Results tagged “oil sands”

Today is Canada Day. On July 1, 1867, Canada became a self-governing country consisting of a federation of the four provinces of Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Since this is a national holiday, Canadian citizens across the country are celebrating with parades, festivals and fireworks.

It's fitting that on this day we acknowledge Canada's contributions to America's energy security.

Northern Alberta is believed to contain more recoverable oil than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia--existing in oil sands deposits--20% of which can be accessed via surface mining and 80% that are too deep for mining.

During our visit to Alberta, we had the opportunity to visit ConocoPhillips' Surmont facility where these deep deposits are produced by flooding the sands with steam in a process called Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD).

In August, I wrote about my experience traveling to Alberta, Canada, with reporters and bloggers to see how oil sands are produced and converted into crude oil.

We learned that there are two different processes utilized to produce oil from the sands--surface mining and in-situ, where the sands are heated with steam and pumped to the surface.

Be grateful that energy-rich Canada is our friendly neighbor to the North. A new study released today shows that the development of Canada's oil sands will lead to the creation of more than 340,000 new U.S. jobs between 2011 and 2025. With our national unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, this is very welcoming news.

This week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit the United States, and high on the agenda in discussions with President Obama should be our country's energy partnership with Canada.

The prime minister's visit underscores the importance of developing more of North America's oil and natural gas. Even with additional alternative energy, continued development of oil and natural gas is of utmost importance to both Canada and the United States as these resources will continue to drive our economies and provide employment for millions. Canada's ample resources--including its oil sands--will help meet our future demand.

Some online discussion has emerged from bloggers who recently toured the ConocoPhillips and Syncrude oil sands operations in Alberta, Canada.

In one post, Brian Westenhaus of New Energy and Fuel says:

This week's episode focuses on the recent tour of oil sands operations in Alberta, Canada that I've been posting about frequently. As I've mentioned, oil sands are a critically important resource, providing crude oil to the United States. Of the more than 2 million barrels of Canadian crude oil that are imported to the U.S. every day, about half is derived from Canada's abundant oil sands.

Yesterday, API hosted bloggers for a conference call featuring Robert Renner, Alberta Minister of the Environment. Minister Renner was available to take questions about Canada's oil sands from the bloggers who recently toured ConocoPhillips and Syncrude operations in Alberta.

During the past several days, I've written extensively about Canada's oil sands, how they are produced, and the environmental programs that convert the disturbed land into meadows, forests and lakes. Today, in my final post about last week's oil sands tour, I want to provide you with some basic facts that often don't appear in news articles about oil sands development.

So you mine the oil sands, extract the oil, reclaim the land--and then what do you do? At the Syncrude oil sands operation in Alberta, you start a bison ranch--wood bison, to be specific.

Approximately 300 of these big, shaggy mammals live on nearly 1,730 acres of reclaimed land that used to be an oil sands mine. Today the former mine comprises several pastures where the bison graze and rid themselves of insects by rolling in the dirt or rubbing against scratching posts. They live a good life with plenty of food and water, and with freedom from the diseases that are threatening the existence of the species.

Day Two of the oil sands tour, August 7 - About 60 kilometers southeast of Ft. McMurray, Alberta, ConocoPhillips is producing crude oil from oil sands using a process called in-situ development. In concept, in-situ development sounds fairly simple. The oil sands are heated underground with steam, gravity pulls the hot oil down toward a wellbore, and the oil is brought to the surface.

Simple, right? Not really. In actuality, the process requires high-tech engineering, precise execution and the ability to see underground using sophisticated seismic testing and monitoring equipment.

Day one of the oil sands tour, Aug. 6 - We're standing in a quarry where a steady stream of 380-ton to 400-ton, multi-story vehicles roll in and out, accepting loads of oil sands. As soon as one vehicle is loaded, another one takes its place next to the huge shovel that scrapes the oil sands from the black, sandy quarry wall.

These carefully coordinated activities are repeated hundreds of times a day by the workers who are mining and processing Canadian oil sands at this Syncrude facility. As soon as the trucks are loaded, they roll toward the processing facility where the oil sands are used to produce about 350,000 barrels of light, sweet crude oil every day.

6:35 a.m., Ft. McMurray, Alberta -- In just a few minutes, I'll leave this hotel room to join today's tour to ConocoPhillips' Surmont oil sands facility. But before I go, here are a few observations about the oil sands deposits here in Alberta.

Occasionally, I'm offered the opportunity to visit oil and natural gas field operations at various places around the Northern Hemisphere. This week I'll be traveling to Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada, to see how oil sands are converted into crude oil.

Why would the United States Congress snub its nose at our neighbors to the north? It's a very good question, and one that leaves us scratching our heads. Please allow me to explain.

Recently the U.S. Senate took up the defense appropriations bill, which gave it the opportunity to correct the flaws in Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This act contains language that could prohibit federal agencies from procuring fuel from U.S. refiners that use Canadian oil sands-derived crude oil as their feedstock.

In a recent op-ed in the Argus Leader, John Duff Erickson, professor emeritus at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, makes a strong case for continuing the development of Canadian oil sands. He notes that Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the United States, and Canadian oil is helping to bolster U.S. energy security.

Two new independent studies commissioned by the Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI) have found that emissions from producing, transporting and refining oil sands are not significantly higher than emissions from other forms of crude oil refined in the United States. The studies found that direct greenhouse gas emissions from oil-sands derived crude oils are generally 10 percent higher, but when cogeneration is taken into consideration, the difference disappears.

By today's estimates, there are about two trillion barrels of recoverable conventional oil resources worldwide, and as much as twice that in additional frontier resources like extra-heavy oil, oil sands, and oil shale and shale gas. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conservatively estimates oil shale formations in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contain 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil--more than three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. 

Today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 15 to 8 to approve an energy bill that would open part of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico for additional oil and natural gas leasing and clarify ambiguous language included in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This language--as originally written--could have prohibited federal agencies from using transportation fuels derived from Canadian oil sands.

A couple of days ago, the Sierra Club posted on The Hill's blog, questioning whether it's safe to bring more Canadian oil sands crude oil into the United States via pipeline. I posted a comment to this post last night, and today on this blog, I'm providing additional information to set the record straight. Simply put, the Sierra Club post grossly exaggerates the risks and ignores the benefits of transporting oil derived from Canada's abundant oil sands to the United States. And it mischaracterizes the pipelines that carry this much-needed oil to American consumers.