how many wells, page-20

AFU

have to disagree with the emotional sentiment that this is a life and death struggle etc.; if it was, there would/will be quicker ways to achieve it.

in fact the world is not running out of oil. there are plenty of resources - at least for next half-century; the real question is which of these resources will be economically attractive and technically feasible to recover.

that's why we've seen a massive increase in investment in Canadian tar sands; and more to come on heavy crude oils; and more evaluation of EOR projects; biomass/biofuels etc. and others like deep water offshore oil or gas from the arctic; the list is quite long in fact and includes gas to liquids and coal to liquids

Now UCG may be an attractive option. But for widespread use it will have to be as good or better than the alternatives; hence the question I posed on how many wells will be required. Sure this is not the only aspect; but its one of them as it is an indicator of the operational costs and complexity.

I suspect the problem is not drilling but as I mentioned originally how to manage and control a field of so many wells (think reactors in reality rather than oil wells). Granted, there's lots of wells in Texas but these are (mostly) conventional wells; UCG requires controlling a burning process underground so the management aspect is far more complex. In such a situation you would consider to modularise the system; in this case that would mean having a network of UCG-units connected to some large downstream processing unit; sure that may be feasible at some point in time; but then you need to wonder - how long will it take to work out how to do it properly? will it be economically better than the alternatives?

Now its easy to do the sums to show how much profit you'll make in a year if you just plug in some round numbers; But those are all built on assumptions of how the system operates and that it will operate satisfactorily; the number of UCG reactors (ie injection/production well pairs) is also easy to calculate and I've done it. And it also happens that there's no other GTL process that operates with so many reactors.

well I guess LNC can do the calcs I've done too; obviously they think its feasible; but also obviously, as they are currently the only ones in the world doing this, they are rather alone; wouldn't you think if it was such a sure thing as you portray, others would also be jumping on the bandwagon?

it will be interesting to find out how this goes - and to partially answer the earlier questions about my interest/intentions - that's actually the main reason I hold some stock; perhaps it will make us rich? but I'm not betting my life-savings on it.

cheers
DrP