The Kern River field. They have been doing that for just over 3 decades. I've done a little work out there. It can be an amazing place to drive through. Like going back through time of oil history.
Posted on 12/15/2009 5:03:06 AM PST by thackney
Heavy oil is thick as honey and hard to pump out of the ground. That's where most of it has stayed while lighter crude is available.
But heavy oil may be the future of Alaska's petroleum development, despite higher costs and more environmental concerns…
…
Lawmakers will be interested in knowing whether some of the North Slope's vast natural gas resources would be best used helping to reach heavy oil fields.
"If we want to develop new sources within known fields, then you have to talk about heavy oil," said Paskvan, D-Fairbanks.
…
The North Slope has an estimated 30 billion barrels of "in place" heavy oil, up to one-fifth of which could be recoverable, said Kurt Gibson, division deputy director.
Heavy oil production, however, takes a lot of work. Companies need special submersible pumps or other equipment to draw it through thousands of feet of rock and toward production facilities.
…
But since development of heavy oil can often use existing drilling sites, the environmental footprint might be smaller than expanding for more light oil, said Pam Miller, an Arctic specialist at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.
…
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Doesn’t it take a lot of energy to break that stuff down to usable fuel and driving the cost up a lot?
Yes, it does take more energy to produce, transport and refine.
At $30/bbl it would not be considered.
At $70/bbl it is worth considering.
At $100/bbl it will be produced.
All those price assumed to be sustained for years. Short term pricing is too quick for the decade this would take for substantial production quantities.
Note that some “heavier” oil is already in production.
Also note that some of the shallower Alaskan Oil fields are very cold. Once heated, some issues go away.
Thanks
Drill baby Drill!
Build a twin unit nuke plant and pump the steam down the holes to heat up and thin out the heavy crude.
CAn you imagine the outcry among the watermelons to see a nuke on the north slope???
A couple of the heavy fields on the Alaskan North Slope have been known for decades.
The Ugnu field has been drilled through for decades to reach warmer, lighter oil beneath it.
It has only been recent economic conditions and technical advances that it has been considered for production.
In the last few years a couple flow tests have been done on it.
Let's train the polar bears to run the nuke plants.
In some places on the north slope warm water from very deep wells is pumped to shallower, colder formations closer to the permafrost. After time the shallower formation is capable of flowing more oil with a greater recovery ratio of the oil in place.
All this happens thousands of feet below the surface and below the permafrost.
One of my teams helped design the facility to do this for BP.
Why do we need to heat the oil when Algore says the center of the earth is millions of degrees hot?
In California, one field near Bakersfield (I think there) has a big boiler that sends steam down the holes to break up the heavy crude to make it easier to bring to te surface.
I worked in a water injection field near Westbrook TX in one summer job I had being a roustabout. Being an engineering student, I would catch the engineers and pick their brains about what and how they were doing there.
Don’t they shoot hot water or steam down the holes to help warm and thin it before they bring it up also? I remember reading about some wells being looked at as a way to make it thinner and easier to pump, but it was a while ago I read it.
The Kern River field. They have been doing that for just over 3 decades. I've done a little work out there. It can be an amazing place to drive through. Like going back through time of oil history.
There are big heaters to warm produced fluid to help flow back to the processing centers.
The re-injected gas and miscible injectant is warmer than most fields due to compression.
The produced water gains heat through the processes of separation and reinjection.
I don’t know of a North Slope field that generates heat on the surface for the purpose of warming the field directly. But that doesn’t mean for sure a small unit doesn’t exist. I know it isn’t normally done on the North Slope (yet).
I do know steam assisted production is common in the in-situ production of the Alberta Oil Sands and Ken River, California. I would expect the process to become more common over time and continued high prices.
Kind of like driving through Kilgore or Texon. Old oil fields developed around te turn of the century can be fascinating to look at some of the old equipment there.
How is this heavy oil different from the oil in Venazuela? (sp)
Crude oil comes in more flavors than Baskin Robins. My apologies if I’m covering what you already know.
The two most common qualities measured are viscosity and sulfur.
API gravity is the measure of viscosity. Heavy oils are very thick; they have a higher percentage of long chain hydrocarbons and have more BTUs per barrel.
Light crude tends to contain more molecules directly available for gasoline and diesel.
Heavy crude needs more processing like cracking to break the long molecules into shorter, lighter ones.
Heavy is an arbitrary line drawn at 22 degrees API and below. Extra-Heavy starts at 10.
Each field is different and somewhere along this continuous scale. There is no magic grouping. Most of Venezuela’s reserves are heavy and sour but they represent a smaller portion of their daily production. Most of their fields that first went into production were lighter and easier to process, just like California and Alaska.
I’ll post a link that shows crude oil qualities from around the world. It will group them by area. If you look at it you will see more what I mean.
Main Crude Oils listed by Grade (table)
http://www.bernd-bronowski.de/sides/crude_az.htm
World Crude Qualities (chart)
http://www.meglobaloil.com/MARPOL.pdf
I found something that may answer your question concerning a comparison of Alaska Heavy Oil to Venezuela Heavy Oil. This compares samples from each, along with other areas. The thing to remember is it varies from field to field in the same area.
Heavy oils: A worldwide overview
http://crusher.mines.edu/pdf/TLE_Hinkle-Final.pdf
Hey man you are the guru - thanks for the link. Too bad we can’t get a few more people with big voices to see that energy is all around us and that WORK will allow us to drill, build and make more jobs even as the costs change what we have paid into what we will pay.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.