There’s an oil boom going on right now in Alberta, Canada, in a town called McMurray where temperatures hover around 40 below in the dead of winter. Oil companies are digging up dirt that is saturated with oil, called oil sands. The cost of extracting the oil form the sand historically made production of the oil sands unviable. Once oil hit $40 a barrel mining the oil sands became not only viable but very profitable. The cost of producing oil from Alberta tar sands is about $25 per barrel.
Surface mining occurs predominantly in the Athabasca oil sand deposit. About 20% of the oil sand can be reached by open pit mining. First, the surface layer is cleared. This consists of boreal forest and muskeg (a type of bog) in Alberta. Below this surface layer is a layer of rock, sand, and clay which is then removed. This layer is called overburden. Overburden is a term used in mining to describe the material that lies above the area of economic interest. Below this overburden lies the oil sand.
Big shovels are used to dig the oil sand and dump it into the back of huge heavy hauler trucks. In fact, these are the worlds largest trucks. These truck are three stories high and cost $5 million. The shovel is capable of scooping up about 100 tons of oil sands in one load. The trucks can carry up to 400 tons of oil sand in each load.
The heavy hauler trucks carry the oil sands to crushers in the mine where it is crushed into similar size pieces. Then, the crushed pieces are mixed with hot water in a large vessel called a cyclofeeder. The oil sand and water mix together to form a slurry. The slurry is then pumped through a pipeline into an extraction plant.
The extraction plant processes the slurry to separate the bitumen from the oil sand. The slurry from the mine goes into a large tank. This tank is called a separation vessel because the slurry settles into layers in it. The sand is heavy and settles out first, forming a layer on the bottom of the vessel. The middle layer is a murky water layer. The bitumen floats on the surface as a bubbly froth. This froth is skimmed off and treated to remove the sand, clay and water still contained in it. The froth is then diluted and placed in fast spinning machines called centrifuges where centrifugal force is used to remove the sand, water and clay from the oil.
The bitumen needs upgrading to make higher quality fuel products. Carbons are removed or more hydrogen is added. The bitumen is heated to 925 degrees to remove the carbon in furnaces called cokers. The heat forces the molecules in the bitumen to split apart producing two new products: a heavy solid and a light gas vapor. The heavy solid material is mostly carbon called coke. Coke is similar to coal. The gas vapors are cooled and condense into liquid fuels. Sulphur is then removed from the liquid fuel by adding hydrogen. The sulfphur combines with the hydrogen and is removed from the fuels.The liquid fuels are then combined to make synthetic crude oil. It’s called synthetic because it has changed from its natural state, which is the thick, black bitumen.
Eighty percent of the oil sand in the Athabasca deposit is too deep to reach by surface mining. Steam injection (in-situ) technologies are used to extract the oil. Two wells are drilled down into the oil sands. Steam is injected into one well to heat the oil sands. The steam causes the bitumen to separate from the oil sands. Gravity makes the oil seep into the second well and it is then pumped to the surface.
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The higher price of oil per barrel and new technologies have not only made it economically sound to mine the oil sands in Alberta. It has also made it feasible to drill deeper in mature fields to find oil. Companies like,
Western Pipeline Corporation, are using technology to determine worthwhile areas in mature fields to produce oil.
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.
