Do you buy the estimate heavy oil raises Energy cost by 17-40% for oil recovery phase? I thought SAGD was at or below the 17% number because of all truck fuel backed out as well as the heat that was needed to remove the tar…..and the additional energy needed to move all rock back to minesite via slurry?? Also they seem to be factoring in the higher heat level that is needed for heavy vs conventional crude processing – most balances there is substantial amount of that that gets recaptured in the heat exchangers just like in coker unit compared to other processes and so the net increase isn’t as high (would be lot lower if coker gas had better BTU control and Nat Gas could be backed out critical Coker furnace to avoid higher level coking).
The way they write this crap up is as though there was an alternate to use conventional oil (although think lot of Bakken fits closer to WTI than Bitumen blend). Maybe with at least one house conserative it can break this log-jam that the environmental’s, EPA & Liberal’s have put in place to kill off Heavy oil production & movement into US.
The other stupid belief the environmental’s have is that if US doesnt get it then it wont get processed – they are just shoving more jobs out US & increasing the downturn in capacity because it will go to China/Asia if it doesnt and at a hell of lot more energy waste & environmental emissions than if it was processed in US.
Why do Oil industry continue to let crap like this go thru unchallenged? It is an obvious call for more “environmental study on energy cost/funding on unit by unit basis’ by anti-industry environmental groups …. so they can have better data to kill off process one by one like the MTBE & HF Alky unit and drive gasoline production cost even higher!
Regards
