Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil that constitute unconventional resources, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted primarily in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen, silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits.
Heavy crude oil is highly viscous oil that cannot easily flow from production wells under normal reservoir conditions.
Enhanced oil recovery, also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. Although the primary and secondary recovery techniques rely on the pressure differential between the surface and the underground well, enhanced oil recovery functions by altering the chemical composition of the oil itself in order to make it easier to extract. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using primary and secondary recovery. According to the US Department of Energy, carbon dioxide and water are injected along with one of three EOR techniques: thermal injection, gas injection, and chemical injection. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.
Steam-assisted gravity drainage is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells is drilled into the oil reservoir, one a few metres above the other. High pressure steam is continuously injected into the upper wellbore to heat the oil and reduce its viscosity, causing the heated oil to drain into the lower wellbore, where it is pumped out. Dr. Roger Butler, engineer at Imperial Oil from 1955 to 1982, invented the steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process in the 1970s. Butler "developed the concept of using horizontal pairs of wells and injected steam to develop certain deposits of bitumen considered too deep for mining". In 1983 Butler became director of technical programs for the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA), a crown corporation created by Alberta Premier Lougheed to promote new technologies for oil sands and heavy crude oil production. AOSTRA quickly supported SAGD as a promising innovation in oil sands extraction technology.
Connacher Oil and Gas Limited is a Calgary-based exploration, development and production company active in the production and sale of bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands region. Connacher's shares used to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but it was de-listed in 2016, after filing for insolvency.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding is a process in which carbon dioxide is injected into an oil reservoir to increase the output when extracting oil. This is most often used in reservoirs where production rates have declined due to depletion.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel that can be drawn from beneath the earth's surface. Reservoirs of petroleum are formed through the mixture of plants, algae, and sediments in shallow seas under high pressure. Petroleum is mostly recovered from oil drilling. Seismic surveys and other methods are used to locate oil reservoirs. Oil rigs and oil platforms are used to drill long holes into the earth to create an oil well and extract petroleum. After extraction, oil is refined to make gasoline and other products such as tires and refrigerators. Extraction of petroleum can be dangerous and have led to oil spills.
Canada's oil sands and heavy oil resources are among the world's great petroleum deposits. They include the vast oil sands of northern Alberta, and the heavy oil reservoirs that surround the small city of Lloydminster, which sits on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. The extent of these resources is well known, but better technologies to produce oil from them are still being developed.
The Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA) was an Alberta crown corporation to promote the development and use of new technology for oil sands and heavy crude oil production, and enhanced recovery of conventional crude oil. It was funded by the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund. Its head office and information centre were located in Edmonton, Alberta and a second office in Calgary, Alberta in Canada.
The Clearwater Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous (Albian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta, Canada. It was first defined by R.G. McConnell in 1893 and takes its name from the Clearwater River near Fort McMurray.
The McMurray Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous age of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta. It takes the name from Fort McMurray and was first described from outcrops along the banks of the Athabasca River 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) north of Fort McMurray by F.H. McLearn in 1917. It is a well-studied example of fluvial to estuarine sedimentation, and it is economically important because it hosts most of the vast bitumen resources of the Athabasca Oil Sands region.
Heavy oil production is a developing technology for extracting heavy oil in industrial quantities. Estimated reserves of heavy oil are over 6 trillion barrels, three times that of conventional oil and gas.
Petrobank was an oil exploration, development, and production company based in Calgary, Canada. It operates through 4 units/subsidiaries, PetroBakken Energy in Canada, Petrominerales Ltd in Peru and Colombia, HBU in the heavy crude oil business, and its technology unit Archon Technologies Ltd . In 1986 the company changed its name from Petrobank Energy Resources Ltd. to Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. Though it has a significant resource base its ten patents for heavy oil extracting technology are becoming increasingly valuable to the company. In December 2010 the company received permission from the government of Alberta to produce oil sands bitumen at a new location in Dawson using a technique known as fireflooding, the third Petrobank operation that will use it; the 50% interest in Dawson was acquired in October from Shell Canada.
The Long Lake oil sands upgrader project is an in situ oil extraction project near Anzac, Alberta, 40 km (25 mi) southeast of Fort McMurray in the Athabasca oil sands region of Alberta.
Laricina Energy Ltd. was a private Canadian oil producing company engaged in exploration in North-Eastern Alberta. The company targeted oil sands opportunities outside of the Athabasca mining area and was focusing on in situ plays in the Grosmont and Grand Rapids formations. Its headquarters were located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Located in northwest-central Alberta, the Peace River oil sands deposit is the smallest of four large deposits of oil sands of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin formation.
The Underground Test Facility (UTF) site is located approximately 60 km Northwest of Fort McMurray. In the 1980s, Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA) initiated an extensive program to evaluate horizontal well recovery processes for Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) deep oil recovery from shafts and tunnels (Shaft and Tunnel Access Concept – SATAC. The SAGD process which developed in the late 80s included drilling wells in pairs with the producer at the base of the reservoir and the steam injector from the above. The top well injects heat into the reservoir to form a steam chamber and makes the bitumen more liquid which then drains to the production well. The UTF site contains an oil reservoir 20 meters thick. It was determined that these reserves could be mined from tunnels in the limestone below the pay zone using SAGD.
Riyaz Kharrat is an eminent Iranian scientist in the field of chemical engineering and petroleum engineering. He is a full professor at Montanuniversität Leoben.
Carabobo is an oil field located in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt. As one of the world's largest accumulations of recoverable oil, the recent discoveries in the Orinoco Belt have led to Venezuela holding the world's largest recoverable reserves in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia in July 2010. The Carabobo oil field is majority owned by Venezuela's national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). Owning the majority of the Orinoco Belt, and its estimated 1.18 trillion barrels of oil in place, PDVSA is now the fourth largest oil company in the world. The field is well known for its extra Heavy crude oils, having an average specific gravity between 4 and 16 °API. The Orinoco Belt holds 90% of the world's extra heavy crude oils, estimated at 256 billion recoverable barrels. While production is in its early development, the Carabobo field is expected to produce 400,000 barrels of oil per day.
