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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: wherry who wrote (673)6/1/2005 4:24:13 AM
From: kryptonic6  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1183
 
Most of the methods I refer to are those that use the extracted bitumen itself to generate a form of gas and/or steam and/or electricity which the process then uses to extract more bitumen.

Thank you for your post. If this method can be done on a mass scale, then the oil sands may be able to produce net energy for quite some time... the only drawback is that I understand that the curent EROEI ratio for oil sands is pretty low, less than 2:1, but still a net energy producer.

All in all, it does seem that neither nuclear power nor cheap NG are essential for oil sands mining and processing. NG is certainly desirable (as a very nice, clean burning fuel), but not essential. It is all a matter of price and comparative process efficiency.

Let's assume that the oil sands can be mined without NG. I guess the better question is, how much can oil sands mining be scaled up as we begin the down slope of the global conventional oil production curve?

Jesse