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This portable
crusher works
at the mine
face
Oil from
sand
I
6,000
CAPP
Actual
Forecast
Oil sands production
5,000
4,000
3,000
Oil sands in production
and under construction
2,000
1,000
Convetional oil
0
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
figure 1. Despite its rapid growth, Western Canadas production of bitumen from
oil sands will actually dip below last Junes moderate growth (MG) forecast over the
coming years. Conventional oil production will decline
Process technology
The main drivers for technology innovations in oil sands production are
a desire to reduce costs and environmental impacts. Operating costs vary
widely, but are currently in the range
of US$3035/bbl, says Stringham.
19
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about 10 API, is upgraded by delayedor fluid-coking to obtain a synthetic
crude of 2530 API for refining.
The downside of these operations is
that they use large volumes of water
and have created huge tailings ponds
that contain toxic residues. Air pollution is also a concern, and emissions of
carbon dioxide are a major issue (see
sidebar). In their defense, spokespersons for industry point out that they
recycle at least 90% of the water they
use, with zero discharge, and the net
water use averages roughly 4 barrels
per barrel of produced oil.
The popular process for in situ mining is steam-assisted gravity drainage
(SAGD). A horizontal well is drilled
into the oil formation, and a second,
producer well is drilled parallel to it
at a lower level. Steam is injected into
the upper well to liberate the bitumen, which is pumped out from the
producer well.
Benefits of in situ mining are that
the produced bitumen is clean, there
are no tailings, and water use is much
lower than those of operations based
on surface mining. Petro-Canada says
its net water use for SAGD (including
90% water recycling) is about 1/3 barrel of water per barrel of product.
On the other hand, energy use is
high and there are air emissions from
the steam boilers. Several new technologies are being developed and implemented to alleviate these problems
and to cut costs (see below).
Companies whose operations start
with mining are striving to improve efficiency throughout the process train.
At the beginning of the train, Suncor
has been using a mobile crusher at the
mine face for more than a year. Built
to Suncors specifications by MMD
(Summercotes, England), the tracked
unit can process 5,000 metric tons
per hour (m.t./h) and is linked to a
mobile slurry unit, thus reducing the
cost of truck haulage and reducing
air emissions. Suncor expects to have
two more mobile crushers operating
within three years.
Syncrude has designed a compact
slurrying unit for use with a mobile
crusher at the mine face and fieldtested a 4,000-m.t./h prototype, which
is about half the size of a commercial unit. The company is now doing
20
Toward mid-year, Alberta Energy (Edmonton, Alta.; www.gov.ab.ca) the provincial governments energy department, will award three to five contracts for pilot projects for
carbon capture and storage (CCS). Total funding is $2 billion (Canadian) and the goal
is to capture 5 m.t./yr of CO2 and develop a pipeline network to transport the gas for
use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or injection deep underground.
The CO2 initiative is welcomed by Stephen Kaufman, chairman of ICO2N (Calgary),
a group of some 20 industrial companies that studies CCS. In a recent report ICO2N
outlined a scheme for a CCS system to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 million m.t./yr, at
an estimated cost of more than $100/ton.
Last year was the first full year of an Alberta regulation that requires companies
emitting more than 100,000 m.t./yr of CO2 to reduce their emissions by 12%. Those
that dont meet their targets may buy offsets or pay $15 for each ton over the limit. The
Alberta government was the first in North America to issue such a regulation.
Environmentalists complain that the regulation is based on intensity (for example, per
barrel or kWh), rather than placing a cap on plant emissions. The oil sands industry
produces about 4% of Canadas greenhouse gas emissions and this is set to triple to 12%
by 2020, says Simon Dyer, director for oil sands with the Pembina Institute (Calgary;
Pembina.org), a sustainable energy think tank. He adds that the regulation does not
encourage polluters to use CCS. Paying $15 a ton, when CCS may cost around $100/
ton, is a perverse incentive not to use CCS, he says.
Dyer notes that current oil sands operations cover about 600 km2 of land in northeastern Alberta and have the highest environmental impact of any oil production in the
world. As for land reclamation, he says that so far virtually no land has been certified as
reclaimed, nor any tailings ponds, which comprise about 130 km2 of toxic liquids.
Coking
Suncor
Newsfront
Marsulex Inc. (Toronto; www.marsulex.com). The NH3 reacts with SO2
to form an ammonium-sulfite slurry,
then air is bubbled through the slurry
to obtain ammonium sulfate, which is
sold to the fertilizer industry.
Syncrude chose this process because
ammonia is generated as a byproduct
in the hydrotreating plant, says Paul
Ibbotson, a process engineer. However,
trace compounds in the gas caused an
odor, so the company has been buying
NH3 until it finds a way to deal with
the offending compounds.
Suncor will install three trains of
paired delayed cokers for its planned
200,000-bbl/d expansion. The project,
dubbed Voyageur, will process bitumen
from a combination of surface- and in
situ-mined sources (Figure 2). The
company has been using some SAGD
for about five years, says a company
spokesman, but in the next 57 years
we expect it to account for about 50%
of our bitumen recovery.
Tailings treatment
figure 2.
The drawing shows
the layout of Suncor's
planned expansion
In situ processes
The conventional in situ mining process is SAGD, as noted earlier, but this
method uses large volumes of natural
gas to raise steam, and there are air
emissions from the steam boilers. A
number of companies are working on