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Chapter Three, Part Four:

The key to abundant clean oil is abundant nuclear electricity.

If we use electricity for heat instead of coal and gas, it's possible to also use the electricity to do a clean job of making the coal and gas into a very clean oil.

Oil Platforms vs. Synthetic Oil Plants 

World Fossil Fuel Reserves Continue to be Huge  

Fossil-Based, Synthetic Oils

 

Even if we continue to burn oil, natural gas, and coal as we are doing now, there is so much in the way of carbon reserves out there it could be 300 to 400 years before we reach the bottom of all the carbon-based fuel barrels - known and yet to be discovered.  Much more likely Global Warming will bring carbon-based fuel production to a halt long before that.  So, for all practical purposes, while "Peak Oil" may be the peak for oil, we've just begun to tap the other, much larger, but more costly, sources.

 

Are oil platforms a better deal than coal-to-oil synthesis plants?

The 24 best oil platforms ($±2 billion each) in the Gulf are producing a total of about 1.5 million bbls/day, or an average of about 62,000 bbls/day from each. 

"In Nigeria, the Sasol-Chevron partnership has also planned a plant that will produce 100,000 barrels/day [synthetic oil] from natural gas.  In addition, Sasol is investigating possibilities in China, where two plants of 80,000 barrels/day [synthetic oil, ±4 $ billion each] from coal are being planned. Viability studies for the first plant have been completed.

The United States uses about 21 million barrels of crude oil every day.  It would take about 260 coal-to-crude plants to make our oil from coal.  $61 a barrel is the projected cost of doing this in a $4-billion coal-to-liquids plant in Pike County, situated in Kentucky’s eastern coalfields.  Pumped U.S. oil is still around $10 - $15 a barrel to put it in a refinery.  I read somewhere mid-east oil costs around $3 a barrel to put it in a boat.

The United States uses about 9 million barrels (378 million gallons) of gasoline every day.

For Perspective: With a capacity of 562,000 barrels per day, ExxonMobil’s massive refinery in Baytown, Texas, is the nation’s largest. 

MAKING SYNTHETIC CRUDE OIL FROM COAL: Pebble bed nuclear reactors can produce both the heat and electricity needed to do a clean job of making synthetic gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from coal.  See also:  http://www.liquidcoal.com/   A syncrude plant consumes 50% of the coal just to heat the synthesis process.  We can't allow coal to be the source of syncrude heat.

News Items:

In Montana, the Crow Tribe Hosts Massive Coal-to-Liquids Plant. Grist, August 8, 2008. "The Crow Tribe on Thursday agreed to host a massive new $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant on its reservation land in Montana. The plant would produce about 50,000 barrels a day of diesel fuel when it opens, and eventually up to 125,000 barrels a day. Coal for the plant would come from a yet-to-be-developed mine on nearby Crow land with an estimated 9 billion tons of recoverable, largely untapped coal reserves. The project is still many years from even the construction phase, but the deal could eventually become a major economic engine for the tribe's 12,000 members since, like most reservations in the U.S., unemployment and poverty there are among the highest in the country. The project could eventually pay the tribe nearly $1 billion a year; their current annual budget is roughly $26 million. Tribe officials said the plant will be built to capture about 95% of its carbon emissions that could then, at least theoretically, be sequestered underground. When up and running, it will take roughly one ton of coal to produce one barrel of diesel fuel at the plant."  (Aug 3, 2008)

A subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil giant has thrown its weight behind an ambitious, $3 billion coal-to-liquids (CTL) project planned for South Australia.  Australia-focused energy minnow Altona Resources Plc, which is listed on London's Alternative Investment Market, has signed an in-principle agreement with CNOO(Beijing) Energy Investment Co Ltd to cooperate in the development of Altona's Arckaringa project in SA.  The project includes a 10 million barrel per year (28,000 barrels per day) open cut mine and a 560 megawatt power plant. (Aug 19, 2008)

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World fossil fuel reserves continue to be huge.

The chart below shows there's a huge amount of fossil fuel (and its Global Warming CO2) remaining. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see from the two pie charts with differing opinions - one very conservative, one very optimistic, nothing's about to be used up so don't let the doomsday enthusiasts spook you.  These are conservative numbers, based on amounts determined by drilling into the ground rather than modern seismographic imaging techniques.

Oils are now about 15% of the worlds total fossil energy, natural gas about 16% and the remainder are coals at 69% [U.S. DOE].  The United States has about 25% of the world's coal.  We're certainly not about to run out of fossil fuels.  But it is true that only about 3% of the world's pumpable oil reserves are in the United States.  [British Petroleum, BP 2004 Statistical Review of World Energy]  2/3 of all pumpable oil we know of is in the Mideast.

The green diagram depicts the concept, if not the actual ratio, of "Proven" vs. "Probable" oil reserves.  Oil companies and governments claim to use the proven reserves because the probable reserves are "iffy" and very subject to oil prices

This points out how much oil availability depends upon drilling technology.  

Oil, oil, everywhere but not a drop to pump. 

We should be allowed to pump, strip pump, or synthesize oil as long as we don't harm the environment.  There are thousands of old, half-full, abandoned oil fields in the United States.  Many may have "sour" or heavy crude, uneconomical to pump when Mid-East sweet crude oil is below $30 a barrel but well worth it with sweet crude at $60+. 

With modern oil field imaging, horizontal re-drilling, and modern refining equipment, we still have substantial amounts of recoverable natural oil for the near-term.  A lot of this abandoned U.S. oil is of better quality than that Canadian tar sands stuff they laughingly call "Syncrude."  We're buying it from them at the rate of a million barrels a day.  Example: Michigan Oil fields.  http://michigan.hometownlocator.com/features/Cultural,class,oilfield.cfm

Beyond that, if we have all the electricity we want, we can make "partial CO2-clean" synthetic oil from coal, gas, oil sands, oil shale, and oil sludge for the mid-term.  It should always be pointed out that synthetic oil production facilities produce small quantities of oil per day - say 50,000 barrels a day - compared with a healthy oil field - say 300,000 barrels a day. 

We can also make completely synthetic Oil from only Air and Water - remember dry ice from air and hydrogen from water?  We can also make completely carbon-neutral "Green" gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from biomass' carbon forever.  Just add large amounts of nuclear electrical heat energy to drive both of these extremely endothermic processes.  We are up to our ears in clean oil energy options IF OUR GOVERNMENT WILL LET US.

We are already starting to dig into Canada's tar sands to the tune of 1 million barrels a day.  To turn tar sand into sellable crude oil, 2 oil barrels worth of natural gas energy (1,400 cubic feet) have to be burned or reduced to hydrogen to produce 3 barrels of $18 - $25 a barrel "Syncrude."  That makes tars sands oil almost a double-CO2 polluter, producing CO2 when made, producing CO2 when burned in your car.  Does it get any dirtier than this?  Yes.  When you make crude oil from coal by burning some coal to liquefy the rest.  There, it's 50 - 50 for a $61 barrel of synthetic crude. 

Pumped U.S. oil is still around $10 - $15 a barrel to put it in a refinery.  I read somewhere mid-east costs are around $3 a barrel to put it in a boat.

The main concern is getting enough: CAN THE WORLD GET 100 MILLION BARRELS OF IT EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 50 YEARS?

Don't laugh, needing 88 million barrels a day, the world is pumping as hard as it can now and getting only 85 million barrels a day.  Shortages get worse over time. 

Other sources that can be upgraded to crude oil by adding huge amounts of hydrogen:  In addition to tar sands, there is Venezuelan (CITGO) heavy oil sludge, and, beyond that, extensive deposits of oil shale rock in the United States and several other countries.

The story of CITGO Petroleum Corporation as an enduring American success story began back in 1910 when pioneer oilman, Henry L. Dougherty, created the Cities Service Company.
    When Cities Service determined that it needed to change its marketing brand, it introduced the name CITGO in 1965, retaining the first syllable of its long-standing name and ending with "GO" to imply power, energy and progressiveness. The now familiar and enduring CITGO "trimark" logo was born.
    Occidental Petroleum bought Cities Service in 1982, and CITGO was incorporated as a wholly owned refining, marketing and transportation subsidiary in the spring of the following year. Then, in August, 1983, CITGO was sold to The Southland Corporation to provide an assured supply of gasoline to Southland's 7-Eleven convenience store chain.
    In September, 1986, Southland sold a 50 percent interest in CITGO to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. PDVSA acquired the remaining half of CITGO in January, 1990. With a secure and ample supply of crude oil, CITGO quickly became a major force in the energy arena. --- From CITGO web site.

 

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Fossil-Based, Synthetic Oils:

1. GTL or Gas To Liquid:

Natural gas makes excellent synthetic ultra-clean diesel and jet fuel.  When stranded in remote locations it is also extremely cheap and has the advantage over coal of producing almost no tailings.  Often, stranded natural gas is just flared off, needlessly wasting a valuable fossil fuel while needlessly producing CO2 emissions.  Huge stranded natural gas flares can be seen at night from space.

Better to turn it into diesel.  It's being done now.  Examples: Shell , Syntroleum - The "Turn Anything Into Oil" company.

KEY: CO2 emissions and Peak Oil make it critically important the world immediately stops burning natural gas for electricity and heating purposes and begins using it instead for making large amounts of ultra-clean synthetic diesel and jet fuel.  Will we? No.

2. CTL or Coal To Liquid:

Longer-term, converting coal to oil by using pebble bed reactors for conversion heat to minimize CO2 emissions, shouldn't be all that bad either.  Coal has the advantage of being both less costly and much more plentiful than natural gas.  Putting the coal-to-oil conversion plants near coal mine mouths provides an excellent place for synthetic oil tailings sequestration piles next to existing coal tailings piles.  These conversion plants will not have massive outputs like oil fields, so are well-suited to small eastern coal mines.

The Germans produced over 5 million gallons (120,000 bbl) of synthetic crude oil a day from coal during WWII.  Their gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel came from lignite coal, a very low-grade, dirty form of coal.

Be mindful that even if all our oil were domestic, that fact would not shield us from high world oil prices.  Our oil companies would just sell our oil into the world markets, raising domestic prices to global parity.  Like Global Warming mitigation, energy base expansion has to be done at the global level to be effective.

 

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KEY: THE BETTER THE WORLD CAN MANAGE CO2 PRODUCTION, THE BETTER THE WORLD CAN ALSO MANAGE UNAVOIDABLE OIL CONSUMPTION.

(Right) Notice that Mother Nature will clean up the CO2 produced by a certain amount of fossil fuel burning.  This, in effect, defines mankind's worldwide fossil fuel (combustion) budget limit.  We must be frugal with Mother Nature's gift of CO2 removal.  Think cars, airplanes and other unavoidable combustions.

There is no such limit on how much nuclear fuel we can use. 

These are all reasonable goals:

1., Ending Climate Change:

Converting all fossil fuel burning power plants to nuclear to end their yearly 11 billion tons of CO2 is the unavoidable major step we must begin immediately to quickly stop the increasingly dangerous accumulation of climate-changing CO2 in our atmosphere.  Also, all fossil fuels are now far too precious to just burn.  Mankind needs them as synthesis feedstock if we want to continue living well for the next 500+ years.

*2., Clean Energy:

If we hope to cope successfully and simultaneously with both Global Warming and Peak Oil shortages, we will need to increase nuclear electrical energy production by about 10 times.  40% of this can come from converting existing fossil power plants to nuclear.   2004 .pdf  This one-page IPCC world energy chart shows how much of each energy type is still available (uranium is yellow) and how much CO2 each energy type is currently producing.  They omitted thorium, the other nuclear fuel, which is three times more common than uranium but has to be made radioactive before it can be used.

*3., Clean Resources Forever From Abundant Electricity:

Since energy is the master resource, if the world has sufficient clean electrical energy to provide the needed CO2-free heat and mechanical energy, we can make abundant synthetic crude oils - and synthesize almost any other needed substance - from almost any fossil fuel or biomass feedstock - using CO2-free synthesis processes and carbon-neutral feedstocks that do not harm the environment.  The Energy Values: Wood = 3,500 BTU/lb, Coal = 12,000 BTU/lb, No. 2 Diesel = 20,000 BTU/lb.  See also:  http://www.greenspirit.com/trees_answer.cfm    Examples:  The 2.5 billion people who now cook on wood fires are already carbon-neutral,   Carbon-neutral Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oils from Air and Water    ELCAT    Syntroleum is already doing it from biomass

 

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