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Science Technology

The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit 166

Posted by timothy from the gas-is-awesome dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The latest issue of Wired has an interesting article about Canadian tar pits that could result in a trillion barrels of oil when processed. It seems just when we think the oil will run out we find new reserves. Now excuse me while I gas up my Hummer."
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The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit More

The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit

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  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Analise ( 782932 ) * <anaili@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:56AM (#9572289) Homepage Journal
    Makes you wonder, if all the money being put into finding new sources of oil was instead put into new sources of energy, would we all be driving cars that get 80mpg and make almost no emissions? Or, you know, something like that.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

      by be951 ( 772934 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:47PM (#9572944)
      ...if all the money being put into finding new sources of oil was instead put into new sources of energy, would we all be driving cars that get 80mpg and make almost no emissions?

      It is possible, but not necessarily the case. Along with money, it takes time to adopt new technology. Also, we can build cars that get 80 or more miles to the gallon, zero emission vehicles, vehicles that use non-petroleum power sources, and various combinations of those and other "green" features. There are a number of reasons that "everyone" doesn't have these. First of all, cost is an issue. But there are many other factors -- both rational and emotional -- involved in purchasing a vehicle. Does it do what I need? Does it do what I want? Does it look how I want? Is it better in one of those areas than an alternative?

      The short answer to why we aren't all driving super-high mileage vehicles is that we as consumers haven't demanded. We want fast, pretty, luxurious, big, cool, cheap, convenient, etc... cars more than we want highly efficient, enviro-friendly cars.

      • The short answer to why we aren't all driving super-high mileage vehicles is that we as consumers haven't demanded. We want fast, pretty, luxurious, big, cool, cheap, convenient, etc... cars more than we want highly efficient, enviro-friendly cars.

        My point was, if all the time, energy, and money that has been spent on finding more oil reserves had been spent on finding other/better energy sources, we might now be driving cars (even larger ones) that perform just as well or better as what we've got now a

        • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

          by nelsonal ( 549144 )
          Probably not, in the whole scheme of things, very little gets spent finding new, better energy sources. The biggest cost to energy is converting sunlight to a more useful form (usually electric or chemical) the advantage with oil is that is complete you just have to find it, and most of the reserves already found it was either know for eons and was regarded as a nusiance (La Brea tar pits etc) as oil soaked ground is not as useful for travel or crop growing. We have put considerable resources into getting

          • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

            by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @02:58PM (#9574293)
            Probably not, in the whole scheme of things, very little gets spent finding new, better energy sources.

            Perhaps that is due to the controlling interests not wanting to give up that control.

            • Sorry about the confusion, energy==oil and gas in that context. E&P costs are miniscule compared to the amount of energy generated and its mobility. If you applied to alternative power sources the returns are nowhere near as good yet. As we use up more of the "low hanging fruit" althernate sources will become competitive. But when that happens depends on when (if) we hit peak oil. Assuming Hibbert is correct, a rought guess would be most alternate energy becomes competive about a third to half way
              • Geez. No-one can read an if statement correctly anymore. I thought folks here were programmers :)

                IF all the time & resources had been spent to research alternatives,
                THEN we would likely have nearly-as-effective if not more so vehicles with better emissions
                ELSE well, here we are
                ENDIF
                • My issue was mainly the efficiency of your first conclusion. We haven't spent all that many resources (relative to the energy we got out) looking for additional oil reserves (it has all been low hanging fruit so far). Certainly nothing near the amount of improvement that would have to be accomplished in alternate power sources. The article mentioned that natives used the oil from these finds to seal their canoes prior to western arrival here. Doesn't take a whole lot of R&D to find that or get it ou
                  • Do you know how much a new drilling plant costs? A new off-shore rig? Probes? OPEC bureaucracy? How much did it cost in the 40's? 50's? 60's? 70's? 80's? 90's? This decade? We're talking billions and billions (of relative value).

                    Besides, there was an article not too many moons ago about do-it-yourself biodiesel for, what, $0.48 per gallon?

                    I agree to a point; the alternatives aren't that great right now (certainly much less useful than if they had been researched with proper funding from the 40's on out),

                    • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

                      by nelsonal ( 549144 )
                      I'd make a rough guess that $500 billion (in current dollars) has been spent on finding and extracting oil from the ground (no royalties or other wealth transfers just the economic costs). That same $500 billion would no doubt have improved our automotive technologies considerably, however I firmly doubt that alternate energy sources would be competitive with pulling the stored energy from the ground. Batteries are nowhere near the same energy density, and it requires considerable land, energy, and effort
                • Perhaps more like: float oiluse = 1.0; float economy, population = 1.0, standardofliving; float technology = 1.0; try { for(ever) { oiluse = oiluse*1.05; technology = technology*1.05; economy = oiluse*technology; population = population*1.05; standardofliving = economy/population; } } catch(OilRunOutException) { population = 0; }
            • Probably not, in the whole scheme of things, very little gets spent finding new, better energy sources.

              Perhaps that is due to the controlling interests not wanting to give up that control.

              Or just because we don't need them at present, and there's greater return on investment in other branches of development.

              Think about it. If we knew we _had_ to switch to, say, hydrogen power storage and nuclear power generation within 50 years, wouldn't the big oil companies invest scads of money to make sure _they'd
            • Next on the list: Canada.

              The Prime Minister of this so-called nation flies in a government-jet with the word "LIBERAL" in five-foot-high RED letters!

              How long can the United States endure this antagonism to the world's freedom?

              51 States Now! -plus Israel, U.K. and Puerto Rico, maybe Iraq.

            • What, and you think that those "controlling interests" wouldn't love to be the ground-breakers in a massive changeover to alternative fuels and have a (temporary) monopoly? Why are they spending billions of dollars researching alt fuels, then?

              The main problem is the cost of changing our infrastructure over (to hydrogen, alcohol, or whatever). Half a trillion dollars over ten years (given a real effort) is the conservative estimate.

              The other problem, right now, is that the demand for that changeover i

              • Re:Hmm (Score:2)

                by qtp ( 461286 )
                What, and you think that those "controlling interests" wouldn't love to be the ground-breakers in a massive changeover to alternative fuels and have a (temporary) monopoly?

                The problem with your theory is that the newer technologies in renewable energy tend to work rather efficiently on a micro producer scale, and thus would serve to reduce the amount of control that any one company or small group of companies can have over the energy market.

                Electricity from solar energy can be that are on the market tod [nwpwr.com]

        • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)

          by rburgess3 ( 682428 )
          There's plenty of oil still left on the earth... you know those numbers that the 'death, doom and destruction' crowd keep throwing around, the 'We'll be out of oil in the next 20 years!' stuff? That's based upon an estimate of what's available that is as EASY to get at as what is currently being used. The nations of the world know of vast amounts of oil that can be used, it's just that currently, the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela and a couple other countries have stocks that are far, far cheaper to proce
      • There's also the idea that not everyone wants/can afford a new car. I drive a 91 Accord: decent milage, fairly reliable. I definately couldn't afford a 2004 and I wouldn't drive a domestic as I find them less reliable.

        If we wanted really efficient cars, even if we made them today a lot of people couldn't afford one until 10+ years from now.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fat Cow ( 13247 )
      i've got great news for you! you don't have to wonder - you can take your own money and invest in those alternative energy companies. if you're right you can make a bundle. hurrah!
      • you can take your own money and invest in those alternative energy companies

        I probably would, alas I am a broke college student.
      • My money == government money ?

        I belive it's a task of the government to invest in research of "products" that are not of economic interest for companies (at the point they have reasons that don't justifies their investment) but may bring positive results for the society as a whole.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 ) <zkessin@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @02:16PM (#9573857) Homepage Journal
      The thing is that for all we bitch about oil it does its job quite well. Oil and derived products (gas, jet fuel, Disiel fuel, heating oil etc) have several things going for them:

      1) They have a high energy density. The fact is you can get a lot of useful work out of a gallon of auto gas.

      2) They are reasonably stable at room tempurture. Yes they will burn but they won't explode for no reason (which some things will).

      3) We have an infrastructure for them. From the drill to the pump a lot has been invested in making oil avalable.

      4) We have a huge knowlege base. There a lot of people out there who know how to do a lot of useful things out of petro chemicals. From roughnecks to chemical engineers a lot of folks know how to do useful stuff here.

      There is a lot of oil in the world. Right now there is a lot of oil that we know about but like the Canadian tar we haven't bothered to go after it because its a lot cheaper to get oil some where else. If for every $100 of oil it costs you $3 in Saudi Arabia but $60 in Canada to extract it which would you use? As the oil that is easy to get to is used up we will get creative about how to get the other stuff.

      I imagine the fuel of the future will be Eathanol. You can make it by fermentation of sugars in plant products. But this also has problems, in that corn used for Eathanol can't be used for food or other things.

      There is this myth that there is some perfect source of energy out there and if we would only spend 5 minutes looking we would find it. I wish it was so but I'm kind of skeptical. I mean if you did find it you would get quite rich. But so far its not happened. Other energy sources have problems as well.
      • I imagine the fuel of the future will be Eathanol. You can make it by fermentation of sugars in plant products. But this also has problems, in that corn used for Eathanol can't be used for food or other things.

        That's not entirely true. The corn used for ethanol is not the corn that you eat on the cob. It is mainly used for feeding animals.

        Distiling the corn down to alcohol doesn't use up all of the food stock in the corn - what is left (the distiller's grain) can still be used to feed animals, and it

        • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

          by mikerich ( 120257 )
          Just one drawback - the US puts about 8 times as much energy INTO producing crops as it extracts from those crops (by eating them, distilling them whatever). This number is called the Fuel Energy Subsidy and has been increasing through the last century thanks to the advent of mechanisation and artificial fertilisers.

          That energy is obtained from fossil fuels.

          Corn ethanol is no more than a tax subsidy for farmers, it certainly does not replace petroleum and gas.

          Best wishes,
          Mike.

    • Yes.

      Even with current technology, the worlds best selling electric car, the Gem, runs at a cost of about 0.25p/mile - compared to 30p/mile for a typical petrol car. (BBC news) [bbc.co.uk]

      Just needs a bit of a push to get the milage between charges up. My own idea is that batteries be "leased" from garages, so that you drive into a garage and swap for a fully charged one instantly, for some sort of fee. No new technology needed for that, just some basic mechanics.

      But electricity comes from fossil fuels you say? The

  • futurama (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:56AM (#9572290) Homepage Journal
    If they drain all the oil out of the tar pits, it'll really mess up the plot for that episode of Futurama.
    • You're forgetting that those tar pits were on a burnt out sun just past Teddy Bear Junction. Duh.
      • That wasn't the tar pits -- that was the Fountain of Aging. The episode was on the Cartoon network last night. ;)

  • oil running out? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Slowping ( 63788 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:59AM (#9572325) Homepage Journal
    The world has always had big reserves in many places, especially around Alaska and Canada. Why burn up your own reserves when you can eat away at others first?

    For countries like US and Canada to open up their own reserves would just drive down oil prices and make the oil worth less. Wait until the global supply is lower and then you can get some real bang for the buck.

    • Re:oil running out? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:10PM (#9572487)
      The tar pits aren't fully exploited because it's much harder to extract oil from them than to buy it from the Arabs, Russians, South Americans, etc...
      • Oil, more or less, flows out of the ground (sometimes it gushes under pressure, other times you have to inject brine or steam to recover it). The Canadian heavy oil has to be dug out of the ground just like coal.

        There may be some special considerations in Canada -- the cold weather, the gritty sand that wears out mining gear. But the actual mining of coal is not the expensive part -- the biggest cost of Wyoming coal (you can Google for their promo Web site) is rail transport to power plants.

        I think th

  • haha (Score:5, Funny)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:04PM (#9572395) Homepage
    I learned about this years again in grade 10 geography class. We canadians have 70% of the world's drinking water too. Bow down and worship us Americans!

    Er wait

    I mean, please don't invade us :/
    • Fallout intro anyone?
    • It would be nice to see a surge in resources like this give us more say in U.S.-Canada trade relations. You know, U.S. blocks trade for Canadian beef, we block trade to the U.S. for oil. Canada wouldn't be pushed around by the U.S. as much as we are now. That would be nice to see. Force America to patch up relations with us, rather than the other way around.
      • Naah -- we'll just move in from the south and reform your government. No, wait, Reform is no more, right? It's the Liberals and the NDP this week?

        Hell, never mind -- we don't understand your government, so we'll fix it. But good.

    • Better watch your back (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cause the minute you are worth something guess where the next couple of states are coming from?
    • It will be a while yet before the oil from Alberta's tar sands are as economical to extract as conventional crude.

      Things are looking up though with new extraction techniques. Kudos to those guys at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary.
      • What a tremendous technology - consume huge amounts of energy and water to get the stuff out of the ground. Then use even more energy and produce biblical amounts of carbon dioxide to make the muck actually usable. THEN create even more carbon dioxide when you burn it.

        Thank goodness the profligate use of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide pollution aren't causing long term problems for humanity.

        Oh...

        Best wishes,
        Mike.

    • I wonder about the global warming that this new oil will cause. But on the bright side, if it warms up enough you might not find a nicer place to be than Montreal in January!
    • In the words of the great Homer Simpson:

      "Canada? Why should leave America to visit America Junior?"

  • How does this solve the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:09PM (#9572466)
    There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.

    The problem comes if China and the Third World follow in the footsteps of our oil-wasteful economy. The planet's atmosphere is not going to like that. Although there's a lot of concern about the Three Gorges Dam in China, I would rather see them submerge some local Chinese history than throw tons of hydrocarbons into the world's atmosphere.

    • True (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mark_MF-WN ( 678030 )

      The problem comes if China and the Third World follow in the footsteps of our oil-wasteful economy. The planet's atmosphere is not going to like that. Although there's a lot of concern about the Three Gorges Dam in China, I would rather see them submerge some local Chinese history than throw tons of hydrocarbons into the world's atmosphere.

      True. It sometimes seems like environmentalists wont be happy until we all live in caves. I care about the environment, but I also recognize that something has to giv

      • Re:True (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The only sustainable solution is thinning the herd. I'd rather have 100M hominids living in comfort in a paradise than 10G barely subsisting in a spoiled world.

        And no, I don't need to be part of that select 100M. I'm willing to go, anonymous and forgotten, if need be.
      • Hydroelectric dams provide bountiful, clean electricity, at a fairly reasonable environmental cost. If China is embracing hyrdoelectric, I say more power to them.

        Know much about china? They have tons of dams that protect 10's of millions of people from chinas natural state, which is merciless flooding. I used to know a lieutenant colonel and we talked military strategy alot (it was better then working :-)) and he told me were we ever in a serious war with china, the first thing we would do is blow up th

    • It's not only submerging history, it's fucking up the ecosystem of the entire region. Just like every dam does.

      • Re:How does this solve the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kawika ( 87069 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:41PM (#9573520)
        Yep, hydroelectric power can do a lot of local damage. But it doesn't poison the whole world. Also, the floods it controls have killed thousands in the past, so there is a benefit. Unless the dam breaks--there are legitimate concerns about that.

        Also, China is making an important strategic and economic decision by using hydroelectric. Their economy will not be dependent on foreign oil, and won't need to become involved in Middle Eastern politics to protect their country. Now there's a real tar pit.
        • Yep, hydroelectric power can do a lot of local damage. But it doesn't poison the whole world.

          They can seriously screw up international relations. Turkey's enormous Ataturk Dam brought it and Syria and Iraq to the brink of war after the Euphrates dwindled to a trickle as the reservoir filled. Israel has threatened Jordan with attack if the Jordanians build a dam on a tributary of the River Jordan. Egypt has threatened Sudan if they dam the Blue Nile.

          China is now engaged in an internation dispute over i

      • A CHANGED ecosystem does not mean a DESTROYED ecosystem. I am so sick of this ignorant environmentalist prattle about some utopian static, eternally unchanging mythical ecosystem that exists nowhere except their deluded fanaticism.
      • Actually, I think the greater worry is the possibility of the dam collapsing.

    • There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.

      Ah, but the problem with oil is that it is not priced with the knowledge of how much is still in the ground, like other limited resources. So far, we have only been given educated guesses as to how much available oil is still in the ground. To give an exampl

    • Why are you comparing "reasonable prices" and "Oil Crisis" prices? I'd think that you could say the prices are lower than when we were really restricted in accessing oil, but that wouldn't be "reasonable", now would it?
    • There is no lack of oil at reasonable prices. Even with the recent price spike, US gas prices are lower in inflation-adjusted terms than they were during the "Oil Crisis" of the late-1970s. Prices would be a lot higher if we were running out of oil.

      The oil crises were all political events caused by the taps being turned off. It's not really a fair comparison.

      We are almost certainly at, or very close to, the peak of oil production - from here on it is a short plateau before oil production goes into an

  • its really sad (Score:1, Redundant)

    by drfrog ( 145882 )
    that people still want to keep our oil based economy

    why not stop and look at other choices?

    the hunt for oil is one of the main causes of international violence currently

    isnt it time to look for better solutions?


    • > the hunt for oil is one of the main causes of international violence currently [...] isnt it time to look for better solutions?

      Imagine a world where people invade Holland to take over their windmills...

    • Re:its really sad (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, get started!
    • the hunt for oil is one of the main causes of international violence currently

      The other main cause being religion.

    • Re:its really sad (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:50PM (#9572984) Homepage Journal
      Well, we're going to need oil until those other choices are viable. It's not like we can wave a magic wand and declare "energy independence" and we suddenly have alternative energy sources to replace oil, despite what certain presidential candidates might think.

      What we need to do is pursue other source while we look for more oil. They've been looking for other solutions for 100 years. The problem is the consumers will not want to trade their gasoline-powered cars for something else that will cost them a lot more. The problem with arguments like yours is that it assumes money just magically appears out of thin air.

      THe main cause of international violence is corrupt governments that keep their people in abject poverty even though it isn't necessary, and then convincing them it is someone else's fault (the U.S., Israel, etc, etc).

  • tarpit... oil... hummer... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:19PM (#9572616) Homepage Journal
    On /. a reference to 'tarpit' usually means something other than the type that holds oil, or at least petrochemicals.

    Accept for a moment, the premise that hummers (and other gas-guzzlers) are generally undesirable, and then put that together with 'tarpit' in the normal /. sense.

    We need to replace a stretch of road with a tarpit that'll look like a road, and be sufficiently stiff to support lighter vehicles, but swallow hummers and SUVs - like a /. tarpit swallows evil packets. If that fine a selection on stiffness/surface tension is too hard, how about making it the road to a gas station, "Cheap Gas - $1.50/gal - minimum purchase 20 gallons!"

  • $10 to produce? (Score:5, Informative)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:21PM (#9572646) Homepage Journal

    Canadian tar pits that could result in a trillion barrels of oil when processed.

    The oil locked into the Athabascan tar sands have been known for a number of decades; experts in the 1970's were trying to figure out economical ways of extracting the oil.

    The article claims extraction is now possible for $10 per bbl.

    I'm skeptical. The figure probably assumes some economies of scale in production to arrive at a cost that, if compared to recent prices, would make it a no-brainer to go forward.

    Then, too, there's always the issue of how much sulfur is in this oil, which can affect the downstream price at the refinery.

    • The extraction prices are probably accurate. The problem is that after the $10 per bbl, you still end up with what the industry considers crappy oil compared to the light sweet stuff flowing out of the midddle east. This means it requires much more refining with it's associated costs. So this option has to be significantly cheaper before refiners start buying it.
    • I think that doesn't include any royalties, refining costs, or transportation costs. For a reference I've heard that extraction costs are $2-$3/barrel in the middle east. Which (combined with their operation at 60%-70% capacity) is the actual reason Saudi Arabia exerts so much leverage on world oil prices. They can continue producing after it is no longer economical for others to produce and keep enough slack capacity to ajdust in either direction.
    • $10 sounds lower that what they are actually achieving but at $35/bbl market price they are making money. Keep in mind also that the current extraction technology used for turning tar sand into what they call synthetic crude, uses a lot of natural gas, if methane prices keep going up too so will this.

    • Re:$10 to produce? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rauser ( 631244 )

      The oil sand that is mined at Syncrude is refined into "synthetic crude oil" that Syncrude produces at its Mildred Lake facility north of Ft. McMurray. The costs to produce this syncrude were in the $13-14/barrel when I was there in 2002. Compare this to the ~$35/barrel market costs for oil on the open market and the Canadians are making money hand-over-fist!

      there's always the issue of how much sulfur is in this oil, which can affect the downstream price at the refinery.

      The sulfur is removed at Mildred

  • EROEI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AndrewHowe ( 60826 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:22PM (#9572666)
    Energy Return On Energy Invested.

    Middle East oil has an EROEI of something like 30. That is, you get 31 barrels out of the ground, and you get to use 30 barrels of it for useful work. The other barrel is used to pump it out of the ground, refine it, ship it to your neighbourhood and pump it into your tank.

    Oil from tar sands has an EROEI of about 1.5, so you waste 2 barrels for every 3 you get to guzzle. That's utterly shite, basically. Perhaps that figure has been improved recently with newer techniques, but it's not going to be competitive with M.E. oil until the latter has pretty much dried up.

    The other bummer about tar sands oil is that it's really low quality, full of sulphur etc.

    • Oil from tar sands has an EROEI of about 1.5, so you waste 2 barrels for every 3 you get to guzzle.

      3 - 2 = 1.5 ??
      2 + 2 = 5
      • 3:2::1.5:1

      • Re:EROEI (Score:4, Informative)

        by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:15PM (#9578417) Homepage
        3 - 2 = 1.5 ??

        No, three DIVIDED by two is 1.5.

        The original poster's math was correct.

        -
        • No, I think it's still wrong. He claimed that a 30:1 ratio meant that if you extract 31 barrels, you consume 1 in the process. Thus, for a 1.5:1 ratio, which is 3:2, that means if you extract 5 barrels, you consume 2 in the process.

          • Re:EROEI (Score:3, Informative)

            by Alsee ( 515537 )
            Thus, for a 1.5:1 ratio, which is 3:2, that means if you extract 5 barrels, you consume 2 in the process.

            Yes. That's exactly what he said, he just phrased the second example a bit differently than first example.

            He said you get to guzzle 3. That's 3 usuable, not 3 total pumped. The guzzlable 3 plus the wasted 2 implied the 5 total pumped.

            -
            • That's true, if you don't install a Nuclear Power Plant [cns-snc.ca] to assist in the extraction...

              Of course, this begs the question -- why not just develop clean nuclear power in the first place, instead of fixating on developing more economical extraction processes? Vitrification of nuclear waste for long term storage is probably superior to suffocation, freezing or frying to death after destroying our environment. Unless you're ecologically minded [greenpeace.org], evidently...

              Could it be that the public has bought into the a

  • A Trillion? Is that a lot? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by merockhold ( 409862 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:41PM (#9572883) Homepage
    At the current worldwide rate of consumption of about 80 million barrels a day, a trillion barrels would last almost 35 years. (That said, I've seen conservative estimates of growth in that rate to something like 140 mbd within 30 years. Whatever.) Anyhow, that puts us near the end of my personal life expectancy, so I'm OK with whatever the rest of you nuts do after that. You might check with my kids before you completely wreak the environment and run the world's tank down to the dregs, though.
  • Canada as leader of OPEC :).

  • No surprise (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:28PM (#9573374)
    I think that most Canadians have known about the Alberta tar sands since grade school.

    (For those who haven't read the article: basically, Canada has one of the largest oil reserves, but it's tied up in a sandy, tar-like muck. This makes the oil too difficult to extract, and less economically feasible compared to, say, invading an entire middle east country. :)

    Canada also has very large supplies of drinking water (which may one day become an even more important resource), not to mention some of the world's largest reserves of uranium, potash, natural gas, and several precious metals.
    • We're just waiting.....

  • Fossils (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GreyOrange ( 458961 )
    Maybe I'm mistaken, but aren't there fossils in tar pits? I mean if we process this stuff, could we lose valuable information about previous life forms that would not be found in the other types of oil reserves?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Fossils (Score:3, Informative)

      by WalksOnDirt ( 704461 )
      "...aren't there fossils in tar pits?"

      Fossils are found in the La Brea tar pits because they got trapped in the sticky tar. This started happening a few tens of thousands of years ago, after the tar was exposed on the surface. The tar was formed millions of years ago, but the extreme conditions that change buried organic matter to tar don't preserve fossils.

      The tar sands have had no opportunity to acquire fossils except for the surface layer; and, since they are not sticky like real tar pits, not a larg

  • But what about emissions? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Via_Patrino ( 702161 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:27PM (#9576292)
    But what about emissions? You keep having cheap gas but CO2 emissions go skyhigh the same way.

  • Oil dependence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SofaMan ( 454881 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @08:19PM (#9577519)
    You know, we are, at some point, going to need to wean ourselves off of mineral oil, Middle Eastern or otherwise. It will get more expensive.

    Many people have raised the quite legitimate concern about changing over to new automotive technologies, and I've got to tell you, biodiesel is looking better and better.

    1. There's no significant change that needs to be implemented to current diesel automotive technology.
    2. There's no significant change that needs to be implemented to current fuel distribution infrastructure.
    3. Burning biodiesel is carbon-neutral i.e. all the carbon being released by it is carbon that was trapped by living plants in the first place, not carbon that was sucked out of the atmosphere and trapped millions of years ago when the climate and ecosystem was completely different. And we can start to use up a bunch of carbon that's already in the atmosphere causing problems.
    4. It mean we can actually use huge areas of unusably salinated land again - certain types of oil-rich algae grow amazingly in shallow super-salty water.
    5. You can make it yourself if you want (unless you live in Australia, where they have just declared that biodiesel attracts fuel excise, so by making your own you basically become a tax evader).


    It won't replace the use of mineral oil for some time, but would be an important step on the way, by reducing the environmental, technological (combustion technology is still fairly inefficient, now well over a century old, with no significant changes in the basic principle in that time) and economic urgency for finding other energy alternatives. If we started talking about diesel electric hybrids, then we might be getting somewhere!

  • Damn! (Score:4, Funny)

    by msouth ( 10321 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @09:25PM (#9577856) Homepage Journal
    Now we'll have to start taking them seriously.

  • oil independence - closer than you think (Score:5, Informative)

    by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizard.ecis@com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:49PM (#9578580) Homepage
    The numbers for replacing foriegn oil are:
    • $169 billion to build the algae farms
    • $33B/year operating costs
    what comes out can be processed in conventional oil refineries.

    You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here [unh.edu] This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in the mid 1990s and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then.

    Other than that, remember $250/ton shipping to LEO? [slashdot.org] Follow the links from the slashdot article, to JP Aerospace and to evaluations by experts. From what I saw at the JP Aerospace site, the only reason why it's going to take 7 years for them to get to orbit is lack of funding. They're getting DOD experimental contracts for high-altitude transportation, but even with this, they're bootstrapping. The NASA space power satellite [nasa.gov] system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. $250/ton is a lot cheaper than $400/kg.

    The only thing keeping these technologies from becoming a viable alternative in the very near term is bad habit on the part of what passes for our business and governmental leadership. They're obsessed with the idea that the only way to get oil is the traditional methods. Even if the cost estimates for biomass oil and the SPS are off by a factor of 10, they look awfully good next to the projected $16T (yes, that's $16,000 billion) dollar cost of "business as usual"... based on an unproven and unlikely assumption that "enough" oil is there to be found. (see below)

    Hint: The Bush Administration defunded the Space Power Satellite project.

    Concrete steps to get this running? For the oil side, how about government loans, tax credits, and temporary price supports in case the oil cartel gets desperate enough to try to put the new energy replacements out of business by dropping their oil prices to cost of production? A promise to the rest of the world that the algae oil biomass production technology will be freely exported as soon as it is ready to go? These are the first things that occur to me.

    For the space side, direct government funding, and or payload guarantees (e.g. the government will guarantee payment for X-million pounds per year of payload to any vendor(s) who can prove the ability to get it to LEO for, say, under $10/pound?) would be a good start. Or start contracting for lots and lots of solar cells and designate JP Aerospace as the prime contractor to get them to orbit.

    The alternative: The International Energy Agency wants $16 TRILLION DOLLARS [softcom.net] to be spent on new oil exploration and development and facilities to "prevent" energy crisis. This makes the happy assumption that there's enough oil to solve the problem. A few minutes spent googling on "peak oil" will convince you that there isn't.

    The $16T does NOT include the military costs of dealing with the Middle East.

    Personally, I'd rather see $16T spent on something useful.

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