Unconventional oil reserves

What are oil sands
Oil sands, tar sands or, more technically, 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, saturated with a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen (or colloquially as tar due to its superficially similar appearance). Natural bitumen deposits are reported in many countries, but in particular are found in extremely large quantities in Canada. Other large reserves are located in Kazakhstan and Russia. The estimated worldwide deposits of oil are more than 2 trillion barrels (320 billion cubic metres); the estimates include deposits that have not been discovered. Proven reserves of bitumen contain approximately 100 billion barrels, and total natural bitumen reserves are estimated at 249.67 Gbbl (39.694×109 m3) worldwide, of which 176.8 Gbbl (28.11×109 m3), or 70.8%, are in Alberta, Canada.

Oil sands reserves have only recently been considered to be part of the world's oil reserves, as higher oil prices and new technology enable profitable extraction and processing. Oil produced from bitumen sands is often referred to as unconventional oil or crude bitumen, to distinguish it from liquid hydrocarbons produced from traditional oil wells.

The crude bitumen contained in the Canadian oil sands is described by the National Energy Board of Canada as "a highly viscous mixture of hydrocarbons heavier than pentanes which, in its natural state, is not usually recoverable at a commercial rate through a well because it is too thick to flow." Crude bitumen is a thick, sticky form of crude oil, so heavy and viscous (thick) that it will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons such as light crude oil or natural-gas condensate. At room temperature, it is much like cold molasses. The World Energy Council (WEC) defines natural bitumen as "oil having a viscosity greater than 10,000 centipoise under reservoir conditions and an API gravity of less than 10° API". The Orinoco Belt in Venezuela is sometimes described as oil sands, but these deposits are non-bituminous, falling instead into the category of heavy or extra-heavy oil due to their lower viscosity. Natural bitumen and extra-heavy oil differ in the degree by which they have been degraded from the original conventional oils by bacteria. According to the WEC, extra-heavy oil has "a gravity of less than 10° API and a reservoir viscosity of no more than 10,000 centipoise".

According to the study ordered by the Government of Alberta and conducted by Jacobs Engineering Group, emissions from oil-sand crude are 12% higher than from conventional oil.

Historic examples
The Athabasca River cuts through the heart of the deposit, and traces of the heavy oil are readily observed as black stains on the river banks. Since portions of the Athabasca sands are shallow enough to be surface-mineable, they were the earliest ones to see development. Historically, the bitumen was used by the indigenous Cree and Dene Aboriginal peoples to waterproof their canoes. The Athabasca oil sands first came to the attention of European fur traders in 1719 when Wa-pa-su, a Cree trader, brought a sample of bituminous sands to the Hudson's Bay Company post at York Factory on Hudson Bay.

Romania discovered some near the oil producing town of Ploiești in the run up to WW2 and plans were made to use them if the conventional oil ran out, but it did not.

Cold War usage
High oil prices and falling supplies in the 1970s lead to a plan to

Athabasca oil sands

 * 1) Country- Canada
 * 2) Region- Northern Alberta
 * 3) Offshore/onshore- Onshore, mining
 * 4) Coordinates- 57.02°N 111.65°WCoordinates: 57.02°N 111.65°W
 * 5) Site operators- Syncrude, Suncor, CNRL, Shell, Total, Imperial Oil, Petro Canada, Devon, Husky, Statoil and Nexen
 * 6) Corporate partners- Chevron, Marathon, ConocoPhillips, BP and Oxy
 * 7) Discovery- 1848
 * 8) Start of production- 1967
 * 9) Current production of oil- 1,300,000 barrels per day (~6.5×107 t/a)
 * 10) Estimated oil in place- 133,000 million barrels (~1.81×1010 t)
 * 11) Producing formations- McMurray, Clearwater and Grand Rapids

The Athabasca oil sands are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, 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 (a semi-solid rock-like form of crude oil), 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 (the latter stretching into Saskatchewan).

Together, these oil sand deposits lie under 141,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi) of boreal forest and muskeg (peat bogs) and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels (270×109 m3) of bitumen in-place, comparable in magnitude to the world's total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. The International Energy Agency (IEA) lists the economically recoverable reserves, at 2006 prices and modern unconventional oil production technology, to be 178 billion barrels (28.3×109 m3), or about 10% of these deposits. These contribute to Canada's total proven reserves being the third largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela's Orinoco Belt.

Minor exploration and mining activity started up for a while in 1900. Operations were mooted in 1924-26, 1940, 1958 and 1962. The 1962 plans were take up in 1965 and enacted in 1967. It's development was inhibited by the declining world oil prices in the late 1960s. The second mine, operated by the Syncrude consortium, did not begin operating until 1978, after the 1973 oil crisis had caused prices to rise, thus sparking investors' interest.

By 2009, the two extraction methods used were in situ extraction, when the bitumen occurs deeper within the ground, (which will account for 80 percent of oil sands development) and surface or open-pit mining, when the bitumen is closer to the surface. Only 20 percent of bitumen can be extracted using open pit mining methods, which involves large scale excavation of the land with huge hydraulic power shovels and 400-ton heavy hauler trucks. Surface mining leaves toxic tailings ponds. In contrast, in situ uses more specialized techniques such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). "Eighty percent of the oil sands will be developed in situ which accounts for 97.5 percent of the total surface area of the oil sands region in Alberta." In 2006 the Athabasca deposit was the only large oil sands reservoir in the world which was suitable for large-scale surface mining, although most of this reservoir can only be produced using more recently developed in-situ technology.

Critics contend that government and industry measures taken to reduce environmental and health risks posed by large-scale mining operations are inadequate, causing unacceptable damage to the natural environment and human welfare. Objective discussion of the environmental impacts has often been clouded by polarized arguments from industry and from advocacy groups.

Modern usage
Venezuela's Orinoco Belt was descovered in 2003 and has been exserimentaly tapped for oil and gas since 2003. Oil sand/shale mining was planned for 2013, but is now planned for some time in the the 2020s.

Synthetic crude
Synthetic crude oil, also known as syncrude, is the output from a bitumen upgrader facility used in connection with oil sand production in Canada. Bituminous sands are mined using enormous (100 ton capacity) power shovels and loaded into even larger (400 ton capacity) dump trucks for movement to an upgrading facility. The process used to extract the bitumen from the sand is a hot water process originally developed by Dr. Karl Clark of the University of Alberta during the 1920s. After extraction from the sand, the bitumen is fed into a bitumen upgrader which converts it into a light crude oil equivalent. This synthetic substance is fluid enough to be transferred through conventional oil pipelines and can be fed into conventional oil refineries without any further treatment. By 2015 Canadian bitumen upgraders were producing over 1 million barrels (160×103 m3) per day of synthetic crude oil, of which 75% was exported to oil refineries in the United States.

In Alberta, five bitumen upgraders produce synthetic crude oil and a variety of other products: The Suncor Energy upgrader near Fort McMurray, Alberta produces synthetic crude oil plus diesel fuel; the Syncrude Canada, Canadian Natural Resources, and Nexen upgraders near Fort McMurray produce synthetic crude oil; and the Shell Scotford Upgrader near Edmonton produces synthetic crude oil plus an intermediate feedstock for the nearby Shell Oil Refinery. A sixth upgrader, under construction in 2015 near Redwater, Alberta, will upgrade half of its crude bitumen directly to diesel fuel, with the remainder of the output being sold as feedstock to nearby oil refineries and petrochemical plants.

Synthetic crude is the output from a bitumen/extra heavy oil upgrader facility used in connection with oil sand production. It may also refer to shale oil, an output from an oil shale pyrolysis. The properties of the synthetic crude depend on the processes used in the upgrading. Typically, it is low in sulfur and has an API gravity of around 30. It is also known as "upgraded crude".

Synthetic crude is an intermediate product produced when an extra-heavy or unconventional oil source is upgraded into a transportable form. Synthetic crude is then shipped to oil refineries where it is further upgraded into finished products. Synthetic crude may also be mixed, as a diluent, with heavy oil to create synbit. Synbit is more viscous than synthetic crude, but can be a less expensive alternative for transporting heavy oil to a conventional refinery.

Syncrude Canada, Suncor Energy Inc., and Canadian Natural Resources Limited are the three largest worldwide producers of synthetic crude with a cumulative production of approximately 600,000 barrels per day (95,000 m3/d). The NewGrade Energy Upgrader became operational in 1988, and was the first upgrader in Canada, now part of the CCRL Refinery Complex.

Locations
N. Korea
 * 1) Canada
 * 2) Melville Island
 * 3) Baffin Island
 * 4) Athabasca oil sands
 * 5) Northen Secatuain
 * 6) Norythern Manitoba
 * 7) South eastern British Colombia
 * 8) Southern Yukon
 * 9) Venezuela
 * USA
 * 1) Utah
 * 2) Southern Alaska
 * 3) California
 * 4) Louisiana
 * 5) Montana
 * 6) Texas
 * 7) New York
 * 8) Conetticutte
 * 9) Ohio
 * 10) Illinois
 * 11) Florida
 * 12) Australia
 * 13) Greenland
 * 14) Iceland
 * 15) Sweeden
 * 16) Norway
 * 17) Finland
 * 18) Spain
 * 19) Italy
 * 20) Bosnia
 * 21) Madigascar
 * 22) S. Africa
 * 23) Barbados
 * 24) Bahamas
 * 25) Cuba
 * 26) Oman
 * 27) Argentina
 * 28) China
 * 29) Junggar Basin
 * 30) Tarim Basin
 * 31) Turpan Basin
 * 32) Qaidam Basin
 * 33) Ordos Basin
 * 34) Scichuan Basin
 * 35) Jianghan Basin
 * 36) Subie Basin
 * 37) Songlaio Basin
 * 38) Pearl River Mouth Basin
 * 39) South China Basin
 * 40) Yangtze Basin
 * 41) Kazakhstan
 * 42) To the north of the Caspian Sea
 * 43) In the north of the Caspian Sea
 * 44) Russia
 * 45) East Siberia
 * 46) Tatarstan
 * 47) Dagestan
 * 48) Central Urals Mountains
 * 49) Sakhaslin Island
 * 50) Yakutia
 * 51) Mongolia
 * 52) Estonia
 * 53) Latvia
 * 54) Lithuania
 * 55) Belorussian
 * 56) Ukraine
 * 57) Nova-Russia
 * 58) Afghanistan
 * 59) Pakistan
 * 60) Tajikistan
 * 61) Turkmenistan
 * 62) Uzbekistan
 * 63) Azerbaijan
 * 64) Armenian
 * 65) Georgia
 * 66) Moldavia
 * 67) Transdentstria
 * 68) Nagorno-Karabach
 * 69) N. Osetia
 * 70) Chechnya
 * 71) Albania,
 * 72) Trinidad
 * 1) Romania
 * 2) Serbia
 * 3) Bosnia
 * 4) Hungary
 * 5) Croatia
 * 6) Macedonia
 * 7) Greece
 * 8) Slovenia
 * 9) Italy
 * 10) Poland
 * 11) Madagascar
 * 12) Tsimiroro
 * 13) Bemolanga
 * 14) Republic of the Congo
 * 15) Brazil
 * 16) Guyana
 * 17) Colombia
 * 18) Equator
 * 19) Peru
 * 20) Nigeria
 * 21) India
 * 22) Iran
 * 23) Ghana
 * 24) Egypt
 * 25) North Sudan
 * 26) South Sudan
 * 27) Mexico
 * 28) Saudi Arabia
 * 29) Kuwait
 * 30) Iraq
 * 31) Turkey
 * 32) Jordan
 * 33) Syria
 * 34) Vietnam
 * 35) Burma
 * UK
 * 1) Mid Wales coastline
 * 2) Dorset
 * 3) Lankashire,
 * 4) Durhamshire,
 * 5) E. Yorkshire
 * 6) Oxfordshire
 * 7) Berkshire
 * 8) Surrey
 * 9) Essex
 * 10) North Norfolk
 * 11) South Lincolnshire
 * 12) Bukinghamshire
 * 13) Derbyshire
 * 14) Staffordshire
 * 15) Devon
 * 16) Sterlingshire
 * 17) Cornwall
 * 18) Vale of Glamorgan
 * 19) Monmouthshire
 * 20) Tayside
 * 21) Northumbrian coast
 * 22) Cumbrian coast
 * 23) Dumfress-shire
 * 24) Inverness-shire.
 * 25) Easter Ross
 * 26) Malaysia
 * 27) Indonesia
 * 28) Thailand
 * 29) Uganda
 * 30) Niger
 * 31) Kenya
 * 32) Tanzania
 * 33) Senegal
 * 34) Mozambique
 * 35) Somalia
 * 36) Ethiopia
 * DRC
 * 1) Angola
 * 2) Mexico
 * 3) Bolivia
 * 4) Paraguay
 * 5) Uruguay
 * 6) Brazil
 * 7) Pakistan
 * 8) Morocco
 * 9) Libya
 * 10) Algeria
 * 11) Slovakia
 * 12) Austria
 * 13) Luxembourg
 * 14) Switzerland
 * 15) Liechtenstein
 * 16) France
 * 17) Belgian
 * 18) Netherlands
 * 19) Denmark
 * 20) Hungary
 * 21) Czech Republic

In May 2008, the Italian oil company Eni announced a project to develop a small oil sands deposit in the Republic of the Congo. Production is scheduled to commence in 2014 and is estimated to eventually yield a total of 40,000 bbl/d (6,400 m3/d). The reserves are estimated between 0.5 and 2.5 Gbbl (79×106 and 397×106 m3).

Methods for extraction include Cold heavy oil production with sand, steam assisted gravity drainage, steam injection, vapor extraction, Toe-to-Heel Air Injection (THAI), and open-pit mining for extremely sandy and oil-rich deposits.

Also see

 * 1) 1970s energy crises
 * 2) Utah oil sands
 * 3) Athabasca oil sands
 * 4) Atomic power stations
 * 5) Energy
 * 6) Fuel

Links

 * 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
 * 2) http://www.2b1stconsulting.com/boe/
 * 3) http://oilsandstruth.org/russian-tar-sands
 * 4) http://www.capp.ca/canadian-oil-and-natural-gas/oil-sands/what-are-oil-sands
 * 5) http://priceofoil.org/campaigns/extreme-fossil-fuels/no-extreme-fossil-fuels-tar-sands/
 * 6) http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/europe-softens-stance-on-canadas-oil-sands-as-relations-with-russia-sour
 * 7) http://www.statoil.com/en/about/worldwide/northamerica/canada/oilsands/pages/oilsands.aspx
 * 8) http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/why-chinas-mood-is-souring-on-canadas-oil-patch?__lsa=b046-f4d6
 * 9) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-02-28/sunshine-oilsands-taps-china-for-output-boost-corporate-canada
 * 10) https://www.amazon.com/Fragrance-Oil-Reminiscence-jasmine-mandarin/dp/B00D9DEWUE?ie=UTF8&ascsubtag=shopzilla_mp_1199-20%3B14693722069003189705010090302008005&creative=395105&creativeASIN=B00D9DEWUE&linkCode=df0&ref_=asc_df_B00D9DEWUE4348016&smid=A3A63D76HKPKJO&tag=shopz0d-20
 * 11) http://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/1387098/chinas-oil-sands-bet-goes-sour-canada
 * 12) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-ostroy/albertas-oil-sands-china-_b_1121471.html
 * 13) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chinas-oil-sands-deal-will-have-lasting-impact/article1357620/
 * 14) http://energychinaforum.com/news/88918.shtml
 * 15) http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/china_oil_basin_map.png
 * 16) http://boereport.com/2013/10/25/north-america-leads-the-world-in-production-of-shale-gas/
 * 17) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/20/canada-eu-tar-sands
 * 18) http://www.nexencnoocltd.com/en/Operations/OilSands.aspx
 * 19) http://www.ccmresearch.co.uk/oil-sands.html
 * 20) http://www.no-tar-sands.org/
 * 21) http://www.zazzle.ca/welsh_oil_rig_trash_sticker_wales_oil_rigs_gas_round_sticker-217193030126997539
 * 22) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/27/canada-oil-sands-uk-backing
 * 23) http://www.ostseis.anl.gov/guide/tarsands/index.cfm
 * 24) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15889665
 * 25) http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2014/11/18/u-k-groups-protest-canadian-oilsands-lobbying/
 * 26) http://subscribe.energyandcapital.com/97584
 * 27) http://www.plus500.co.uk/Instruments/CL
 * 28) http://geology.com/articles/oil-sands/
 * 29) http://www.mining.com/eu-spares-canadian-oil-sands-the-dirty-fuel-label-93109/
 * 30) http://repository.icse.utah.edu/dspace/bitstream/123456789/6817/1/Utah-Tar-248.pdf
 * 31) http://berkshireoilinc.com/
 * 32) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
 * 33) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Oil_Sands_Joint_Venture
 * 34) http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/tarsands/index.cfm
 * 35) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
 * 36) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt
 * 37) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_crude
 * 38) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86NG0j0wi1s
 * 39) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands
 * 40) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands