Explaining the potential of heavy oil … to your executives

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it” -- Theodore Roosevelt (American 26th US President (1901-09), 1858-1919)

Executives have their uses, but they don’t always fully understand what you do for the organization. This is especially true if you are engaged in advancing the technologies that will help us utilize heavy oil until we can transition to other forms of energy.

Sometimes it helps to point them to an article that provides an overview of how the various technologies fit together. The following is just such an article …

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Heavy Oil:Unleashing the Potential
www.hartenergy.com (July 2006)

[Brief Excerpts]
“New strategies and improved processes cut costs and make better products.
“From drilling to operations typical of a refinery, a single heavy-oil production scheme can span technologies and processes similar to those of upstream and downstream petroleum operations. In situ recovery has benefited from advances in drilling and completion technology aimed primarily at conventional oil development. Upgrading bitumen to marketable synthetic crude uses well-proven refining processes.”

“In choosing an upgrading strategy, Syncrude’s decision was to remove carbon. Fluid coking is the heart of its upgrading process, but it does have some hydrogen addition capability and uses vacuum distillation. Fluid coking is an ExxonMobil technology in which hot bitumen is sprayed into the reactor operating at about 931°F (500°C). The bitumen is cracked into smaller molecules to make a lighter product. Carbon is removed as coke that can be used as fuel.}

“Though they have been improved,upgrading technologies in use today are basically the same ones that have been around for several decades, said Eddy Isaacs, managing director for Alberta Energy Resource Institute. “The most exciting thing happening is the idea that you can gasify the removed carbon – in the form of asphaltenes, for instance – and produce hydrogen,steam and electricity,”he said.”

“BIG MAY NOT BE BETTER In the case of heavy-oil projects, economy of scale can become “diseconomy of scale,”said Gary Nieuwenburg,vice president of synthetic crude for Nexen. Nexen’s development strategy is to expand in increments of about 60,000 b/d. To arrive at that increment, the company determined the largest size vessels that can be transported to site from a modular yard or manufacturing facility anywhere in the world.That size vessel dictated the best size for an expansion. “There is a 3 to 1 cost advantage by building components in a yard rather than stick-building on site,”Nieuwenburg said.”

source: http://www.heavyoilinfo.com/feature_items/e-p_heavyoil_article-3.pdf/at_download/file
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As you can see, there is valuable information on specific vendors, processes and strategies that can help you conversations with your executives. And in helping yourself, you will be helping them to make better decisions.