KP1 within the next few days.

Since the re-configuration, fluid production rates from KP1 have ranged between 250 and 420 bbls per day with oil cuts averaging 36% and reaching as high as 65%. Also, the air injection rate was increased to 50,000 cubic metres per day and the produced gas rate has increased to 8,000 cubic metres per day.

Looks as though things are going quite well.

Oh, and the disadvantage of having a small coal fire in a garret flat is that during the night it went out, and in the morning I would occasionally wake up with snow in the grate.

The IPCC mess - like a smoldering coal fire

The computer models used to project future temperatures also don't include this feature because it remains poorly understood.

The feature is upper atmosphere water vapor, and as an article in the Houston Chronicle from which the quote comes notes, recent work reported in Science shows:

” Water vapor in this narrow region really packs a wallop, and has a much bigger impact on climate than if you were to increase water vapor levels at a level higher up,” said the study's lead author, Susan Solomon, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.

During the 1980s and 1990s, levels of water vapor in the stratosphere rose quite dramatically, but in 2000 they suddenly dropped.

The effect of this change is reported to be a change of some 25% to 30% on global surface warming. Now the argument is apparently that had the water vapor level not dropped, then the increasing levels of carbon dioxide would have continued to raise global temperatures. What that argument fails to do is read the abstract, let alone the paper, – which says that:

More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change.

In other words the increase in water vapor before 2000 was causing more warming than would have been the case without it. But the quote at the top is the most pertinent – this is just one of the factors that appear to influence climate that are not in the models. Which leaves one wondering, yet again, why the models have been given such credence when they are obviously not predicting what is happening.


On the other side of the Atlantic the Times has caught the IPCC chief in a lie apparently, and sentiment seems to be growing over not only the pecuniary advantage he seems to have taken of his position but also the lack of scrutiny of sources of information for the last report.

Taking Dr. Pachauri’s lie first, it appears that he was told in November that the IPCC report on glaciers in the Himalayas – which reported on their likely disappearance by 2035, was wrong, and not, as he claimed, in the last few days. What is equally of concern is that there was an investigation of the melting of the glaciers in 2004, headed by Gwyn Rees, which was then published in Hydrological Processes. He has since, on several occasions, had to rebut Syed Hasnain, who was responsible for the glacier melting claim in the IPCC report, but who had signed off on the conclusions of the report, at the time it was written. Specifically:

In 2004, Rees had assumed the rapid-melt claims would not be repeated, but in May that year Hasnain gave an interview to New Scientist suggesting the UK-funded study had confirmed his claims of rapid glacier melt.

In it he said: “Global warming has already increased glacier melting by up to 30%. After 40 years, most glaciers will be wiped out and we will have severe water problems.”

A furious Rees made the magazine publish a retraction in its letters page, describing Hasnain’s comments as a “gross misrepresentation”.

In fact the report said that suggestions that the glaciers would melt soon would seem unfounded. Yet Syed Hasnain has helped Dr Pachauri’s company now get millions of dollars to study a problem that he knew did not exist, and now works for the company.

Sadly as the blinkers fall off the eyes of a press that has, for too long, assumed the climate change distorters could do no wrong, more evidence is coming to the fore that what the report was based on was drawn much more from involved sources, such as the WWF, rather than the peer-reviewed scientific articles that were the claim.

Donna Laframboise has found eight references in the IPCC text to Greenpeace literature being used, in some cases as the sole reference for the global impacts caused by greenhouse gases. She had earlier shown the influence of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the document.

For example, a WWF report is cited twice on this page as the only supporting proof of IPCC statements about coastal developments in Latin America. A WWF report is referenced twice by the IPCC's Working Group II in its concluding statements. There, the IPCC depends on the WWF to define what the global average per capita "ecological footprint" is compared to the ecological footprint of central and Eastern Europe.

The fact that some of the activities of the CRU are viewed as criminal is now being faced by the University of East Anglia. The spreading impact of this will continue to rebound, and well-meaning comments are non-helpful at best, whether by the Prince of Wales (who is the patron of the School of Environmental Science) or the President of the United States who, in his state-of-the-Union address said about the climate and energy:

We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities -- (applause) -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. . . . . . They're (Germany and India) making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.

which is non-controversial, and then

Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history -– (applause) -- an investment that could lead to the world's cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched*. And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy. You can see the results of last year's investments in clean energy -– in the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. (Applause.) And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. (Applause.)

I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year. (Applause.) And this year I'm eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate. (Applause.)

I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation. (Applause.)

Well perhaps if we relied a bit more on the scientific experts and less on Greenpeace, and let opposing points of view have better access to the journals, and perhaps some funding, rather than trying to suppress and obliterate them, we might be closer to the truth on these issues.

The main press in the UK is slowly swinging around to the position that there is something rotten in the climate science house, it is surprising how little dent the story has made yet in the American press. But that may change.

End note: I sat down to write a book review of “Climategate – the CRUtape letters” (which I recommend highly) but somehow the above captured my fingers. I’ll have the book review later, and one on “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, that I just got today (harder to get in the US since it is only published, to date, in the UK).

* Wow! We have a patent (U.S. Patent 5,037,431, 1990) on that. (but I bet it wasn't our technique he meant).

Conventional Coal Production is rising

Gregor MacDonald had a couple of interesting charts on coal demand that should get greater attention. The first was the relative pace at which coal demand is growing relative to oil.



While the second shows how much of the increased demand is coming from Asia, and Africa, rather than from the OECD. As he puts it, you could almost define the OECD as the oil users, and the non-OECD as the coal users.



Note that the great growth in demand has been since mid-2001.

The difference between the two (OECD and non) is likely to grow greater in the years ahead., since the EIA is projecting virtually stagnant demand in the OECD nations.



(Note that 1 Quad is about 44 million tons of coal, so that 100 quads would be about 4.4 billion tons)

At the moment Peabody, for example – who provide about 250 million tons of coal a year to the market, is seeing an 18% decline in demand y-o-y (Note that the above curves only go through mid-2008. ) but expect to see some recovery and increase in price in the second quarter of this year. The railroads who ship the coal, much of it from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to power stations around the country, have also seen a 12 – 21% drop in income, but their December figures are showing the signs of recovery (or a colder winter) with movement up 4% in a demand return that is expected to continue. The situation is such that coal stocks are no longer a popular item in the market. Although Powder River Basin coal is currently at $10.40 per ton, up from $8.40 just over a month ago, a rise not seen in other coal prices. Production numbers have yet to reflect this, though the final 2009 points in the graph below are just estimates).

Coal production figures for the United States (source EIA )

This on the day that the BBC announced that the British Recession was over. Not, of course that this helps those currently out of work, since the return to full recovery is still some time away. But it does provide some support for the idea that coal demand in Europe may begin to grow.

One argument against that is the relative availability of natural gas, and the lower environmental footprint that that brings with it. And it is going to be in the relatively longer-term assurance of availability that decisions may be made on whether or not to switch from one boiler to another (although many can handle both). But for countries in Asia coal may be the chosen alternative. And even in the United States natural gas and electricity costs seem to be rising in parallel, as Frank Clemente just pointed out.

Source Energy Facts February 18, 2010.

It is interesting to note how estimates for that increase in demand have changed. Back in 2005 Forbes was predicting that China’s demand would be 2.5 billion tons this year. By mid 2008, the Head of the Chinese Coal Industry Association was predicting demand at 3 billion tons.

Data show that China's coal production rose from 1.415 billion tons in 2002 to 2.536 billion tons in 2007, an average annual increase of 12.38 percent. At present, coal accounts for 76 percent of the country's total production of primary energy sources, and 69 percent of the whole society’s consumption.

Demand is continuing to increase, which is taken as an indication of the growth in the economy. It is antipated to grow by about 5% or more this year, and figures as high as 3.4 billion tons are being bruited. Unfortunately in the immediate short term since imports have to enter the country through harbors, prolonged cold can halt deliveries.

India is often not that readily recognized, but bear in mind the following statistics:

India ranks third in coal production
Coal is one of the primary sources of energy, accounting for about 67% of the total energy consumption in the country.
India has the fourth largest reserves of coal in the world (approx. 197 billion tonnes.).
Coal deposits in India occur mostly in thick seams and at shallow depths. Noncoking coal reserves aggregate 172.1 billion tonnes (85 per cent) while coking coal reserves are 29.8 billion tonnes (the remaining 15 per cent).

Yet even with those supplies not enough coal is being produced to meet the demands. With consumption at 604 million tons there is still a current shortfall estimate of some 70 million tons a year, that is met by imports. Imports also are not adequate and as a result there continue to be power shortages – in this case at 11 generating stations. However part of the problem may be that there is a difference between the cost of imported coal at $4 per million Btu and domestic coal at $1.76 per million Btu and domestic coal supplies cannot keep up.

The panel said that the country’s import requirement was 29 million tonne this fiscal, which would spiral to 50 million tonne in 2011-12 and is likely to be 120 million tonne by 2012-13. What is more, of the 203 captive coal blocks that have so far been allocated with combined reserves of 26 million tonne, only 92 blocks have commenced operations with a projected production of 49 million tonne by 2011-12/


And if you think India has problems, Pakistan’s are even worse, but then that is something that I have written about before.

The brief conclusion is that coal is going to around for a long time into the future, with demand continuing to outstrip supply for the non-OECD countries, and so one can expect the lines in the top charts above to continue rising.