Chapter 12: Unconventional

This is a very interesting chapter that describes a number of unconventional sources of oil that have come into play over the years. There are only two required reading sections, but I encourage you to read as much of the chapter as you can in that it is interesting.

We chose two specific examples because they are fundamental to some recent issues in the news. First is the section on the Canadian Oil Sands. The chapter section provides an excellent overview of how this oil is recovered, especially the unique dual nature of recovery- open pit mining and subsurface steam flooding. The interesting aspect of the Canadian Oil Sands is that they play a key role in the controversy over the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is oil from this area that will constitute the bulk of the oil that was to move through the pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Texas refineries.

It has been claimed that the challenge to the pipeline was not so much that it was a pipeline, we have hundreds and hundreds of miles of pipelines already in those areas; but that it would encourage development of this oil resource. The truth of the matter is that this region plays a critically important role in Canadian economy and that oil will be recovered with or without the pipeline. It is only a matter of it comes into the US anyway by rail and truck, or it goes west to the British Columbia ports to be shipped on to Asia.

Second, the section on tight oil discusses a technology that was used early on for oil, but more recently for natural gas (Chapter 16)- an approach we will learn about later called hydraulic fracturing. The demise of this approach occurred early because of the price drop in the 1980s which made this technology uneconomic.