Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit

Posted by timothy on from the gas-is-awesome dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The latest issue of Wired has an interesting article about Canadian tar pits that could result in a trillion barrels of oil when processed. It seems just when we think the oil will run out we find new reserves. Now excuse me while I gas up my Hummer."

1 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. EROEI by AndrewHowe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Energy Return On Energy Invested.

    Middle East oil has an EROEI of something like 30. That is, you get 31 barrels out of the ground, and you get to use 30 barrels of it for useful work. The other barrel is used to pump it out of the ground, refine it, ship it to your neighbourhood and pump it into your tank.

    Oil from tar sands has an EROEI of about 1.5, so you waste 2 barrels for every 3 you get to guzzle. That's utterly shite, basically. Perhaps that figure has been improved recently with newer techniques, but it's not going to be competitive with M.E. oil until the latter has pretty much dried up.

    The other bummer about tar sands oil is that it's really low quality, full of sulphur etc.