Environmental Exam 4

• Oil sands are layers of sand/clay with a viscous, tarry type of petroleum called bitumen
• Oil sands are layers of sand/ clay saturated with a viscous, tarry type of petroleum called bitumen
• Oil sands are found in Alberta, Canada
• extracting and processing oil wasn't profitable until 2003
• the United States is one of the biggest buyers of tar sands (oil sands)
• TransCanada made a pipeline called Keystone XL to transport oils to the United States
• Nonrenewable energy sources include coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas.
• Renewable energy sources include biomass, hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and wave energy
• Most of Earth's energy comes from the sun, which drives wind, the water cycle, and photosynthesis
• Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels have replaced biomass as our dominant source of energy
• In the United States, coal, oil, and natural gas supply 80% of total energy demand
• Net energy is the difference between energy returned and energy invested
• Energy sources are assessed using EROI
• EROI is the energy returned on investment
• Fossil fuels were formed hundred of millions of years ago, from organisms performing photosynthesis
• Coal is a hard, blackish substance formed from woody organic matter compressed into dense, solid carbon structures
• Coal is extracted by strip mining, subsurface mining, and mountaintop removal
• Crude oil is unrefined oil extracted from the ground
• Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane and other volatile hydrocarbons
• Petroleum usually refers to oil but may also refer to oil and natural gas collectively
• Oil and natural gas are derived from marine plankton that died, sank to the sea bottom, became buried, and transformed by time, heat, and pressure
• Oil shale is sedimentary rock filled with organic matter that can be processed into shale oil, and occurs where deposits were not buried deeply enough to be subjected to enough heat and pressure to form oil
• Methane hydrate is a solid consisting of molecules of methane embedded in a crystal lattice of water molecules, also found in sediments in the Arctic and the ocean floor
• Technologically recoverable portions are the proportions of fuels that are physically accessible to us
• The economically recoverable portion of the fuel depends on costs of extraction and market prices
• Proven recoverable reserves are both economically and technologically recoverable
• Refining is a process that separates the molecules in crude oil by size
• China is the highest coal producer and consumer
• The United States is the highest producer and consumer of oil and natural gas
• Coal is primarily used for electricity generation
• Reserves-to-production ratio is calculated by dividing the total remaining reserves by the annual rate of production
• The current estimate of oil reserves is 1.7 trillion barrels and the rate of production is 32 billion per year
• Natural gas reserves are estimated to last 54 more years and coals reserve-to-production ratio is about 110 years
• M. King Hubbard in 1956 predicted that the united states would hit peak oil in 1970
• Mountaintop removal mining removes entire mountaintops to access the coal seams running through them, producing large amounts of rock and soil erosion
• At a typical oil or gas well, as much as 2/3 of a deposit may remain in the ground after primary extraction
• Directional drilling is technology that allows for drillers to bore down vertically and then curve to drill horizontally
• Hydraulic fracturing pumps chemically treated water under high pressure into layers of rock to crack them
• Roughly 35% of oil and 10% of natural gas extracted in the United States come from the Gulf of Mexico and coastal California
• Fossil fuel extraction has direct impacts on landscapes and natural habitats