EQ2 6.5 Flashcards
What are some energy pathways?
- Pipelines (oil/gas)
- Land/ships (coal/uranium)
- Tankers/ships (oil/LNG)
- Underground cables (electricity)
Why can pathways be complicated?
- Physical geography = hard to access (e.g. deep ocean waters)
- High environmental costs (e.g. seperating tar sands in Canada)
Human:
* Political tension
* Diversions
* Unstable source location (e.g. Libyan civil war)
* Embargoes/sanctions
What are consequences of disrupted pathways?
- Recession
- Job losses
- Energy shortages
- Conflict
Renewables more commonly accessible = less conflict
What’s the deal with Russia and South Caucasus?
- Russia doesn’t want another member of NATO and EU right next to it - so establishes its superpower status
- 5th pipeline built by BP in 1999 reduces Russian leverage over Europe
Keychain of fracking process
- Layers of decaying organisms exposed to heat + pressure = natural gas
- Drills through sediment then turns drill 90° and drills more horizontally
- Fracking fluid pumped into well at pressures so high that it create fractures in the shale that gas + oil can escape through and enters water
Keychain of tar/oil sands process
IF WITHIN 75M OF SURFACE
* Bitumen is open-pit mined
* Huge clumps of oil sands are shovelled into large trucks and taken to crushers where they’re broken down + heated with water to seperate sand
IF >75M BELOW SURFACE (like 80% of oil sands)
* Steam assisted gravity drainage
* Steam is pumped underground through wells to liquiefy the bitumen, then pumped up to surface and is processed and refined
* Higher production costs than conventional sources
What is the Deepwater Horizon?
- Drilling rig that is semisubmersible, can be transported by ship
What was the Deepwater Horizon Disaster 2010?
- Rig exploded due to methane gas
- 11 killed, 17 injured + knock-on effects on local health
- Oil blowed out for 87 days - 4 million gallons released in total
- Negative impacts on animals, Lousiana’s fishing industry, tourism
