BP starting heavy oil facility to test production feasibility

Petroleum News ^ | Week of March 20, 2011 | Alan Bailey

[thackney]

I remember reading about the planning for this project back in 2006 when I was still working in the Alaska Oil Industry.

[thackney]

24 – 33 Billion barrels of Heavy Oil in Place

Heavy Oil Challenges & Opportunities North Slope Alaska
http://www.aoga.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/8.-Pospisil-Heavy-Viscous-Oil.pdf

Note: Oil in place is not the same as recoverable oil amounts. This is testing a new method to see how much oil can be economically recovered.

[azhenfud]

Alaska needs a refinery.

[thackney]

Alaska has 6 refineries, if I remember correctly.

5 of them are fairly little.

[thackney]

Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries, Alaska
http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_SAK_a.htm

[T-Bird45]

“Because of that linkage (with light oil), the time to look at heavy oil is now,” West said. “And in fact the longer we wait to look at it, the more the light oil declines, and at some point we’re going to curtail the amount of heavy oil that we can get off the Slope.”

Another good reason for going into ANWR, IMO.

[Eska]

The tankers run from North Pole to Dawson, Canada everyday once the road opens. North pole supplies our entire area and they use to haul it all the way to Seattle too, where it was sold a couple bucks less a gallon than here in Alaska; just business. I always heard it said the only reason they had any refineries was to supply military fuel needs, those tankers must be all extra production.

Ak will have oil for many years into the future and the price will only keep going up; making it more valuable and Alaska the most tax friendly state for it's residents.

Oil industry pays around 62% in taxes and that includes state, feds, and local. I read that many places around the world, the oil companys pay 80 & 90% and get shot at or nationalized or have various political upheaval problems in the end. So, I do believe oil will be coming out of the ground here in Alaska for another 50 years.

[PapaBear3625]

Oil-eating bacteria make light work of heavy fuel: using bacterial to turn heavy oil into methane.

[PapaBear3625]

Expert Viewpoint - Commercial Biogenic Gas Production -- more detailed info about using microbes to make heavy oil more recoverable.

[thackney]

Until they get a natural gas pipeline, they don’t want more methane on the North Slope.

Beside, the oil pipeline needs more liquid.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

What is the gravity of this stuff ?

[bert]

Is there any of this heavy crude above the formations in the Prudho Bay Unit?

[thackney]

~10° API

http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/318651245.shtml

[thackney]

[bert]

Thanks so much...... some but mostly next door

[thackney]

By the way, combined with the "normal" viscosity of this stuff, it is darn cold. This is a shallow reservoir near the permafrost level. See post 14 for chart.

[azhenfud]

From the info, it appears Alaska’s six refineries operate at about 35% capacity in comparison to those in Louisiana and the bulk of their finished product is heavy distillates.

[thackney]

operate at about 35% capacity in comparison to those in Louisiana and the bulk of their finished product is heavy distillates.

How did you come up with that? That link is capacities, not production.

I am interested into what numbers you are comparing.

[thackney]

If you are interested, you might want to look at this document from the state, the most current annual report.

http://www.dog.dnr.alaska.gov/oil/products/publications/annual/2009_annual_report/updated_2009_annual_report/section_3.pdf

It gives more detail about each refinery and the products produced. Jet Fuel is the most common.

[azhenfud]

In the “Operable (Barrels per Calendar Day)” column(s);
Alaska has six refineries with total bbls/day of 393,980
Louisiana has 17 operable with total bbls/day of 3,171,923
393,980 / 6 = 65,663 average per refinery
3,171,923 / 17 = 186,584 average per refinery
(65,663 / 186,584) x 100 = 35.19 percent

I realize there’s a world’s difference in the geographical locations of the refineries regarding climate, but is it 65% worth of a difference or does the difference occur in the refinery size/capacity? I honestly don’t know. Are Alaska’s refineries 65% smaller in scale compared to Louisiana’s?