scholarly journals Global prospects of unconventional oil in the turbulent market: a long term outlook to 2040

Author(s):  
Nikita O. Kapustin ◽  
Dmitry A. Grushevenko

Unconventional oils have taken the global oil industry by storm and have secured an 8% share in the global liquid fuels production in under 20 years. And it is without a doubt that these resources will continue to play an important role in the future. Cost analysis of unconventional oil types has shown that Light Tight Oil (LTO) or shale oil still holds potential for technological and economical improvement, however, the revolutionary stage in development has probably already been passed in the US. For the rest of the world, the issue of kick starting LTO production lies as much in the fields of adapting the existing technologies, as overcoming economic, legislative and environmental barriers. The same cannot be said for heavy oil and bitumen production, as open pit mining is demonstrating cost escalation and resource base depletion, whilein situproduction approach has reached the limit of technological progress and production costs are mostly determined by external factors. Oil price fluctuation and the emergence of more economically viable unconventional oil sources have shifted attention away from kerogen oil and substantially halted production technologies development. The forecast of unconventional oil was conducted along two scenarios: Baseline (a business-as-usual scenario) and Technological (scenario of forced technology development and transfer). The share of unconventional oil in global crude production will increase to 17–21%, depending on scenario. The main difference between scenarios is the rate of kerogen production, which benefits from the favorable conditions of the Technological scenario. Large-scale LTO production will remain a local North American phenomenon in both scenarios. More important than geological or technological factors is the unique business environment, characteristic for the USA, which would be impossible to replicate in any other country. Expansion of unconventional oil production as stimulated competition on the liquid fuels market. Conventional oil producers have mostly adapted to the new environment and will continue to dominate in the forecast period. The greatest pressure is put on the more costly alternative supply sources: biofuels, coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid; which have the least promising prospects in the current market.

Author(s):  
T. V. Galanina ◽  
M. I. Baumgarten ◽  
T. G. Koroleva

Large-scale mining disturbs wide areas of land. The development program for the mining industry, with an expected considerable increase in production output, aggravates the problem with even vaster territories exposed to the adverse anthropogenic impact. Recovery of mining-induced ecosystems in the mineral-extracting regions becomes the top priority objective. There are many restoration mechanisms, and they should be used in integration and be highly technologically intensive as the environmental impact is many-sided. This involves pollution of water, generation of much waste and soil disturbance which is the most typical of open pit mining. Scale disturbance of land, withdrawal of farming land, land pollution and littering are critical problems to the solved in the first place. One of the way outs is highquality reclamation. This article reviews the effective rules and regulations on reclamation. The mechanism is proposed for the legal control of disturbed land reclamation on a regional and federal level. Highly technologically intensive recovery of mining-induced landscape will be backed up by the natural environment restoration strategy proposed in the Disturbed Land Reclamation Concept.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Lei Zhao ◽  
Greg You

Brown coal is young, shallowly deposited, and widely distributed in the world. It is a fuel commonly used to generate electricity. This paper first reviews the resources and characteristics of brown coal in Victoria, Australia, and its exploitation and contribution to the economy or power supply in Victoria. Due to the shallow depth of the brown coal seam, e.g. very favorable stripping ratio, open pit mining is the only mining method used to extract the coal at low cost for power generators. With the large-scale mining operations, cases of batter failure were not rare in the area. From the comprehensive review of past failures, overburden batter tends to fail by circular sliding, coal batter tends to fail by block sliding after the overburden is stripped due to a weak water-bearing layer underneath the coal seam and tension cracks developed at the rear of the batter, and batter failure is typically coincided with peak raining seasons. Secondly, the paper reviews the case study of Maddingley Brown Coal (MBC) Open Cut Mine batter stability, including geology, hydrogeology, and hydro-mechanically coupled numerical modelling. The modelling employs three-dimensional finite element method to simulate the MBC northern batter where cracks were observed in November 2013. The comprehensive simulation covers an overburden batter, a brown coal batter, two rainfall models, and a buttressed batter. The simulated results agree well with observed data, and it is found that the rainfall at the intensity of 21mm substantially lowered the factor of safety of the coal batter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziheng Song ◽  
Yinli Bi ◽  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Yunli Gong ◽  
Huihui Yang

Abstract It is urgent to restore the ecological function in open-pit mining areas on grassland in Eastern China. The open-pit mines have abundant of mining associated clay, which is desirable for using as a soil source for ecological restoration. The mining associated clay in Hulunbuir district, Inner Mongolia was selected and mixed with a sandy soil at a ratio of 1:1 (S_C soil). Also, effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation on soil functions were studied. The aboveground and underground biomass of maize in S_C soil was 1.49 and 2.41 times higher than that of clay soil, respectively. In the topsoil and S_C soil, the growth hormone (IAA) and cytokinin (CTK) levels of maize were higher than that of clay, while abscission acid (ABA) levels were lower. The inoculation with AMF could significantly improve the biomass of maize and enhance the stress resistance of plants. Through structural equation model (SEM) analyses, it was found that the soil type and AMF inoculation had the most direct impact on maize growth and biomass content. These finds extend our knowledge regarding a low-cost method for physical and biological improvement of mining associated clay, and to provide theoretical support for large-scale application in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-186
Author(s):  
S.V. Shaklein ◽  
◽  
M.V. Pisarenko ◽  

Analysis of the grade composition of the mineral resource base of the distributed and undistributed subsoil Fund as of 01.01.2018 showed a decrease in reserves of coal intended for open pit mining. In the future, the production of a number of technological grades of coal (gas fat (GZh), fat (Zh), coking fat (KZh), coking (K), coking caking low-metamorphized (KCN), coking caking (KC), lean caking (OC), low caking (CC) is possible only by underground method. The expansion of the raw material base of the Kuzbass coal industry and the support of coal production volumes, primarily by the technological of grades coking fat (KZh), coking (K), coking caking (KC), lean caking (OC), low caking (CC) involves exploration, the use of unconventional production technologies and tax preferences for coal mining enterprise


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1313
Author(s):  
Olha V. POKATAIEVA ◽  
Lesia A. SAVCHENKO ◽  
Oleksandr M. BUKHANEVYCH ◽  
Anton O. MONAIENKO ◽  
Olga P. GETMANETS

For the purpose of a more detailed analysis of the features of administrative regulation of fiscal policy, it is necessary to consider examples of fiscal regulation of business processes in individual foreign countries, as well as features of fiscal policy in the EU. For several decades in a row, the G7 countries – Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Canada, the USA, France, and Japan - determine world economic policy. Despite the periodic global economic crises, they are among the first to overcome their consequences and maintain a leading position in the global business environment. This happens due to a balanced fiscal regulation policy. Among their common features is that part of the GDP that they accumulate through leverage of fiscal regulation has a steady tendency for growth. Thus, over the past 40 years in France, this share has grown by 10.1%, and in Canada - by 10.9%. The paper shows that the theoretical basis of modern fiscal regulation in these countries is neo-conservatism, the basis of which is the importance of direct impact on production through targeted and large-scale tax cuts. The authors show that fiscal regulation in this case provides incentives for conservation and investment. Another important element is the reduction of government spending, mainly due to the implementation of targeted government programs. However, despite several common features, each country has certain features in the administrative and legal regulation of fiscal policy. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that it is necessary to investigate these features in more detail through the lens the historical development of the administrative and legal regulation of fiscal policy in foreign countries.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunyao Wang ◽  
Xiaoping Lu ◽  
Zhenwei Chen ◽  
Guo Zhang ◽  
Taofeng Ma ◽  
...  

Illegal open-pit mining causes environmental harm and undermines sustainable development. Conventional monitoring approaches such as field research and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery are time-consuming and labor-intensive, making large-scale monitoring difficult. In comparison, optical remote sensing imagery can cover large areas but is vulnerable to adverse weather conditions and is not sensitive to vertical ground changes. As open-pit excavation causes sudden changes in the scattering properties of ground objects along with dramatic vertical deformation, we evaluated the feasibility of using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) coherence to identify illegal mining activities. Our method extracts the coherence coefficient from two SAR images taken on different dates, applies thresholding and filtering to extract a decorrelation map, and then overlays this with legal mining boundaries and optical satellite images to identify illegal mining activities. For three test cases in southwestern Inner Mongolia, China, 49 legal mining sites were correctly detected (with an accuracy of 90.74%) as well as six illegal mining sites. Ground truthing confirmed the presence of ongoing activity at one of these sites. Our study shows that InSAR coherence is suitable for the identification of mining activities, and our method provides a new approach for the detection and monitoring of illegal open-pit mining.


Author(s):  
Sergei Vokhmin ◽  

Introduction. Drilling and blasting operations are first in the workflow and significantly determine the economic efficiency of the entire mining and primary processing workflow in the enterprise. The cost of drilling and blasting operations is a significant part of total production costs of large mining companies. In this context, mining engineers today are facing a crucial technological problem, i.e. the reduction of the off-gauge fraction yield after the explosion. Research aims to develop the models which forecast the granulometric composition of the rock mass taken down as the original factor in reducing the economic waste of the entire workflow. Methodology. The parameters which influence the results of rock mass fragmentation and the techniques of rock mass granulometric composition forecasting in the course of drilling and blasting were analyzed. Results. The present paper gives a brief overview of the global mineral output; provides information on the extraction of key types of minerals (mineral fuel, ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, precious metals, and construction materials), as well as revenues derived from their sale. On the example of domestic companies, approaches to the issue of forecasting the off-gauge fraction yield after the explosion. Summary. Direction for future actions in creating the model forecasting rock mass yield of a certain fraction after the explosion.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102-106
Author(s):  
O. A. Isyanov ◽  
◽  
D. I. Ilderov ◽  
V. I. Suprun ◽  
S. A. Radchenko ◽  
...  

Instability of pit wall slopes is the most critical accident in open pit mining. The risk of damages to pit walls is proportional to the height of exposed surfaces and to the time of exposure. Among many factors governing pit wall stability, the major factor is geological structure and weakening zones in rock mass. Deformation processes are initiated in host rock mass of coal seams mostly because of undercutting of weak interlayers. Alongside with local undercutting, another cause of landslides is transition of coal mining from down-dip extraction to up-dip extraction. The sequence of mining and morphology of weak interlayers also have influence on initiation and evolution of deformations. The basic component of engineering solutions on pit wall stability control is optimization of mining sequence and methods of accessing working horizons in open pit mines. Large-scale deformation of Western and Southeastern pit walls in Urtui mine could be avoided using the optimized sequence of mining operations. For example, mining advance mostly along the curve of the Urtui centroclinal fold, with early access and destress of the eastern and, first of all, western wings of the fold could make it possible to evade from up-dip mining of coal seams and, as a consequence, to solve the major geomechanical problems in the open pit mine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6919
Author(s):  
Izabela-Maria Apostu ◽  
Maria Lazar ◽  
Florin Faur

Some valuable minerals, such as lignite, are extracted through open-pit mining works. After the cessation of mining activity, large-scale gaps result in the landscape. These gaps, also called “remaining gaps”, represent some of the roughest types of environmental impacts. After the cessation of mining activity, recovery and ecological restoration works are required. However, it is first necessary to carry out risk assessment studies considering the possible future influences on the final slopes. For this study, flooding of the remaining lignite open-pits gaps was considered as the ecological restoration option. The study was based on extensive research, including sampling, laboratory tests, statistical-mathematical processing, hypothesis formulation, evaluations, interpretations, and field observations, regarding the rock behavior and occurrence of negative geotechnical phenomena (geotechnical phenomena that have a negative impact and a risk on the integrity of the environment and local communities, such as landslides, rockfalls, liquefaction, suffosis) during the flooding process. This paper’s originality consists of combining the methods and methodologies developed with the help of classic methods (Fellenius, Janbu, and Bishop methods) and probabilistic ones (Rosenblueth method) existing in the specialized literature for solving the proposed problem and structuring the information similar to a guide.


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