Energy Industry Page 321 to 336
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Energy Industry Pg. 321 to 336
What are some reasons you can give for why Canada is one of the largest users of energy in the world?
What are some reasons you can give for why Canada is one of the largest users of energy in the world?
- Climate, population density and distribution (transportation), advanced industrial economy, energy is cheap so we waste
- Conventional Energy Sources: well-established methods such as oil, natural gas, coal, hydro, and nuclear electricity (responsible for almost all of the energy used in Canada)
- Alternative Energy Sources: newer methods like solar, wind, and biomass energy
- 1 joule is a very small amount of energy, so gigajoule (GJ, one billion joules) and petajoule (PJ, one million joules) are used
- Don’t write down, but go over page 322 text and fig. 25-1 in textbook
- The Creation of Oil and Gas: generally found together in the environment
- How do you think oil/gas formed, and when did this forming first start?
- Hundreds of millions of years ago, when areas of Canada were covered by shallow oceans, as sea life and plants died they would fall to the sea floor
- Over millions of years, the dead plants and animals accumulated in thick layers, and were eventually covered by layers of sand and silt
- The immense weight of all the layers compressed the lower layers into sedimentary rock, and then from bacterial action, heat, and pressure the layers of animals and plants converted into oil and gas
- Often found in anticlinal traps
- Dome-shaped structure of rock layers created by folding, in which oil and gas are often trapped between layers of non-porous rock
- How do you think oil/gas formed, and when did this forming first start?
- Finding oil and gas can be very difficult, because deposits can be located many hundreds of metres below the surface. Some strategies geologists have designed to help find them are:
- Looking for surface rocks that contain traces of oil
- Looking for fossils in sedimentary rock that could indicate the right conditions needed for creating gas and oil
- Conducting seismic surveys (using shock waves to locate oil and gas bearing rock structures)
- In order to find and acquire oil and gas, drilling into the earth is needed
- Long process (may continue for months)
- Can result in no oil or gas being found (dry hole), oil and gas being found but in quantities too small to justify transporting the gas to a market (well is plugged and re-evaluated later), or that the deposit of gas or oil is large enough to develop
- Flowing Wells: these wells have enough natural pressure to force the oil or gas to the surface, where the flow is controlled by a series of valves called a “Christmas tree”
- Non-Flowing Wells: if there is not enough pressure to make the oil or gas flow to the surface, electric- or gas-powered pumps must be used (nodding horse or grasshopper machine)
- Secondary Recovery: as oil is removed, it becomes increasingly more difficult to remove more oil, and thus secondary recovery strategies have been incorporated
- Still, only about 60% of the oil in most deposits is removed
- Alberta is the biggest developer of oil and gas, with Saskatchewan and B.C. producing both but in less quantities
- Oil from the ground can take the form of either conventional crude oil, or synthetic crude oil created from Oil Sand
- Oil Sand: sand that is coated in an oil-like substance (Bitumen), which is easily dug up and can then be processed to separate the bitumen from the sand (found largely in Alberta)
- Hydro-Electric generating station: generators that are built near rivers with significant changes in elevation, with a large and reliable flow of water
- Force of the water moving from a higher to a lower elevation drives the generator and produces the electricity
- Pros: cheap (no fuel)
- No air pollution
- Renewable resource
- If there is a reservoir, it can also be used for recreational activities (fishing/boating)
- Cons: very costly to build
- Suitable sites are often far from areas where electricity is needed, which means costly and unsightly transmission lines are needed
- Building a dam require the flooding of low-lying areas, which destroys everything in the area (also causes the release of dangerous metals, like mercury, from rocks under the reservoir)
- Significantly impacts the lives of the people living in an area that’s about to be flooded (most often Aboriginal people because the sites are located in remote areas
- Thermal-Electrical generating station: steam is used to turn turbines, which causes the generator to turn and produces electricity
- Steam is produced by burning fuel such as coal, oil, natural gas, wood, or even garbage
- Pros: plants can be built where electricity is needed, or where fuel is cheaply available (shorter transmission lines)
- Less expensive to build than hydro-electric or nuclear-electric plants
- Cons: fuel costs (especially oil and natural gas) are high
- Most fuel are non-renewable resources
- Burning of these fuels produce carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas)
- Coal and oil produce the gases that contribute to acid precipitation
- Nuclear-Electric generating station: same concept as thermal-electric generating station, but uses different fuel to power the turbines
- Heat comes from the radioactive breakdown (fission) of uranium atoms, which in turn boils water and creates the steam used to turn the turbines
- Pros: plants can be built where electricity is needed (shorter transmission lines)
- Low operating costs
- Canada has an abundant supply of uranium
- Do not produce air pollution
- Cons: very high construction costs
- Radioactive materials are very hazardous to human health and must be handled with great care
- Waste products from nuclear plants remains dangerous for 100,000 years, and no permanent method for handling this waste has been established yet)
- Useful life of a nuclear plant is much shorter than original thought, so plants will need to be replaced / rebuilt at enormous cost
- Getting Electricity to Market: once electricity is produced, it must be moved to where it will be used (often transmitted hundreds of kilometers)
- Power Grid: system of electrical power lines that connects large generating stations to buildings where people use electricity
- Electricity has become one of Canada’s most important export commodities
- Energy industries were responsible for almost 7% of Canada’s GDP in 1997, and provided 280, 000 jobs
- Trade in Electricity: electricity is often moved from one place to another through transmission lines
- Electricity is sent to the United States during the summer, when the country’s air conditioner needs are high
- Inversely, the states might sell power to Canada during the winter, when heating demands are high
- Trade in Natural Gas: closely tied to the location of gas pipelines, which is the only method of transporting vast amounts of natural gas
- Trade in Oil: the cheapest way to move oil is by supertanker, with the second cheapest method being by pipeline