The oil sands in Alberta contain the second biggest known oil reserve in the world, the first being Saudi Arabia.. It is estimated that up to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in the oil sands. Alberta’s oil sands comprise one of the world’s two largest sources of bitumen. The other source is Venezuela.Alberta’s oil sands lie beneath 54,643 miles of mostly northern Alberta; an area larger than the state of Florida. Oil sands are found in three places in Alberta – the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake regions. The Athabasca region is the largest and has the most oil sands close to the surface.
Oil sand is oil which is trapped in the sand underneath the earth’s surface. The oil in the oil sand in Alberta is composed of sand, oil, clay, and water. The oil sand grains can be easily crumbled in your hand. The oil in oil sand is called bitumen. Bitumen is a thick, sticky form of crude oil, kind of like cold molasses. It is heavy and won’t flow unless it is heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons.
Bitumen is a complex hydrocarbon made up of a long chain of molecules. This chain of molecules must be split and reorganized for it to be processed in refineries. Bitumen is carbon rich and hydrogen poor. Bitumen requires upgrading to synthetic crude oil or dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines and usable by refineries. Upgrading involves removing some carbon while adding hydrogen to make more valuable hydrocarbon products.
There are four main processes used to upgrade bitumen. Coking which removes the carbon and breaks large bitumen molecules into smaller parts. Distillation is used to sort the mixtures of hydrocarbon molecules into their separate components. Catalytic conversions transform the hydrocarbons into more valuable forms. Finally, hydrotreating is used to remove sulphur and nitrogen and add hydrogen to the molecules.
The end product of the processing is synthetic crude oil, a light sweet crude oil. It’s called synthetic because it’s been changed from its natural state. It’s natural state being the thick, black bitumen.
It takes two tons of oil sands to extract enough oil to make one barrel. The sands have to be dug up, moved and processed to produce this barrel of oil. About 75 percent of the bitumen can be recovered from sand. Once the bitumen is extracted the processed sand is returned to the pit and the site is reclaimed. Developers are required to restore oil sand mining sites to at least the equivalent of their previous biological state including vegetation and drainage.
Extracting oil from oil sands requires more technology and labor to produce than extraction from reservoir rock. Companies like,
western pipeline corporation, extract oil from reservoir rock which does not require as much processing as oil sands.
Bob Jent is the CEO of
Western Pipeline Corporation.
Western Pipeline Corp specializes in identifying, acquiring and developing existing, producing reserves on behalf of its individual clients.
