Page 18 - Synthetic Fuels Handbook

6 CHAPTER ONE

TABLE 1.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of Developing Heavy Oil and Tar Sand Resources
ADVANTAGES: • The Western Hemisphere alone contains more than 1 trillion barrels of
recoverable unconventional oil. This is at least 35 years worth of oil at
current global consumption rates.
• Most tar sand and oil shale reserves are found in the United States and
Canada with enough producible oil to meet 25 percent of the U.S. current
oil demand for 400 years.
• The Green River Basin in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah has oil shale
deposits that contain up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil—3 times
the size of the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.
• Oil shale deposits in the Western United States can ultimately support
production of up to 10 million barrels per day.
• Most nonconventional oil production will come from stable countries
(e.g., Canada) that do not belong to a cartel.
• Nonconventional oil can reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
• Nonconventional oil from tar sand and oil shale is generally compatible
with existing pipeline and refinery infrastructure.
• Tar sand and oil shale can be an energy bridge to the beyond oil era.
• Will force rejection of the Hubbert Peak and the peak oil theory.
DISADVANTAGES: • Production cannot be ramped up as quickly as conventional oil production.
• Production of tar sand bitumen requires high volumes of expensive
natural gas.
• Tar sand operations emit large amounts of carbon dioxide.
• No swing suppliers that can turn the taps on and off in response to global
market shocks.
• The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) may need to maintain larger
stockpiles of oil.
• High environmental impact of tar sands strip mining.
• Environmental impact of oil shale development not fully assessed.
• Environmental issues could be a constraint to future development.

1.2.1 Tar Sand Bitumen
Tar sand bitumen is another source of liquid fuels that is distinctly separate from conven-
tional petroleum (US Congress, 1976).
Tar sand, also called oil sand (in Canada), or the more geologically correct term bitu-
minous sand is commonly used to describe a sandstone reservoir that is impregnated with a
heavy, viscous bituminous material. Tar sand is actually a mixture of sand, water, and bitu-
men but many of the tar sand deposits in countries other than Canada lack the water layer
that is believed to facilitate the hot water recovery process. The heavy bituminous material
has a high viscosity under reservoir conditions and cannot be retrieved through a well by
conventional production techniques.
Geologically, the term tar sand is commonly used to describe a sandstone reservoir
that is impregnated with bitumen, a naturally occurring material that is solid or near solid
and is substantially immobile under reservoir conditions. The bitumen cannot be retrieved
through a well by conventional production techniques, including currently used enhanced
recovery techniques. In fact, tar sand is defined (FE-76-4) in the United States as:

The several rock types that contain an extremely viscous hydrocarbon which is not recov-
erable in its natural state by conventional oil well production methods including currently
used enhanced recovery techniques. The hydrocarbon-bearing rocks are variously known as
bitumen-rocks oil, impregnated rocks, tar sands, and rock asphalt.