Saudi Aramco's core area in Dhahran city

The world's insatiable demand for petroleum is about to cause more drilling and pumping in Saudi Arabia, as the country is set to begin setting up shop on the Khurais oil field. A ten-billion dollar investment will be made which is expected to allow the nation to pump one and a half billion additional barrels of oil per day by the end of next year. The project, which is already expected to begin shipping over a million barrels of oil beginning next June, is a massive undertaking.

Saudi Arabia has, to this point, resisted producing additional oil, as it believes there is no shortage at all. Instead, the country points to the low value of the U.S. dollar and unrealistic speculators are the major driving forces behind the record-high oil prices. Still, the country remains extremely important to major oil-consuming nations such as the United States as it currently produces eleven-percent of the world's daily supply of oil and is the only country left with relatively easy-to-tap oil reserves.

[Source: AP via The Detroit News]

Oil sands mining transforms the landscape Photo: David Dodge, Pembina Institute

American mayors attending their annual meeting in Florida this week adopted a resolution that "supports federal legislation that prohibits government use of unconventional or synthetic fuels" derived from CO₂-intensive sources such as oil sands or shales and "encourages" mayors to boycott the use of these fuels in their own municipal fleets. Although it seems to have gone largely unmentioned in the American press, the same can not be said of the Canadian media. There, newspapers and and other media outlets are crammed with articles and editorials denouncing the decision with headlines such as, "Oilsands boycott bad for U.S., premier warns" and "Critics say US mayors ignoring energy reality".

Already on the defensive on the domestic front after the deaths of hundreds of ducks from mining pollution and opposition to the Conservative-led federal governments willingness to sacrifice over a dozen lakes to tailings contamination, advocates for the mega-money oil sands projects seem none too happy to hear criticism emanating from South of the border. Their reminders that China and India would be only too happy to buy their "dirty" oil do seem a little over the top though since the resolution was more of a toothless wish than an actual ban. Text of the resolution after the jump.

[Source: CTV]

All sorts of people have been weighing in on the price-of-oil situation lately. Could the current price be a bubble waiting to burst or is it reflective of flat production levels mixed with the rising demand from India and China? If former Saudi Aramco executive, Sadad Al-Husseini, is right, $130 oil might be a bargain-basement price in the near future. It's his contention that the "proven" reserves that are claimed to exist by oil-producing countries are substantially inflated with "probable" reserves being added to the former figure, as well as tar and oil sands. How many non-existent barrels might there be? Try 300 billion.

Mr. Husseini makes the claim in an article in Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, disagreeing with that publication's numbers and "common methods" of reserve estimation. He says the estimates include "unconventional hydrocarbons, inaccessible oil accumulations and unconfirmed recoveries, none of which fit the current definitions of proven or probable reserves." An example he sites, according to our source article from NewsMax, is the 140 billion barrels of Canadian bitumen estimate that is often reported as "proven" reserves. He believes only a small fraction of that amount could be turned into a useful fuel.

Perhaps the oil-supply future will become more clear with the completion of a study this November by the International Energy Agency. They are considered a reliable source of oil information and are currently analyzing depletion rates and are talking with usually-secretive governments. We suspect that many "experts" will continue to weigh in on the topic long before the study's release.

[Source: NewsMax]

Honda's amazing little Cub, which started life with a tiny little four-stroke engine of just 50ccs, continues to build on its record of the most popular vehicle in the world. Just how many tiny-engined Hondas could there be in the world, you ask? How about sixty million. That's certainly a staggering number, but what is surprising is that the machine is selling better now than ever. Last year alone, Honda was able to move an amazing 4.7 million Cubs, despite the fact that they are not sold in America any longer. As our car-obsessed buddies at Autoblog point out, there are twice as many Cubs roaming the world than F-Series pickups and nearly three times as many as the original Volkswagen Beetle. If you'd enjoy owning one but live in the U.S., fear not. A trip to your local classifieds or eBay will surely yield a few friendly Hondas for your perusal.

With all the attention being paid to alternative fuels, it is not surprising that Big Oil should launch a PR counteroffensive. The American Petroleum Institute (API), advertising itself as "the People of America's Oil and Natural Gas Industry," is running a new TV ad, Delivering America's Energy Security, which can be viewed at their website at energytomorrow.com. Their contention is that there is still so much oil under America that we can achieve energy independence without getting off oil for a long time. According to API, there are "112 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil beneath U.S. federal lands and coastal waters. That's enough oil to fuel 60 million cars for 60 years." Unfortunately, we already seem to have about 250,000,000 passenger vehicles in the U.S. And perhaps we don't have 60 years to reverse the effects of 100 years of gasoline-powered internal combustion.

[Source: American Petroleum Institute]

When people think of South Dakota, assuming they think of the state at all, they probably remember the Black Hills, or Mount Rushmore. That may soon change. The largest supplier of crude oil to the United States is Canada and the majority of that oil comes from the oil sands of Alberta. Hyperion Resources has just begun the process of getting approval to build a new oil refinery in Elk Point, South Dakota specifically to process that oil. The first phase of the Hyperion Energy Center is planned to refine 400,000 barrels of oil sands crude per day. The plant will produce ultra-low-sulfur gasoline and diesel fuels.

The refinery is designed to be highly integrated, re-processing many of byproducts of the refining process to produce other necessary inputs. For example, petroleum coke from the distillation process will be used to make hydrogen, electricity and steam. The refinery is also being designed to incorporate the latest pollution control technology as well as carbon capture and sequestration. Construction of the $10 billion facility is expected to start in 2009, with full operation starting in 2014-15.

As advanced as this refinery might be, just imagine what new non-fossil fuel technology could be created with that $10 billion.

[Source: Hyperion Resources, thanks to Mark for the tip]

Petro-Canada and their partners in Fort Hills Energy L.P. are moving ahead with engineering and design work on a new oil-sands development in northern Alberta that could ultimately cost $25 billion. If construction of the new facility is approved next year, production is scheduled to start in late 2011 with 140,000 barrels per day of synthetic crude oil. Once all the phases of the new project are finished in 2015 capacity will be about 280,000 barrels per day. Just imagine the progress that could be made on batteries, cellulosic biofuels, fuel cells and overall efficiency with the $25 billion!

[Source: Petro-Canada]

Following the Challenge-X presentation presentation at General Motors headquarters last week, a group of bloggers including myself, Matt Kelly of The Next Gear, Lyle Dennis of gm-volt.com, Todd Kaho of Green Car Journal, Scott Anderson of Hydrogen Forecast, Philip Proefrock of Ecogeek, and Matt Mayer of GroovyGreen.com were invited to sit down to dinner with Nick Zielinski and Gary Smyth of General Motors.

Nick is the Chief Engineer for the Volt program and Gary is the Director of Powertrain Systems Research and Development. Each will play a major role in shaping the direction and leading the teams that define the future of transportation at GM. We had a wide ranging discussion that covered topics ranging from a certain concept car as it advances toward production, battery and engine technology, various fuels including coal to liquid and more. I'm not providing a transcript for this one because of the number people in the discussion, and the length but it's definitely worth listening too. Unfortunately a jazz band started playing in the next room about 40 minutes in and that lasts about twenty minutes but you can still hear the discussion. The whole recording runs a few minutes shy of two hours and it's unedited.

Lyle gives his take on the discussion here, and you can listen to the whole thing here.

There is a ridiculously small number of people who have had their lives transformed into a movie. There number of people who have seen their lives spun into a nine-minute corporate commercial is even smaller.
Billed as "A story inspired by real events," the Shell Films commercial "Eureka" has been available for a while, but I hadn't seen it until this month's WIRED arrived. The issue is polybagged with a copy of the film on DVD. I figured I could spend nine minutes of my life I'll never get back on the agitprop, and let AutoblogGreen readers know if it's worth their time. It's not.

The film isn't poorly filmed or executed in any way – I've been to enough film festivals to know that it's easy to make uninspired short films – it's just not really fun to watch a well-lit press release. I'll summarize the film – with spoilers – and also put the YouTube stream of the movie (the clip above is the trailer) in case you want to decide for yourself after the jump. You can also watch the film over on the Shell website.

Related:

• Cal Poly wins Shell Eco-Marathon with 1,902.7 mpg!
• Shell exec says oil companies must work together with car companies
• Guess who made $1,252 a second, every second last year?
• Shell plans to quadruple Canadian oil sands production

[Source: Shell, WIRED, YouTube]

Oil sands bitumen extraction cell - Wikipedia

The western Canadian province of Alberta comprises less than ten percent of the country's population but is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, due primarily to oil sands production. Extracting usable oil from tar sands requires a lot of heat, which mostly comes from burning natural gas. With the huge expansion in production that is planned over the next decade, greenhouse gas emissions that are already forty percent over their Kyoto accord targets, are expected to grow by another thirty percent.

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner is now trying to find ways to make reductions in the emissions. Unfortunately, new regulations recently enacted by the Alberta government won't have much effect anytime soon. Some of the newest and biggest emitters have been given a nine year grace period to meet their reduction targets. If anything, new and large scale emitters should be on the cutting edge of making reductions. After all they have the greatest potential impact.

[Source: Calgary Herald]

Thanks to the increased cost of crude oil in recent years, there have been moves to make big expansions in oil production in northern Alberta, Canada. Alberta has some of the largest known petroleum reserves in the world, but unfortunately much of it is locked up in tar sands that need processing to extract the crude. The oil separation process uses hot water, and heating the water, takes energy. Traditionally oil sands production burned natural gas, and lots of it to heat the water, which of course means lots of CO2 emissions.

Now a consortium of oil companies called GeoPower in the Oil Sands (GeoPOS) wants to try a different approach. Oil sands production accounts for one-third of all natural gas consumption in Alberta, and that will increase dramatically in the coming years as production is increased. GeoPOS will be drilling a test well to evaluate geothermal energy as means to heat the water. The nuclear industry had been hoping build reactors in the region to supply energy for heating the water. Geothermal could provide the same constant energy source, as nuclear and unlike solar and wind power. Compared to a coal fired power plant geothermal produces only 0.1 kilograms of carbon per megawatt hour of generated electricity, as opposed to 185 kilograms. Geothermal would also avoid the waste disposal issues of nuclear power. Follow the Read link to learn more.

[Source: Toronto Star]