Les USA peuvent multiplier les réserves de pétrole par 4

[Yves]

US says CO2 injection could quadruple oil reserves
Sat Mar 4, 2006 1:25 AM GMT
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By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, where oil production has been declining since the 1970s, has the potential to boost its oil reserves four-fold through advanced injection of carbon dioxide into depleted oilfields, the Department of Energy said on Friday.

The United States, the world's top oil consumer, has been successfully pumping small amounts or carbon dioxide into depleted oil and natural gas fields for 30 years to push out hard-to-reach fossil fuels.

The DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels through injection of carbon dioxide, the main gas that most scientists believe is warming the earth.

The DOE gave no time frame for when the extra barrels could be added.

The amount is about what the United States, at current demand, uses in 12 years.

Adding billions of barrels in reserves is dependent upon the availability of commercial CO2, the DOE's fossil energy office said.

"Next generation enhanced recovery with carbon dioxide was judged to be a 'game changer' in oil production, one capable of doubling recovery efficiency," DOE said in a release.

Up to 430 billion barrels could be added by pumping the gas into fields that have yet to be discovered, the DOE said.

COSTLY?

A United Nations report in September said that burying large amounts of carbon dioxide could play a big role in fighting global warming, but would be a costly fix.

Electricity prices could typically rise by 25 to 80 percent if power plant operators adopted the technology, according the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The United States is the No. 1 emitter of heat-trapping gases.

In 2001 U.S. President George W. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming which requires developed nations to cut greenhouse emissions. Bush said the pact would harm the economy. He favors using technology and voluntary methods of cutting emissions.

Capturing the greenhouse gases is an emerging technology. Power producers, anticipating future mandatory caps on gases most scientists believe are warming the earth, have been considering adding the technologies to their plants.

But because of the expense, none have yet been used commercially.

In Australia earlier this year, six of the world's major polluters led by United States pushed clean energy technology as an alternative way to tackle global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol.

Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration underground was one of the technologies discussed by the group.

But many environmentalists say it would be virtually impossible to measure leaks of the gas especially from oil and gas fields in which holes have been drilled repetitively over decades.

"How do you make sure you're not putting it in one end and leaking it out many other ends?" said Kert Davies, a climate specialist at Greenpeace in Washington. "If it leaks even at 1 percent per year you've thought you've saved something, but in fact you didn't."

Advancements in carbon capturing could be made at power plant called FugureGen. An international consortium of utilities and coal companies will join with the U.S. government to build FutureGen, billed as a "zero-emissions" coal-fired power plant.

It is expected to be operating by 2012. The FutureGen Alliance includes some of the biggest power and mining companies in the world including Huaneng Power International Inc., Peabody Energy, Kennecott Energy, a division of Rio Tinto, American Electric Power, BHP Billiton, Consol Energy Inc., Foundation Coal and Southern Co.



© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

pour le lien c'est ici

[guino]

On va tous mourrir mijoté au court bouillon

[Papey]

A quoi ça sert d'avoir des millions en banque si on ne peut tirer que 2 euros par jour ?

Ce qui compte ce ne sont pas (que) les réserves, c'est le rythme d'extraction.

[Sylvain]

Et le coût énergétique de cette extraction.

[Fish2]

Imaginez un peu le scénario : on extrait le charbon pour les centrales électriques, on réinjecte le CO2 dans les puits de pétrole déplétés, on récupère alors davantage de pétrole que ce qui avait déja été extrait, et pour finir, les matières fissiles des cendres de charbon alimentent les centrales nucléaires !
C'est pas beau la vie aux States ?

[Yves]

petit HS sur les cendres radioactives.

La concentration en Uranium de la houille pourrait être de l'ordre de 1 à 10 ppm.
C'est une concentration trop faible pour une extraction industrielle, compte tenu des coûts (le minerai classique est à 200 ppm).

Ce pourrait être un "minerai du futur", surtout que la concentration des cendres est supérieure à celle de la houille de base.

CEPENDANT

Lorsque cette concentration existe dans d'autre minerai métallique (argent par exemple), le coup d'extraction étant déjà prix en charge par le métal sus-cité, l'extraction est déjà réalisée.

Les information sur l'uranium dans le charbon datent pour l'essentiel des années 80. Depuis, le désert.

Elle sont sont toutes développée dans l'optique "une centrale nucléaire rejette moins de radioactivité qu'une centrale au charbon". Sans exception et même si des informations pertinentes sont fournies.



Pour moi, ça a un petit parfum de pipo ...

fin du HS

[Fish2]

Mon post était ironique, cf le smiley. Perso je n'y crois pas. Mais j'imagine qu'au DOE certains doivent fantasmer là dessus.

[GillesH38]

J'ai un peu la même impression même si les chiffres que tu cites ne sont pas si ridicules : 1 à 10 ppm , c'est dans la houille extraite, mais les cendres sont 10 fois plus concentrées. Ca devient donc 10 à 100 ppm, ce qui fait que les cendres les plus riches ne contiennent que 2 fois moins d'uranium que les minerais normaux. Pourquoi pas après tout? mais ppm voulant dire partie par million, ça ne fait quand même pas des quantités énormes (100 grammes dans une tonne de cendres). Quand on aura passé le pic de l'uranium, on l'extraira peut être!

Ca ne change pas vraiment le probleme énergétique global. Si on n'utilise que l'U235 sans surgénération, ça ne rajoute que quelques dizaines d'années de nucléaire actuel, quelques années seulement si on doit remplacer quantitativement les fossiles. Si on fait de la surgénération, on en a pour 1000 ans de réserves, alors un peu plus un peu moins....les problèmes seront ailleurs ( technologie à maîtriser, coût, déchets, prolifération...)

[Yves]

D'accord avec toi.

Sauf que j'ai des doutes sur les chiffres.
La seul référence que j'ai est ici :
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev ... lmain.html
Fournie mar monsieur Min iTax en plus
et je la trouve trop engagée pour être parfaitement fiable.

Sinon mes sources sur le minerai me donnent :
minerai primaires : jusqu'à 200 ppm
minerai secondaires : de 0,05 % à plus de 2 ou 3% (mais je ne sais pas convertir en ppm)
minerai dispersés : houille, schiste bitumeux, phosphate, eau de mer (0,003ppm)

A priori le 0,003 ppm est pour l'eau de mer uniquement, le reste = inconnu...

[Glycogène]

Ben, le ppm, c'est comme le "pour cent", mais c'est "pour million".
Du coup, 2% = 20 000 ppm, et 0,05% = 500 ppm
Apparemment, le minerai secondaire provient du tri du minerai primaire, car la concentration est plus forte (au début je pensais que c'était du minerai de 2nd choix).

[Yves]

exact, ce n'est pas le minerai primaire qui est exploité (trop cher), mais le secondaire, qui est le résultat d'une concentration naturelle dans des alluvions (et recristallisation) du minerai primaire.

[energy_isere]

pour revenir au sujet qui est l' injection de CO2 dans les champs de pétrole, c'est aussi planifié en Europe :

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1726500,00.html

Buried at sea: Shell's plan for greenhouse gases


Terry Macalister
Thursday March 9, 2006
The Guardian


The biggest-ever scheme to bury greenhouse gases below the seabed is being planned by energy groups Shell and Statoil. The plan will allow Norwegian gas to be developed for Britain with less environmental damage.
Up to 2.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually - the same as would be produced by 1m cars - is to be captured and stored in offshore oil fields, Draugen and Heidrun, at a cost of up to $1.5bn (£867m

Carbon capture and storage is seen as a potentially vital tool for cutting CO2 emissions and helping to reduce global warming but the technique is still in its infancy. The Norwegian project will not reduce existing CO2 levels but will lead to cleaner power being produced to run the Ormen Lange field, which will eventually provide up to 20% of the UK's entire gas needs.
Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said: "This is an important milestone towards our vision for greener fossil fuels with part of the CO2 captured and sequestered underground."

His Statoil counterpart, Helge Lund, said that if it was successful the technology could be used at other fields off Norway and around the world. The country's environment minister, Helen Bjoernoy, said the plan should be seen as a "showcase for Norway as an environmentally-friendly technology country" but she said it was too early to say whether the government would help finance it.

A new gas-fired power station will be built at Tjeldbergodden in mid-Norway which will be used to provide power for the Ormen Lange field and surrounding communities. CO2 from the plant will be injected into the Draugen and Heidrun oil reservoirs to push out further supplies of oil, leaving the CO2 safe under the seabed.

The project will be phased in between 2010 and 2012 and the two oil companies admit they are still relying on "substantial government funding" to get it off the ground. Although this claims to be the biggest offshore project, Statoil has been capturing CO2 on the Sleipner field off Norway since 1996. Shell has been using greenhouses gases since the 1970s in oil recovery in Texas but the cost of seabed schemes has deterred many others.

BP has recently announced an ambitious plan to build a hydrogen plant in Peterhead in Scotland. Carbon dioxide emitted in the production of hydrogen would be reinjected into a North Sea oil field. It also has announced plans for an even larger hydrogen-fuelled plant in California with the CO2 emissions there being piped off to other oil fields for storage.