Fuel Alternatives for Oil Sands Development - The Nuclear Option

Abstract

Currently natural gas is the fuel of choice in all oil sand developments. A reservoir screening study was conducted to determine the magnitude of the bitumen resource which can be economically exploited using the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology. The study indicates that there are a total of twenty-eight Townships in the Athabasca area where each SAGD well pair (800 metres long, 90 metres spacing) could be expected to produce an average of at least 625 (100 m3) barrels of bitumen per day, over five years, at a cumulative steam oil ratio (CSOR) of 2.5 d/nf or less. This suggests that at least 28 commercial recovery projects could be supported, each potentially producing at least 130,000 barrels (20,600m^3 of bitumen per day for 30 years. Some townships could be capable of supporting projects two to three times as large. The twenty-eight, 30 year SAGD recovery schemes would produce a total of at least 40 billion barrels (6.35 x 1 (fm3) of bitumen. This is approximately 12% of the total Athabasca reserves deemed recoverable by SAGD. At a CSOR of 2.5 n^/m3, more than 42EJ of energy would be needed to generate the required steam. An additional 42 EJ of natural gas would be required to produce the hydrogen required for high conversion upgrading the produced bitumen to synthetic crude oil (SCO). The combined requirements/or steam generation and hydrogen production is 60 percent of the remaining ultimate potential of natural gas in Alberta. Clearly fuels other than natural gas nrust be used if the fullpotential of oil sands is to be realized. Alternate fuels which are in sufficient supply to have a significant impact on the energy requirements for oil sands development are nuclear energy and those derived/rorn bitumen and coal. The Alberta sources of hydrocarbon based fuels are large but limited. Canadian nuclear technology was studied as a possible alternative for providing steam for the deep commercial in situ oil sand projects which were initiated over ten years ago. Because the in situ technology of that time required steam at pressures in excess of 10 MPa, the nuclear option required the development of new reactor technology or the use of steam compressors which was not economical. The current SAGD technology requires steam at pressures of less than 5 MPa which is in the reach of existing Canadian nuclear technology. The cost of supplying steam for a SAGD in situ project using a CANDU 3 nuclear reactor were developed. The study indicates that for gas prices in excess of $2.50 per gigajoule, replacing natural gas fuel with a nuclear reactor is economically feasible for in situ projects in excess of 123 thousand barrels per day.