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Thermal Recovery of Oil and Bitumen by Roger M. Butler

Thermal Recovery of Oil and Bitumen Roger M. Butler ebook
ISBN: 0139149538, 9780139149535
Publisher:
Page: 496
Format: pdf

Thermal extraction is a much more environmentally friendly process than other energy extraction methods; for example, 98% of the water used by Connacher to extract their oil is recycled. Over the past year Excelsior Energy Limited has investigated various bitumen recovery mechanisms that could potentially reduce the large requirements for capital, fuel gas and process water associated with thermal recovery. Low impact energy recovery requires massive capital and a willingness to take on high level of risk. With today's technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. Building sustainable operations for the recovery of oil and bitumen requires leading edge facilities and continual adaptation of technologies. Alberta's vast oil sands — a mixture of sand, water and a semisolid form of petroleum called bitumen — account for 97 percent of Canada's proven crude oil reserves, making Canada the largest source of foreign oil for the world's According to a report by oil sands industry consulting firm Strategy West, “The primary disadvantage of steam-based thermal recovery techniques is the large amount of energy and water that must be consumed for the generation of steam. Ivanhoe Energy's goals for the initial wells in Pungarayacu were to add to its preliminary understanding of the reservoir, to carry out thermal recovery tests, and to extract heavy oil for characterization and upgrading tests using its proprietary HTL upgrading process. It won't add any more to GHG emission than other sources of Oil, or indeed actually less, IF AND ONLY IF they use Nuclear Electricity, Nuclear Steam & Process Heat and Nuclear Hydrogen to extract & refine the bitumen. Genalta Power and Shell Canada have agreed to build a produced-gas-to-power plant that will make use of the gas associated with Shell's bitumen production in an effort to reduce gas flaring at its Peace River oil sands leases. Facilities on its Peace River oil sands leases: the Cliffdale Battery, which uses cold or primary recovery methods, and the Peace River Complex which uses thermal or enhanced oil recovery techniques to extract bitumen from underground. However, the random nature of the carbonate bed, which is neither uniform nor consistent, makes economical bitumen recovery a technological challenge. Ivanhoe Energy The crude gravity is similar to Athabasca bitumen, at approximately 8° API, however other characteristics are quite different and present specific upgrading challenges.