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Saskatchewan Oil

RoperAB

Well-known member
Have any on here heard of any recent huge oil finds in SK?
I have been hearing stuff but nothing specific.
I know about the oil shale< kerogen> in the Pasquia Hills area, near Hudson Bay. But that nothing really huge is it?
Im also wondering if this new strike thats rumored is just new technology to extract what was previously unextractable? Example There has recently been renewed interest in the SK oil sands because of the use of VAPEX <new tech>to recover it. This could boost reserves significantly.
I have also heard that they are just on the verge of being able to convert coal into oil. This would certainly put SK on the world map as an oil producer! Is there any truth to any of this?
Is there a new strike or is it just a combination of new technology?
 

Maple Leaf Angus

Well-known member
RoperAB said:
I have also heard that they are just on the verge of being able to convert coal into oil. This would certainly put SK on the world map as an oil producer! Is there any truth to any of this?
Is there a new strike or is it just a combination of new technology?

Roper, I googled it and found that there is a pile of info about it. It does seem plausible. Below is one link that was interesting.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4249
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Maple Leaf Angus said:
RoperAB said:
I have also heard that they are just on the verge of being able to convert coal into oil. This would certainly put SK on the world map as an oil producer! Is there any truth to any of this?
Is there a new strike or is it just a combination of new technology?

Roper, I googled it and found that there is a pile of info about it. It does seem plausible. Below is one link that was interesting.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4249

HOLY $h#t! EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THAT LINK!!!!!!!!!
Gosh almighty that could change everything!
$10 a barrel oil!
Plus the US also has huge reserves of the stuff. This could end the war!
You see here is the problem, what government liberal or conservative doesnt get elected due to high finance from big American oil companies?
This would be a nightmare for outfits like Haliburton.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
I seriously doubt if it would be a nightmare for Haliburton.
They will adapt. That company has been around for so long...
I grew up with people who worked for Haliburton and they
are a good company to be with.

I feel bad when Haliburton gets picked on when they are doing
a dangerous job that hardly any other US company could do.
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
You feel ' sorry' for Halliburton?????? :shock: :shock: ROTFLMAO

Do you feel sorry enough to realize that they have charged 2x's the amount of the cost of a project just in the consultation fees alone???

And YOU my dear lady are paying that overcharge...just like me and everyone else in the US.

I got zip for my contribution...what did you get?
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
South Africa did Coal gassification recently as well, during the embargo's during apartheid in the 80's... The US has so much of the worlds coal reserves it isn't even funny... People are drilling wells for Ethanol plants around here and hitting coal veins.. The stuff is deep in Illinois and more expensive to get to than the stuff out in Eastern Montana but if the price of coal ever goes up they will hit it, and if coal gassification ever happens the price of coal will rise......

I know they were talking about it 3-4 years ago on the radio around here and said we were probably 10 years out from being able to do it economically in the states... It was interesting but it was also a while ago so I can't remember much of it.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
kola are you just guessing or do you have 'proof positive' of
your statement?

Also, if Haliburton didn't go to Iraq, what company could have?
Do you know of one?

Remember about supply and demand?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
IL Rancher said:
South Africa did Coal gassification recently as well, during the embargo's during apartheid in the 80's... The US has so much of the worlds coal reserves it isn't even funny... People are drilling wells for Ethanol plants around here and hitting coal veins.. The stuff is deep in Illinois and more expensive to get to than the stuff out in Eastern Montana but if the price of coal ever goes up they will hit it, and if coal gassification ever happens the price of coal will rise......

I know they were talking about it 3-4 years ago on the radio around here and said we were probably 10 years out from being able to do it economically in the states... It was interesting but it was also a while ago so I can't remember much of it.

If I remember my figures right Montana coal could provide the energy needs of the entire country for something like 500-600 years-- add in the North Dakota and Wyoming coal and it goes to over 1000 years even with the increased populations and usage...But coal will never be utilized as long as the politicians support the Oil industries lobby of raping of the citizenry....

And if you've ever been to the Colstrip area and looked at (flown over) the reclamation that has been done on the open pit mines- you'd be amazed...Some of those mines look like elegant golf courses and all the cattle and wildlife are grazing the reclaimed areas instead of the native sagebrush......
 

jigs

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
Also, if Haliburton didn't go to Iraq, what company could have?
Do you know of one?
I am sure old Bill Clinton would step up to the plate and form a company to rip off the govt and rape the tax payer in a heart beat.
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
Don't you people EVER watch the news....and I don't mean CNN...I heard this on the beloved FOX.

HB is under investigation for just what I stated. It's quiet a headline. I'll see if I can get you a link since ya'll can't be bothered with trivial stuff like ripping off you & me!
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
FOX news is also reporting that Exxon Oil made their second highest quarterly profits last quarter- $10.49 Billion profits...

While prices of homes dropped the most in 36 years- nearly 10%....

So while consumers were paying around $3.00 a gallon to make Exxon richer, their value in their property was dropping by 10%...

Some of the FOX talking heads are predicting that come spring the true economy and the effects of the energy prices and huge deficit will start showing up with large declining home values along with a pronounced increase in inflation resulting in the Fed raising interest rates... :roll: :(
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Hey OT, did you get that letter from Don Sterhan?
He was talking about Conrad Burns supporting a bill in May
of 2006 that allowed
small business owners to band together to purchase health
insurance for their families and employees. He said that would
level the playing field for small businesses, who currently must
operate by a different set of rules than Fortune 500 companies
and unions.

He says Conrad wants to help and is in a postition to help.

Just thought you might like to know, if you didn't receive the letter.

I value your opinion, but in the case of Burns vs Tester, I hope you
realize that voting against something by voting for the other party
can result in circumstances that you won't like down the road. FWIW.
 

katrina

Well-known member
When I lived in Kimbal Ne, I had friends that worked for Haliburton and they were the kindest, nicest bunch you could ever meet. We had lots of fun. They got paid well and had a good working relationship with the company and each other.........
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Faster horses said:
Hey OT, did you get that letter from Don Sterhan?
He was talking about Conrad Burns supporting a bill in May
of 2006 that allowed
small business owners to band together to purchase health
insurance for their families and employees. He said that would
level the playing field for small businesses, who currently must
operate by a different set of rules than Fortune 500 companies
and unions.

He says Conrad wants to help and is in a postition to help.

Just thought you might like to know, if you didn't receive the letter.

I value your opinion, but in the case of Burns vs Tester, I hope you
realize that voting against something by voting for the other party
can result in circumstances that you won't like down the road. FWIW.

Nope- I guess since I didn't send Conrad any money this year I'm not on his mailing list anymore :roll: Cause I should be on the Repubs mailing list since I did donate to a couple Republican local candidates- and I still get letters from both Rehberg and Bush....

I did get a phone call from Burns' campaign the other day that made me mad... The caller that could hardly speak English (maybe it was his Quatemalan maintenance mans wife :???: :lol: The one he forgot to check if he was legal or not :roll: ) said they were "conducting a poll"...After I said that I couldn't vote for Burns again, she gives me a negative statement against Tester- then asks again if I was voting for Tester...When I said I still wasn't voting for Burns- she came out with more comments against Tester... This went on until I hung up...

And the comical thing is today I see Burns complaining in the paper about the Montana Firemans Assn doing phone campaigning for Tester...Talk about hypocritical....

Ain't going to matter because I already voted- (already over 1000 absentee voters out of about 4,000 voters in county)-- But the next week is going to get downright nasty....Best one I heard today was a story thats going around the Rez- that the reason Conrad is so crooked is that he's a Missouri relative of Jesse James family... :roll: :wink:
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
I don't know about 1000 years OT but there are sick amounts of coal in this country and it is dirt cheap.. Okay, not dirt cheap but i know folks looking at Ethanol plants are looking at coal fired boilers instead of natural gas because of the cost benifit...

Here is a odd thing I heard once, came from my fertilizer seller after it showed on our tests that we were sulphur deficient... Said that way back when, before the scrubbers and reduced sulpher fuels, they got enough sulfer in the rain to recharge the soils "naturally"... Darn greenies costing me money again :wink: :lol: :lol: didn't bother me too much honestly but found that to be an interesting consequence allbeit with antecdotal evidence.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
IL Rancher said:
I don't know about 1000 years OT but there are sick amounts of coal in this country and it is dirt cheap.. Okay, not dirt cheap but i know folks looking at Ethanol plants are looking at coal fired boilers instead of natural gas because of the cost benifit...

Heres an article off Partners for affordable Energy website...Interesting the comments about the Montana Wyoming coal being shipped east...My son works for the BNSF railroad- mostly running between Glendive and Forsyth- sometimes Forsyth and the mines-- anyway the railroad hasn't hardly been able to hire and train people fast enough to keep all the increased trains running- and most are coaltrains.....There is talk of them building another complete line along side the old one- both the southern route and the hi-line route to accomodate all the increased traffic...

The Montana Governor is pushing building additional power plants in Montana and then shipping the power south to the Phoenix, L.A. areas so we can capitalize on some more of the industry jobs within state...And a Canadian company is proposing building the power lines south to furnish the power....



-------------------------------------------------

October 27, 2006


Coal-based electricity is abundant in the United States - thanks to huge domestic coal reserves.

Without these readily accessible coal deposits, electricity prices would certainly be sharply higher, resulting in an uncertain, less competitive U.S. economy.


Reliance on imported energy remains risky
Persistent instability in the Middle East should teach us that excessive reliance on foreign oil is a costly proposition - in political, military and economic terms.




Yet, we import more foreign oil today - about 60 percent of the oil used domestically - than we did in the 1970s when the Arab Oil Embargo shocked our economy into a tailspin.

Despite our best efforts to conserve, our nation's total energy needs are increasing because of continued population and economic growth.

Looking ahead, much of this growth in demand will be satisfied by electricity, the engine of the digital economy (computers, the Internet, etc.) while raising the operating efficiencies of businesses through new electrically powered technologies.
U.S. coal reserves plentiful to meet growing energy needs
The United States is blessed with plentiful domestic resources, including coal, to generate electricity - and new technologies are allowing us to meet the growing demand for electricity more efficiently.

Over half of the electricity produced in the United States is generated by coal-based power plants. Coal is affordable. Supplies are plentiful. And, the United States possesses 275 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, or about one-fourth of the world's total.




U.S. coal reserves are equivalent to four times the oil of Saudi Arabia, 1.3 times the oil of OPEC and equal to all the world's proved oil reserves.

The largest single increment of energy in the world is America's recoverable reserves of coal, secure within the borders of our country.
Minnesota heavily depends on domestic coal-based electricity
Minnesota relies on coal-based generation to supply about 65 percent of its electricity needs. This power is either produced within the state, or imported from neighboring states, such as North Dakota and South Dakota, via high-voltage transmission lines.

Coal from Montana and Wyoming is transported by rail to fuel Minnesota's and South Dakota's coal-based plants. North Dakota exports a majority of the power it produces and much of it travels to Minnesota over high-voltage power lines.


North Dakota has huge reserves of lignite, an important domestic resource
The North Dakota Geological Survey estimates that recoverable lignite reserves are 25 billion tons - or enough to supply the state's coal-based power plants for over 800 years at current rates of consumption.

North Dakota's lignite reserves are almost three times the entire proved reserve of oil in the United States, and about equal to the reserves of four OPEC mainstays - Qatar, Indonesia, Libya and Nigeria.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Thursday, August 17, 2006

By Patrick Barta, The Wall Street Journal



SECUNDA, South Africa -- Every day, conveyor belts haul about 120,000 metric tons of coal into an industrial complex here two hours east of Johannesburg.

The facility -- resembling a nuclear power plant, with concrete silos looming over nearby potato farms -- superheats the coal to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It adds steam and oxygen, cranks up the pressure, and pushes the coal through a series of chemical reactions.

Then it spits out something extraordinary: 160,000 barrels of oil a day.

For decades, scientists have known how to convert coal into a liquid that can be refined into gasoline or diesel fuel. But everyone thought the process was too expensive to be practical.

The lone exception was South Africa, a one-time pariah state that had huge reserves of coal and, thanks to anti-apartheid sanctions, limited access to foreign oil. Sasol Ltd., a partly state-owned company, built several coal-to-liquids plants, including the ones at Secunda, and became the world's leading purveyor of coal-to-liquids technology.

Now, oil prices are above $70 a barrel, and Sasol has emerged as the key player at the center of the world's latest alternative-energy boom.

China is building a coal-to-oil plant costing several billion dollars in Inner Mongolia and may add as many as 27 facilities -- including some with Sasol's help -- over the next several years, according to a recent tally by Credit Suisse.

In the U.S., the Defense Department is studying coal-to-oil technology as a way to reduce the American military's dependence on Middle Eastern crude oil. And the National Coal Council, an industry association, is pushing for government incentives to help generate some 2.6 million barrels of liquid fuel a day from coal by 2025. That would satisfy some 10 percent of America's expected oil demand that year. The plan would require 475 million tons of coal a year, which represents more than 40 percent of current annual U.S. production. Industry officials believe America's coal reserves are big enough to allow for the extra production.

Coal-to-liquids "is not going to replace oil," says Lean Strauss, a Sasol executive who directs the company's overseas energy business. "But it's an important substitute. It is one of the solutions to energy security."

In June, two senators from coal-producing states, Barack Obama of Illinois and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, introduced a bill to offer loan guarantees and tax incentives for U.S. coal-to-liquid plants.

Sasol has found a particularly receptive audience in Montana's Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, who says he carries a lump of coal and a vial of liquefied coal with him at all times. He is lobbying coal companies and others to build coal-to-liquid plants across his state, which has some of the biggest coal reserves in the U.S.

Current estimates indicate the world has just 41 years of known oil reserves and 65 years of natural-gas supplies. It has enough coal reserves to last an estimated 155 years, with some of the largest reserves in the two biggest oil-consuming countries, the U.S. and China.

It's far from clear, however, that the world would be better off -- economically or environmentally -- by burning more coal to fuel cars and trucks.

One problem is that coal-to-oil projects are extremely expensive. A single plant capable of producing about 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day -- less than 0.5 percent of America's daily oil diet -- would cost an estimated $6 billion or more to build.

Energy analysts reckon that some coal-to-liquids projects can offer an acceptable return on investment when oil is priced as low as $30 or $35 a barrel, though such ventures might require government tax incentives to reduce operating costs. It seems likely that oil prices will stay above that level for a while, but the longer-term outlook is anyone's guess. An earlier flurry of interest in coal-to-oil facilities in the U.S. during the Carter administration in the late 1970s died after oil prices collapsed.

Coal-to-oil projects also pose serious environmental questions. When the South African facility superheats coal and turns it into a gas, one of the main waste products is carbon dioxide, thought to be a significant cause of global warming.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy group, estimates that the production and use of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other fuels from crude oil release about 27.5 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. The production and use of a gallon of liquid fuel originating in coal emit about 49.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, they estimate. Even some boosters of the coal-to-oil plants describe them as carbon-dioxide factories that produce energy on the side.

"Before deciding whether to invest scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of billions of dollars in a new industry like coal-to-liquids, we need a much more serious assessment of whether this is an industry that should proceed at all," said David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a recent U.S. Senate hearing.

Coal-to-oil is one of several promising but potentially polluting technologies that are receiving new attention amid high oil prices. Energy companies are trying to unlock natural gas trapped in shale and other difficult rock formations. They're also tapping oil-soaked sands in Canada and so-called heavy oils in politically challenging places such as Venezuela. Environmentalists fear these new sources will outshine conservation as the way to address the world's growing thirst for energy.

In South Africa, environmental groups say Sasol's facilities have emitted huge volumes of carbon dioxide and pollutants, including sulfur dioxide. They say these have caused a host of respiratory problems in nearby communities. Sasol says its emissions of these pollutants are small compared to emissions by other companies' coal-burning electricity plants in the region.

Sasol officials acknowledge their facilities emit greenhouse gases and that building more coal-to-liquids facilities around the world "could have potentially significant implications, in the long run, for our commitment to reducing carbon intensity," according to a recent company report on its social and environmental programs.

Sasol says it plans to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions per ton of product by 10 percent by 2015. Sasol and many other coal-to-oil proponents say that future coal-to-liquids plants can be built with newer technologies that trap carbon dioxide and store it, sharply reducing their emissions.

To many South Africans, Sasol is a huge success story. The company's daily production now meets about 30 percent of South Africa's transport-fuel needs. The country's 50-rand bank note even features a picture of one of Sasol's plants.

Sasol's share price has more than tripled over the past three years. Analysts estimate it earned about $2 billion in the year ended June 30, about 35 percent higher than the year before -- such a sharp rise that South African authorities are contemplating a "windfall tax" on the company.

Coal-to-oil technology dates back to the 1920s, when two German chemists, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, developed a process to convert coal into a gas and then use it to make synthetic fuels. Coal-to-oil technology helped fuel the Nazi war machine, which lacked access to sufficient crude oil. International oil companies also experimented with the process but put it aside because oil was cheaper.

South Africa took a different view. The country lacked oil, but had enormous deposits of coal, much of which had limited market value because of its poor quality. In 1950, the government set up Sasol as a state-owned company and authorized funding for its first project, a coal-to-liquids facility called Sasolburg in the South African countryside.

When oil prices soared in the 1970s, South African officials decided to up the ante. They lent Sasol $6 billion to build two new facilities at Secunda -- each 10 times as large as Sasolburg. The government also privatized the company, listing it on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1979. (The government maintains a 23.5 percent stake).

By the time the facilities were completed in the early 1980s, international oil prices were collapsing. The project was nonetheless a success for the white-dominated apartheid government because international sanctions were restricting South Africa's ability to buy foreign oil. The plants managed to stay profitable by continually boosting efficiency and expanding their end products to include plastics, fertilizers and explosives.

Besides the government loans, Sasol at various times received cash payments from the government when oil prices fell below a certain level. It eventually paid back the loans and stopped receiving subsidies for its coal-to-oil business by 2000.

Today, Secunda is a buzzing industrial hub with 16,000 employees, miles of interlocking pipes and cables, and eight colossal silos. The silos, each big enough to contain a football field, cool steam involved in the conversion process. Fuel trucks wait along the edge of the facility to fill up with gasoline. Nearby mines produce more than 40 million metric tons of coal a year -- as much as all of Illinois.

Outside the plant gates, Secunda has a boomtown feel. It has some 35,000 people, a BMW dealership and a multistory casino hotel called Graceland designed to evoke the "grand old age of Colonial America."

A growing focus for Sasol is marketing its technology overseas. The company first tried to do so in the 1990s, after apartheid ended, but executives found doors slammed in their faces. Oil was trading for less than $25 a barrel at the time. "We sat in corridors waiting for meetings that never happened because they didn't even know who Sasol was," recalls Pat Davies, Sasol's chief executive.

Sasol made its first inroads in countries such as Qatar that have big stockpiles of hard-to-transport natural gas. These countries were interested in Sasol's technology for turning natural gas into liquid fuel.

As oil prices began to perk up, Sasol drew interest on the coal front from China, with its big coal reserves and energy needs. In marketing materials produced for Chinese government officials and investors, Sasol offers a simple message: By 2015, 70 percent of China's oil imports will come from the Middle East. Yet the country has coal reserves equivalent to more than half the oil in the Middle East.

By 2004, Chinese energy planners began meeting with Sasol executives in Beijing to discuss the coal-to-oil process. That was followed by a series of meetings with policy makers and Chinese companies, capped by a gathering in Cape Town in June attended by visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Coal-generated pollution is emerging as a major environmental crisis in China. Yet Chinese officials are apparently willing to accept more coal use if it means improving the country's energy security, especially if local companies can design facilities to use relatively clean-burning varieties of coal.

Shenhua Group, China's largest coal producer, has started work on China's first commercial coal-to-oil facility, designed eventually to produce as many as 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Although that plant uses a different process from Sasol's at Secunda, Shenhua officials are in negotiations with Sasol to jointly build at least one additional 80,000-barrel-a-day plant using the South African company's technique.

While Sasol would charge a fee for licensing its technology, its main interest is to share ownership in the facilities once they're built because it wants a share of the long-term profits. In China, Sasol is asking for a 50 percent equity stake in the projects. A Shenhua official says negotiations are going smoothly and the company hopes to begin construction soon.

In Montana, at least two companies, including the world's largest private-sector coal company, Peabody Energy Corp. of St. Louis, have said they are looking at potential coal-to-oil sites. Montana's Gov. Schweitzer says any excess carbon dioxide from a facility could be given to oil companies to be injected back into the ground to enhance recovery from old wells.

Bringing Sasol on board is critical, says Gov. Schweitzer. He says Wall Street banks want the South Africans to play a role because Sasol is the only company with a track record in the business. To woo Sasol executives, he says, he took them on a flight over Montana coal country last year.

"These are the guys everyone wants to take to the prom," Gov. Schweitzer says.

Sasol officials say they're interested in Montana and other potential sites in the U.S., provided they can find a suitable partner and receive tax or other incentives.

Coal-to-oil "is coming to the United States," Gov. Schweitzer proclaims. When it does, he says, other countries "will be scrambling to protect their oil supplies -- and we'll be energy independent."
 

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