Russian Scientists Discover Secret to Producing Six Times More Oil
HT to and headline from OilpriceScientists from the Tyumen State University, a research center in Siberia, Russia, announced a technological breakthrough in oil production that can boost oil development through initiating underground chemical reactions.A group scientists from Siberia, Russia, have announced the creation of a new technology for gas thermochemical fracturing, RIA Novosti reports.
"The technology will let our economy achieve growth in power generation capacity without extensive exploitation of natural resources," believes Galina Lazareva, a scientist who worked on a mathematical model for the project.To produce the necessary equipment and do testing "in the field", the Tyumen University worked jointly with the N. M. Emmanuel's University of Biochemical Physics, the Sibneftemash plant and a service company named The Oil Technology Center.
The new method is able to compete with foreign ones that are now present in the Russian market.
In particular, the development might reportedly become an alternative to hydraulic fracturing, which originated in Russia but then was widely applied in the US to produce shale oil.
While hydraulic fracturing is about drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release the fossil fuel, gas thermochemical fracturing is a whole new ball game....MORE
My first thought upon seeing the headline was "Uh oh".
Not uh oh for the U.S. oil industry but uh oh because I remembered a story I was going to post some day:
That Time They Were Going To Nuke the Oil Sands
The 'they' being Richfield Oil Co. later Atlantic-Richfield, later ARCO
From Canada's National Post, August 2, 2016:
Nuke the oilsands: Alberta’s narrowly cancelled plan to drill for oil with atomic weapons
It’s often forgotten what a technological feat it was to pump oil out of the Fort McMurray area.Knowing the Russian propensity for big civil engineering plans—reverse the flow of a river, da, etc.—it seemed plausible at first glance that Sputnik would go there.
While it’s long been known that the Athabasca region is swimming with petroleum, geologists spent decades banging their head against the problem of how to turn oily sand into something that could be refined into gasoline.
Which makes it all the more fortunate that — just before science figured it out — Alberta kiboshed a plan that would have simply thrown nuclear bombs at the problem.
“Nuclear miracles will make us rich,” declared famed physicist Edward Teller in a 1959 syndicated editorial.
As the first seeds of the anti-nuclear movement began to show themselves, Teller was trying to assure a worried public that they should welcome atomic bombs as bringers of “as rich a harvest as man’s ingenuity ever has produced.”
A veteran of the Manhattan Project, the Hungarian born Teller had been instrumental in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Now, he was the point man for Operation Plowshare, a U.S. scheme to supply nuclear weapons for civilian purposes.
Canals, the project vowed, could be effortlessly dug around the world. Deserts could bloom thanks to nuclear-blasted wells. And one day, promised Teller, nuclear explosions “may be able to squeeze oil from rock.”
As the story went to press, in fact, a plan to A-bomb oil from rocks was already taking shape in Northern Alberta.
“They were doing a lot of shots in the dark back then,” said Daniel Meneley, retired chief engineer with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., speaking by phone from the Toronto area.
Meneley’s late brother William was directly involved with what would become known as Project Oilsand.
Devised by California-based Richfield Oil Corporation, Project Oilsand was uncannily simple: Get an atomic bomb from the Americans and blow it up under Athabasca....MORE
And it wasn't just the Canadians and the Russians, there was the whole "Fracking For Uranium" proposal in Texas.
And the Great Barrier Reef plan. And...
I could go on and on but weary reader deserves a break.
