The end of easy #oil and #gas

The end of easy oil and gas has been announced for years now. With all the recent ambitious projects lined up, we are starting to realise that reality is knocking at the door. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this very well:

“Saudi Arabia became the world’s top oil producer by tapping its vast reserves of easy-to-drill, high-quality light oil. But as demand for energy grows and fields of "easy oil" around the world start to dry up, the Saudis are turning to a much tougher source: the billions of barrels of heavy oil trapped beneath the desert.”

But no need to panic, there are still enough reserves:

“No one suggests that the Gulf nations are running out of oil. Heavy oil, although difficult to pump, is abundant. The Middle East alone is believed to hold some 78 billion barrels of heavy oil that is currently recoverable, more than three-and-a-half times the U.S.’s total reserves.”

More investments, new technologies and more risks will be involved in getting this heavy oil. The recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the dangers this brings along. Click here to see the movie.

Click here to see what BP predicted earlier.

The three major unconventional oil sources being considered for large scale production are the extra heavy oil in the Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, the Athabasca Oil Sands in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and the oil shales of the Green River Formation in the United States.