What is oil?
Oil, also known as the 'black gold', has been coming from the ground for century's and is per liter cheaper than milk.
Oil is known for a very long time. Arrows from the 7th century have been found with oil on top of the arrows.
So oil is known for a very long time already, however, the start of the oil production has officially begun in 1859, when the first source of oil has been drilled.
The world has become addicted to oil, the global demand for oil is around 31,000,000,000 barrels of oil a year.
We are actually using that much oil that according to the EIA(Energy Information Association) the demand for oil is exceeding supply since the beginning of 2006. In the beginning of 2008 the gap between demand and supply was one million barrels per day.
The main problem is that the big oil-producing companies are having more and more trouble finding new big oil fields, causing peak oil. ( There are two types differentiated in big oil fields. Giants which have a capacity of more than 1 billion barrels and super giants of more than 5 billion barrels)
The avarage oil field found these years contains 100 million barrels. If you reflect that to the annual demand for oil of 31,000,000 million barrels everyone is able to understand we are getting into trouble regarding oil production...
The production is some countries has already hit its peak, for example:
The USA hit its peak in 1970; Canada in 1974; Romenia in 1976; Indonesia in 1977; Egypt in 1993; Argentina in 1998; Venezuela in 1998; the UK in 1999; Australia in 2000; Norway in 2001 and Denemarken in 2004.
These are just a few examples of countries that already reached peak oil, there are actually way more.
There are two main kinds of oil: Conventional oil and unconventional oil.
Coventional oil is oil that easily comes out of the ground and therefore costs little. 96% of the world's supply of oil consists of conventional oil.
Unconventional oil is oil that is way harder to get and therefore way more expensive.
The oil companies try to find as much conventional oil as possible in relation to unconventional oil simply because it's way cheaper.
However, the big companies are having trouble finding the conventional oil: Chevron and Shell conclude: "The era of cheap oil is over."
Production of unconventional oil is rising due to projects in Canada using steam to extract the oil from the sand. In Venezuela there are projects using "very heavy oil" which is oil that's (nearly) solid bound to rocks. This oil has to be diluted by using steam to make the oil pumpable. This only happens on relatively large scale in Venezuala. There are 600,000 barrels per day produced via this method in Venezuela.
Is the mixed-sand in Canada the soultion to the worldwide shortage of oil?
No. According to a research dne by the Swedish University of Uppsala the production of oil from the sands in Canada may reach 6 million barrels a day by 2035. That would be 2,190,000 barrels per year equalling 7,1% of the world demand for oil. So it is centainly going to contribute to the world supplies but it is not enough to get us out of trouble.
Also: There are quite a few problems involved in the canadian sands oil production like:
1) The production of oil requires a lot of water. The current activities require more water in Canada than all other activities in Canada together.
2) There is a lot engery required to steam the oil out of the sand. You roughly need one barrel of oil to produce three barrels.
3)There are also some environmental problems: the amount of carbondioxide emitted when producing one barrel of 'sand-oil' is two to three times as much compared to the production of one barrel of conventional oil.
Is Oil-shale the solution?
Oil-shale are rocks that contain the organic material kerogen (which is a mixture of organic compounds). By heating the kerogen to 500°C, without any air involved in the chemical process, the kerogen will become some sort of crude oil.
Note: In- Situ means that the rocks are being heated underground.
There are estimates of usable oil from oil-shales reaching 3300 billion barrels. Enough oil for roughly nine years of world demand!
Over 60 per cent of those oil-shales are situated in the USA, lucky americans....
Nevertheless there are also big opportunities for oil-shales in E.G. Ukraine, Brazil and Australia.
Concluding: The world demand for oil is exceeding supply. However, due to the recession the problem has become a bit less because of a slight decrease in the demand for oil. This does not mean the problems are over, they are less severe for now. We, all countries together, should think of opportunities and possibilities to solve this problem and making us less addictive to oil.
Meanwhile we should focus more on the interesting possibilities of unconventional oil like oil-shales.
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