Canada´s Oil Sands

This also has a major impact on the water supply of residents in Alberta. Extraction is also dependent on highly complex technologies that require a large amount of energy due to high temperatures. The high temperature depends on the production of natural gas and requires a lot of water and chemicals. All of these results in a low net energy return of about 20% to 50% (Timilsina, 2005). Levi (2009) pointed out that only 20% of the sand can be covered with a shovel with a steam excavator.

Athabasca Oil Sands (or Tar Sands) is a large amount of bitumen or very heavy crude oil located in the northeastern part of Alberta, Canada, concentrated in Fort McMurray, an emerging city. These oil sands are mainly in the McMurray layer and consist of a mixture of coarse bitumen (semisolid crude), quartz sand, clay mineral, water. The Athabasca deposit is the world's largest known crude oil bitumen reservoir, the largest of the three largest oil sands deposits in Alberta, and the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits (the latter covering Saskatchewan) is there. Wenzhou)

Athabasca 's oil sands are more or less concentrated in Fort McMurray in the northern suburbs. They are overwhelmingly the largest bituminous deposit in Canada and may contain over 150 billion cubic meters (900 billion barrels) of oil. Bituminous is very viscous, usually denser than water (10 ° API or 1000 kg / m 3). The saturated sandstone is 15 to 65 meters (49 to 213 feet) thick, and in oil-rich areas the oil saturation is 90% by weight.

Bituminous sand is the main source of unconventional petroleum but only Canada has a large commercial oil sands industry. Through 81 oil sands projects in 2006, Canada produced an average of 1.25 million barrels per day (200 thousand cubic meters per day) of asphalt per day. In 2007, 44% of Canada's oil production was from Oil Sands. Although the work of the new project was postponed due to the economic recession in 2008, this ratio (as of 2008), as the production of asphalt increases, as the conventional oil production decreases, in the next few decades It is expected to increase. In other countries, oil is not produced in large quantities from oil sands.