THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 29, January 31, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
TURNING TAR SANDS INTO CLEAN NATURAL GAS WITH BACTERIA
By Dennis T. Avery
AUGMENTING THE ENERGY SUPPLY: RADICAL ACCELERATION OF THE PROCESS OF UNDERGROUND BACTERIAL
FERMENTATION OF HEAVY OIL -- BACTERIAL REFINING OF TAR SANDS & OIL SHALE -- ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE MEANS OF
RECOVERING CLEAN-BURNING METHANE FROM OIL SHALE & DEEPLY BURRIED OIL SANDS
FULL STORY:
Scientists said recently in the journal Nature they can radically speed up the underground bacterial fermentation
that turns Canada’s tar-like Athabasca sands into natural gas at far less cost and with far less environmental pollution.
This is huge global news because the world has about six trillion barrels of such heavy oil, more than 20 times the proven
oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. They’re focused in Canada’s Athabasca, in Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt, and in the oil shale
of the U.S. Rocky Mountains. All may be economically recoverable with bacterial refining.
Dr. Steve Larter of the University of Calgary says understanding how anaerobic bacteria ferment heavy oil into
clean-burning methane underground opens the door to recovering the gas from deeply buried oil sands. “The main thing
is you’d be recovering a much cleaner fuel,” he says. “Methane is, per energy unit, a much lower carbon dioxide emitter
than bitumen.”
A separate family of microbes that produces CO2 and hydrogen from partly-degraded oil offers a way to capture the CO2
from the tar sands as methane, for burning in a closed-loop system that would keep the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Larter’s research team combined microbiological studies, lab experiments, and oilfield case studies to demonstrate the
anaerobic degradation of oil into methane. The findings offer the potential of “feeding” the microbes and rapidly
accelerating the gas production process. Says Larter:
“Instead of 10 million years, we want to do it in 10 years.
We think it’s possible. We can do it in the laboratory.
The question is can we do it in a reservoir? ”
No longer would huge diesel shovels have to dig up three tons of sand for each ton of heavy oil recovered. Nor would
refiners inject expensive steam to liquefy the heavy oil so it can flow to the surface. With bacterial refining, the tar, and the
contaminating sulfur, can be left deep underground — along with most of the sand.
The oil-eating bacteria have been used for some years to clean up contaminated soils and lagoons near oil refiners. Lab
results have been encouraging, and the team expects to do field tests as early as 2009.
At almost the same moment, a Pennsylvania State University professor said drilling newly-feasible horizontal gas wells
across the Marcellus black shale in northern Appalachia could earn the U.S. a trillion dollars worth of additional
clean-burning energy. The rock deposits run from southern New York westward through Pennsylvania into West Virginia
and Ohio.
Dr. Terry Engelder says the vertical fractures in the Marcellus shale can’t effectively be tapped with vertical wells. A
horizontal well costs three times as much, but can collect gas from dozens of the fractures. He says the horizontal wells
could bring in 50 trillion cubic feet of gas, the equivalent of a Super Giant gas field.
Eco-activists have been telling us we should renounce fossil fuels because “they’re nearly gone anyway.” However, the
U.S. has centuries worth of coal that could be burned in “clean” high-tech systems. Bacterial refining and Dr. Engelder’s
horizontal drilling offer other examples of high-tech energy. Cambridge Energy Research Associates predicted in June, 2007,
that world oil production would rise another 30 percent by 2017, with nearly half of the increase from unconventional
sources such as natural-gas liquids.
Man-made global warming alarmists have failed to offer any cost-effective substitute for coal, oil, and nuclear in base-load
energy production. Solar and wind power are costly and erratic. Biofuels take too much land away from Nature. The problem
is to bridge the energy gap between today and some as-yet-unproven energy technology for humanity’s future.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior policy analyst for the United
States Department of State, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with
atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit,
Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Readers may write Avery at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421. Email:
cgfi@rica.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity