When Canadian oil companies started mining oil sands in a northern stretch of the Alberta province in the late 1960s, few people, even in the oil business, paid attention. The petroleum was locked in thick black tarry paste called bitumen. The oil fields froze rock hard in the winter and thawed into an equipment sinking swamp come summer. But today, new technology and innovation have turned Albertas oil sands into the largest source of U.S. petroleum imports. The oil sands now hold 175 billion proven barrels of oil. Only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have larger proven oil reserves.
A key player in the oil sands story has been Suncor Energy, Canadas leading oil and gas company. For the last decade GE engineers and technology have been helping Suncor manage the environmental impacts of oil sands mining.
Click to enlarge
When oil companies first started mining oil sands, they strip mined bitumen deposits closest to the surface with giant earth movers and gargantuan trucks. But this method can recover only about 20 percent of the available oil. The rest lies deeper underground.
Suncor employed a new technique called SAGD (pronounced sag-dee), or steam-assisted gravity drainage, to extract the oil. SAGD is one of our biggest growth areas, says Suncor vice president Mike Krayacich. Its a big part of our goal to make one million barrels per day.
The method, which is sometimes also called in situ (in place in Latin), pumps hot steam through a pair of horizontal wells inside an underground bitumen reservoir. The steam melts the bitumen, and a mix of oil and water flows to the surface, where the oil is separated.
The leftover water, which contains a mixture of sand, fine clay, and residual bitumen produced during the extraction process, pools in tailings ponds. The Alberta government estimates that such ponds cover some 66 square miles of the province.
Suncor sat down with GE researchers and came up with a pilot program to separate oil and water more efficiently (to less than one part per million of oil), recycle tailings with GEs high-temperature ZeeWeed membrane technology, and reduce Suncors fresh water use. As a result, Suncor is now recovering oil with recycled tailings water.
GE then applied its water recycling technology downstream, and the two companies launched another pilot at Suncors Edmonton oil refinery. Half of the refinerys water now comes from recycled sources, allowing the plant to reduce fresh water use from the North Saskatchewan water by 1.6 million cubic meters per year.
The partnership also extends into renewable energy, with GE helping Suncor build wind farms. Suncors Wintering Hills project, powered by GE turbines, will supply electricity to 35,000 Alberta homes and cut the equivalent of 200,000 tons of CO2 per year. Weve realized at Suncor that collaborating with others can really help us build on one anothers ideas, test technologies at an accelerated rate, and really share what we are learning aggressively, says Gordon Lambert, Suncors vice president for sustainable development. Thats quite groundbreaking even on the global level for the oil and gas industry. You are seeing the oil sands becoming almost a significant pilot for a new way of companies working together.
Focus on heavy oil is also at the core of GEs new Global Innovation Center which opened this month in Calgary. You can explore the partnership between Suncor and GE here.
SOURCE
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.