One of the many reasons why ethanol is a poor choice....Tar Sands are the easiest way to increase oil, though difficult to get out of the sand. They are profitable at anything over 60 dollar oil...Fuel cells? ANything really.
yeah we aren't short on oil, we are short on cheap oil....as for profitability on the tar sands due to the fact that you have to mine it and than process it....as those costs go up (mining involves using oil, heavy equiptment, etc to extract it although open pit mining isn't too energy intensive) so to does the cost to mine the tar sands....as well as the energy input that goes into the processing steps.
Also you have the "global warming" issues as this isn't an environmentally friendly way to go about obtaining oil.
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here's a little background on that tar sands
Tar sands (also referred to as oil sands) are a combination of clay, sand, water, and
bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil. Tar sands can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques or produced in-situ by underground heating or other tertiary recovery processes.
Tar sands are mined and processed to generate oil similar to oil pumped from conventional oil wells, but extracting oil from tar sands is more complex than conventional oil recovery. Oil sands recovery processes include
extraction and
separation systems to separate the bitumen from the clay, sand, and water that make up the tar sands. Bitumen also requires additional
upgrading before it can be refined. Because it is so viscous (thick), it also requires dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines.
Tar Sands Resources
Most of the world's oil (more than
5 trillion barrels) is in the form of tar sands, although it is not all recoverable. While tar sands are found in many places worldwide, the largest deposits in the world are found in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, which each have about one-third of the world's total tar sands resources, and much of the rest is found in various countries in the Middle East. In the United States, tar sands resources are primarily concentrated in
Eastern Utah, mostly on public lands. The in-place tar sands oil resources in Utah are estimated at
12 to 20 billion barrels.
The Tar Sands Industry
Currently, oil is not produced from tar sands on a significant commercial level in the United States; in fact, only Canada has a large-scale commercial tar sands industry, though a small amount of oil from tar sands is produced commercially in Venezuela. The Canadian tar sands industry is centered in Alberta, and more than one million barrels of synthetic oil are produced from these resources per day. Currently, tar sands represent about 40% of Canada's oil production, and output is expanding rapidly. The tar sands are extracted both by
mining and
in situ recovery methods (see below). Canadian tar sands are different than U.S. tar sands in that Canadian tar sands are water wetted, while U.S tar sands are hydrocarbon wetted. As a result of this difference, extraction techniques for the tar sands in Utah will be different than for those in Alberta.
Recently, prices for crude oil have again risen to levels that may make tar-sands-based oil production in the United States commercially attractive, and both government and industry are interested in pursuing the development of tar sands oil resources as an
alternative to conventional oil.
Tar Sands Extraction and Processing
Tar sands deposits near the surface can be recovered by
open pit mining techniques. New methods introduced in the 1990s considerably improved the efficiency of tar sands mining, thus reducing the cost. These systems use large hydraulic and electrically powered shovels to dig up tar sands and load them into enormous trucks that can carry up to 320 tons of tar sands per load.
After mining, the tar sands are transported to an
extraction plant, where a hot water process separates the bitumen from sand, water, and minerals. The separation takes place in
separation cells. Hot water is added to the sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is agitated. The combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from the oil sand, and causes tiny air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets, that float to the top of the separation vessel, where the bitumen can be skimmed off. Further processing removes residual water and solids. The bitumen is then transported and eventually upgraded into synthetic crude oil. About
two tons of tar sands are required to produce
one barrel of oil. Roughly 75% of the bitumen can be recovered from sand. After oil extraction, the spent sand and other materials are then returned to the mine, which is eventually reclaimed.
In-situ production methods are used on bitumen deposits buried too deep for mining to be economical. These techniques include
steam injection, solvent injection, and firefloods, in which oxygen is injected and part of the resource burned to provide heat. So far steam injection has been the favoured method. Some of these extraction methods require large amounts of both
water and
energy (for heating and pumping).
Both mining and processing of tar sands involve a variety of
environmental impacts, such as global warming and greenhouse gas emissions, disturbance of mined land; impacts on wildlife and air and water quality. The development of a commercial tar sands industry in the U.S. would also have significant
social and economic impacts on local communities. Of special concern in the relatively arid western United States is the large amount of water required for tar sands processing; currently, tar sands extraction and processing require
several barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced, though some of the water can be recycled.
hno:
plus home builder shorts been treating me really well for a while now.
