Like most of you, I guess, my heart is with the renewables energy developments of which Scotland has many to be optimistic about but we can’t let the No campaign use the myth of a terminal collapse in the oil and gas sector to argue the Scottish economy is weak. See this for a wee reminder if you need to or if you need to remind a doubter.
As I understand it, ‘heavy oil’ is difficult to extract from the oil fields but, as you might expect a new technology has come along, and the sort of Victorian sounding ‘Steam Oil Production Company’ aim to recover up to 500 million barrels from the North Sea’s ‘Western Platform.’ Reporting in Energy Voice yesterday, here’s how they’ve done it before:
‘In general, the onshore method of steam flooding involves pumping hot water vapour into a well. This heats the oil to a higher temperature so that it flows more efficiently through the underground formation and into the production wells.’
I’m no technologist but does that sound kind of obvious? Nevertheless there will be a pilot run before the company start seriously on the four blocks they’ve been awarded and which they estimate will allow recovery of that headline figure.
Talking-up Scotland 