SPE EVENING PRESENTATION
"Energy in the 21st Century: Why Natural Gas and Heavy Oil?"
by Mr. George Stosur from the U.S. Department of Energy
The Brunei Society of Petroleum Engineers
will be holding an SPE Evening. Details are as follows:
Date: Tuesday, 21/3/00
Venue: D'Anggerek (Near the National Stadium)
Time: 7.00 p.m.
Tickets (B$10 for members and B$15 for non-members) are
available from DRO/1/10 (Hj.Salleh).
Don't miss this excellent opportunity!
Mr. George Stosur from the U.S. Department of Energy will be giving a talk on an interesting subject: "Energy in the 21st Century: Why Natural Gas and Heavy Oil?" Some key features of the talk include:
That the world is running out of oil? Yet, we all realize that oil is a
non-renewable resource, and that eventually world oil production will start to decline, as
it did thirty years ago in the United States. We also know that the world economies run on
oil, particularly the transportation sector -- which assures the ever-increasing demand
for transportation fuels beyond the foreseeable future. The world has much more
unconventional than conventional resources, mostly as heavy oil, tar sands, gas in
ultra-tight formations, coalbed methane, and natural gas hydrates. These were barely
scratched in the 20th century, but will see an explosion of activity in the 21st century.
Overview of the world's huge resources of heavy oil and tar sands found largely in the
Americas that have already seen commercial interest. There are also immeasurable
quantities of natural gas locked in very tight formations, coalbeds, and particularly in
the currently inaccessible natural gas hydrates. With technology driving the oil and gas
production, it is all but certain that many of today's uneconomic processes will become
the staple of tomorrow's world economy. Extraordinary progress has already cut the cost of
finding and producing conventional oil by 60% in real terms over the past ten
years. Data is from the latest projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and selected private sources.Discussion of
promising technologies, e.g., direct conversion of (stranded) natural gas to
transportation fuels for easy shipment from remote locations to markets. An exciting
long-range possibility is technology development for the production of gas from naturally
occurring methane hydrates -- an enormous resource that far exceeds the conventional
natural gas resource. There is no shortage of liquid hydrocarbons in the foreseeable
future.