Randall wrote:
>
> Fred brings up an interesting point : The official story has been that
> the oil found in the US is high-sulfur and it would cost so much to
> remove the sulfur that it's more economical to sell it to countries that
> don't worry about smog (like Mexico and the Far East), and buy
> low-sulfur, 'sweet' oil on the world market.
>
> Any petroleum engineers out there with a response to this ?
Oil derived from the Valdez area is heavy crude and has a somewhat
higher sulfur content and requires more refining, producing more
by-products than gasoline, from my understanding. However, West Texas
Intermediate is slightly heavier, but similar in composition to that of
Saudi light sweet crude. Pennsylvania crude, now not very much
available, is higher in ash, and therefore ash-borne sulfur.
Now, we get to the matter of the kind of sulfur, of which I do know
something, since I worked in the coal-cleaning business for six years.
There are two primary ways in which sulfur can be contained in the
fuel--chemically-bound, or contained in ash products (ash is primarily a
combustion product--oxidized minerals). When the sulfur is chemically a
part of the fuel, the extraction process is horribly expensive and
low-volume. When the sulfur is contained in aggregated mineral deposits,
it is easier to remove. In bituminous and sub-bituminous coals, sulfur
is principally contained in pyrite, which exists in and around coal
deposits.
I suspect that sulfur composition and type in oils is heavily dependent
upon the area from which the fuel is extracted, as it is with coal. For
example, northwestern coals, such as those found in Wyoming and Montana,
are mostly lignites (considerably lower fuel values than sub-bituminous
coals of the Ohio Valley), but they are high in chemically-bound sulfur.
Sub-bituminous coals are usually higher in sulfur, but it is physically,
not chemically, bound, and can be removed by much cheaper, physical,
means.
With oil, I suspect it is the same situation--when chemically-bound, it
can't be extracted easily. When the sulfur is part of the mineral
content, fractional distillation leaves the heavier residue, including
some of the ash products, behind. This must be so, since blended
synthetic oils for use in natural gas engines have to have a much lower
ash content than standard oils, and that is managed at reasonable cost.
As regards fuel prices and California gasoline, what may be more at
issue is the type and degree of refining and type of additives used in
California gasoline to meet CARB standards. I read, a few weeks ago,
when prices started to rise, that one petroleum analyst said that
California gasoline could not be used as an indicator of pricing
elsewhere in the country, since California consumed what he called
"designer gasoline."
What industry PR may not be saying, right now, regarding gas prices, is
that the prices have been too low for American suppliers to garner
investment money to produce fuel commensurate with demand. Now that
prices are much higher, there is a lag from the time when prices rise
and when producers do new exploration and drilling. During the days of
the big oil glut, wells were being capped for the tax loss benefits.
Now, when prices rise, that justifies investment in exploration and
drilling. I live on the edge of the Permian Basin, and until recently,
traveled across the northern basin to central Texas every couple of
weeks. There's been no new activity along my route for sixteen months,
until February. I now count six new drilling rigs in operation in a
ten-mile stretch, in that last month. The oil business has traditionally
been very bad at guessing when prices will rise and fall, and that's why
oil production has been perceived, in the last twenty or thirty years,
as a boom-and-bust business. By the time current wells are drilled, the
shortage will be over, the crude prices will fall, and the investors
will, once again, feel that they were deluded into paying for drilling
costs for poor return. The really smart folks see these changes coming a
year or two ahead of time. There are not many of them. Not enough,
anyway, to make a dent in domestic production when it's required.
Cheers.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM
mailto: mporter@zianet.com
`70 GT6+ (being refurbished, slowly)
`71 GT6 Mk. III (organ donor)
`72 GT6 Mk. III (daily driver)
`64 TR4 (awaiting intensive care)
|