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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on May 18, 2016 at 7:04

Before your video P.G. I'd never heard of BPEarthwatch.  They have a website and a You Tube channel.  This is a cut-and-paste from the channel under the "about" tab.

"Dedicated to Watching the End Time Events that Lead to the Return of Our Lord Jesus Christ.Comets, Asteroids, Earth Quakes, Solar Flares and The End Time Powers."

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Permalink Reply by P.G. on May 18, 2016 at 9:07

I didn't see that about an end times site.
Seemed to be some technical things they explain about the land collapsing and such due to the stopping pumping of steam.  Thought maybe someone on here with the expertise might know about this or could debunk it.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on May 18, 2016 at 10:03

Just my nature, P.G.  When I hear or read something that sounds a little odd, maybe a little overblown or deceptive, I always research the source.  If you will look over the website you should get a feel for BPEarthWatch.  End timers, survivalists, conspiracy theorists, etc. I'd link their website but that would be against GHS rules not to mention the possible promotion of nut jobs.

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Permalink Reply by Keith Mauck (Site Publisher) on May 18, 2016 at 7:48

The uncontrolled blaze covered 355,000 hectares (877,224 acres), up from 285,000 hectares on Monday. The fire on Tuesday burned a 655-room lodge for oil sands workers about 35 km (20 miles) north of Fort McMurray and threatened other housing. 

High temperatures and winds were working against firefighters, and the fire was forecast to move to the east, putting oil operations in its path, officials said.

None of the oil sands have caught fire, and the industry was redoubling efforts to ensure facilities were well-protected, said Alberta wildfire manager Chad Morrison.

"Because of the cleared vegetation, lots of gravel on site and because they have an industrial firefighting service on site that understands this ... we feel fairly confident the sites themselves will be OK," Morrison told a news conference.

The lost Canadian production of 1 million barrels a day represents about one-quarter of total Canadian output. Canadian crude oil prices strengthened in light trading on Tuesday and Global oil prices touched a six-month high, with the Alberta outages among factors lending support.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-enbridge-idUSKCN0...

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Permalink Reply by dbob on May 18, 2016 at 12:12

Did not watch the whole video.  Its a mix of real information, and accidental or intentional misunderstandings.  Regarding the "caverns" the steam systems are not based on caverns, but simply flow through the formation and heating up the sandy bitumen to pull out the bitumen.  The (natural) sand largely stays in place.  That said, due to the shallow depth, i suspect future subsidence is somewhat likely.  But nothing like Bayou Coryne.  

Other systems there work much more like a strip mine, and are unlikely to be affected by the wildfire.  These are fairly intensive to the land, and reclamation of the land after mining is going to take a long time.  

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Permalink Reply by P.G. on May 20, 2016 at 2:48

Thanks.
So there likely will be some settling eventually going on there, huh?
There was some concern about what will happen to the aquifer as that happens.
Is there any place in this country that might be similar? Aren't they using steam in the Bakken?

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Permalink Reply by dbob on May 20, 2016 at 13:31

P.G. - there are some places in Alabama that if developed might be developed that way. And steam is used in some of the California oil wells, and might be useful in some places in Texas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_injection_(oil_industry)

No steam use in this context in Bakken, to my knowledge, and the production zone is deep enough and dense enough settling is unlikely to be an issue.  

settling was common around some of the early shallow oil fields.  Impacts to aquifers from physical displacement would seem possible, but most of the settling I am aware of was on the gulf coast, with the gulf coast aquifer, which to my knowledge has not historically been considered a great source of water.  https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/0274/report.pdf

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Permalink Reply by Jan Holland on May 24, 2016 at 10:15

Evacuation Orders Lifted For 8 Canadian Oil Sands Sites Amid Wildfire

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