One thing I do know about Venezuela is that they have got super-vast heavy crudes which can be made into Orimulsion, which is what my friend and BP Oil colleague was working on in the mid 1980s.
They pumped water and surfactant down and got a pumpable liquid up, which could go through unheated pipelines into ships and on to power stations.
It was 30% water, 3% surfactant [if I remember correctly] and the oily stuff. Ah, no, it wasn't 3% surfactant, it was 3% heat loss to the heating the water in the combustion process, which isn't as much as one would think at a glance. I forget how much surfactant was needed.
We did some work on diesel emulsions too, and that worked fine, and gives reduced emissions, improved combustion, and enables cheaper heavy end oils to be used.
If Venezuela ever bothered to dig into those heavy deposits, you wouldn't need to worry about the world running out of fossil hydrocarbon energy any times soon. Meaning 200 years or so.
I have no idea what has happened with the technology since the 1980s. Economically, it was skooshed by cheap regular crude oils and other matters, such as environmental ones [I guess].
Mqurice |
