This is a little long but it's the global picture and I have a growing problem with bitumen in the global picture. So I make it long.

We know that

oil is essentially for transportation fuels

conventional natural gas is abundant in MIddle east and russia and now un conventional gas is abundant in NorthAmerica. As result the price of natgas energy at well head is very low at about 20 $ (3.5*6) instead of 70$ for the same oil energy. We could say that natgas energy is somewhere 33% of the price of oil energy at wellhead and unconventional gas is yet to be chased elsewhere in the world so that this low price should stand

natgas is less transportable than oil but this is changing rapidly with gas pipes in asia from turkmenistan and iran to india ) and also in US (with gaspipes from rockies to east) and between russia and europe (EDF France signed for southstream russian project) and finally with LNG ships.

you do not need refineries to use natgas ; for transportation, for electric generation etc. Natural gas is CH4 has little carbon and a lot of Hydrogen, can be burnt directly to produce steam in electricpowwer stations or to power engines of vehicules. the very same engines in fact as those of current vehicles with an dapatation kit. I happen to be invested in such adaptation kit producer

refineries are said to be THE MOST COMPLEX INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS in the world. They were mandatory to refine oil into gasoline. THey need incredible amount of capital, they are risky, costly, dirty

we want to reduce emission of carbon dioxyde because it is dirty in the cities and it is bad air to breathe. It is also said that CO2 is responsible of most of global warming although I have serious doubts aout that, still, regulations for cleaner engines is a must have for proper cities . Natgas can do that and is as close to perfect as reality can be, because hydrogen is fantasy and was IMO hype sold to keep users waiting while using the only said available solution that is oil/gasoline

emerging countries like india turn to natgas powered engines for all reasons above :: natgas infrastructures from reserve to consumption are being built; no need for refineries ;cheaper resource; bigger resource; cleaner ; compatible with existing engine manufacturing base

On another hand we have bitumen from Connacher & Co. Bitumen is a low quality sustitute for oil that is

more difficult, costly, in $ and in energy, to extract from ground than oil

more difficult and costly to transport because you need the best of natgas (condensate to dilute it to tranport it to the refinery)

more difficult to refine with upgraders needed, with more energy wasted and more CO2 created more capital in the refinery

I was a believer in insitubitumen because it is cleaner than mining but when you see what happens with natgas I slowly turn to thinking that

the very reason of bitumen is to produce feed for US refineries. This will stop when US refineries stop. All this scheme is flawed, suboptimal. lot of bitumen may stay in the ground.

One would better off turning to clean natgas vehicles instead of turning the system to bitumen. I know the answer to that is we need everything to get enough energy globally...Maybe but if the world has alternate solutions there will be no gifts to the dirty costly solutions. Lobbys can twist things for a while but not for long.

A question finally: Has somebody elements on the economics of natgas powered transportation for NorthAmerica ?

Hubisan