Some of the world's largest—but hardest to reach—oil reserves could be tapped with the help of a little-known scientific field called rock physics, a Canadian scientist says.
The reserves, located north of Edmonton, Alberta, are so immense that they put Canada second only to Saudi Arabia among the world's oil-rich nations (see map of Alberta).
But the reserves contain only "heavy oil," which is extremely difficult to extract.
"Imagine taking a pile of sand, mixing it with peanut butter, and trying to get the peanut butter out," Douglas Schmitt, a geophysicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said earlier this month at a meeting of the American Physical Society.
Currently the easiest way to extract the oil is to scoop up the top layers of earth in giant strip mines.
"You dig it out and put it in something like a big washing machine to separate the oil from the sand," Schmitt said.
Going deeper requires drilling, but conventional drilling techniques don't work because of the oil's thick, viscous consistency.
To make the oil less viscous, production crews commonly heat it by injecting steam into the underlying rock.
For this to be feasible, the steam must be used as efficiently as possible.
That, Schmitt says, is where rock physics comes into play, allowing scientists to chart the process with seismic mapping.
"This could be the next phase of petroleum engineering," Schmitt said.
"Instead of simply making guesses, we should be able to track where the fluids are coming from."
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
