Recent Press Releases
Greenhouse gas emissions set to rise as new sources for transport fuel are used
PR38(06)
Tue, 22 May 2007
The use of low-quality sources of petroleum, such as tar sands, will dramatically raise global greenhouse gas emissions according to a new study.
The work is reported in the paper Risks of the oil transition, published in the new Institute of Physics open-access electronic-only journal, Environmental Research Letters (ERL).
Lead author Professor Alex Farrell of the University of California, Berkeley said: “Liquid fuels for transportation are increasingly coming from a wide range of sources other than conventional petroleum. We call this the oil transition and we conclude that the environmental risks associated with this transition are much bigger than the risk to a country’s economy or the security of their fuel supply.”
Tar sands are currently one of the biggest unconventional sources for petroleum. Bitumen, a very think mixture of organic liquids, is mined from the tar sands. Natural gas is then bubbled through the bitumen to separate the impurities, mostly sulphur. The use of natural gas for removing impurities and then in refining tar sands into oil is a highly energy intensive process itself, even before the resulting oil is refined into gasoline and then burned in vehicles.
The sulphur separated in the production combines with Hydrogen to form H2S, the characteristic 'rotten egg' compound. Solid sulphur is then separated out, yielding vast pyramids of yellow sulphur blocks which are stacked and stored on the site.
“We have calculated that production of fuels from low-quality and synthetic petroleum, such as tar sands, could have greenhouse gas emissions 30%-70% greater than the emissions from conventional petrol. Tar sands are already being used as a source for petrol, with over one million barrels refined each day in Alberta, Canada. With oil selling for $60/barrel on the international market, the $30/barrel production cost for tar sands is no longer an obstacle to production as it used to be.”
Professor Farrell continued: “The enormous abundance of fossil fuel reserves means that the real challenge for the future is not dealing with scarcity of supply but managing the transition from traditional sources such as oil fields to new unconventional sources whilst protecting the environment and balancing the changes that the transition will bring to the global economy and the security of supply for individual countries.”
Notes to editors:
The article, Risks of the oil transition, is available online at http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/1/1/014004 and will feature as part of a special promotional print collection of Environmental Research Letters to be available at the American Geophysical Union’s December 2006 meeting on 11 December 2006 in San Francisco, CA, USA.
For further information, images of the tar sands and sulphur pyramids and interviews with Professor Farrell, or with Professor Daniel Kammen, editor in chief of Environmental Research Letters, both of whom will be attending the AGU meeting in San Francisco, please contact:
Helen MacBain, press officer
Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London. W1B 1NT
Tel +44 (0)20 7470 4815; +44 (0)7946 321473
E-mail: helen.macbain@iop.org
Or:
Alexis Marsh
Tel +44 (0) 20 7470 4896
E-mail: alexis.marsh@iop.org
Environmental Research Letters is the new electronic-only open-access journal from the Institute of Physics. Aimed at serving the whole environmental science community, the journal’s coverage will reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of environmental science, recognising wide-ranging contributions to the development of methods, tools and evaluation strategies relevant to the field. The first issue of ERL is online at http://erl.iop.org.
The Institute of Physics is a scientific membership organisation devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics. It has an extensive worldwide membership (currently over 35,000) and is a leading communicator of physics with all audiences from specialists through government to the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.
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