Talk:Tar sands

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Venezuela's oil deposits

Are the deposits in Venezuela really tar sands, or are they heavy oil? What's the difference?

Venezuela's heavy oil deposits are mostly tar sands, also known as oil sands. They're quite similar to Canada's, though the bitumen in them tends to be a little heavier than the stuff coming out of the Canadian oil sands.

[edit] API

OK, I'm looking more, and I see that "API" ratings (a measure of density?) are important in the distinction between oil sands and heavy oil. The Athabasca area is oil sand (BTW, this seems to be the term used in industry), with API of about 8 degrees. Heavy oil, such as the Lloydminster deposit in Alberta & Saskatchewan or the Orinoco river deposit in Venezuela have an API > 10 degrees.

Can someone confirm this and update the main page?

Also, many articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoco_tar_sands and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands clearly state Venezuela's Oil sands are bigger than Canada's (and one of them even says 1.8 trillion) why putting 1.5 trillion as Venezuela's reserves in this article?, we need consistency people, and the sources cited clearly state 1.8 trillion for Venezuela.DamianFinol 04:04, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Addendum, another link: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060529/venezuela_gilded_tar.html?.v=1 and http://zfacts.com/p/218.html quoting the last one: "Canada's northern forest contains at least 174 billion barrels of recoverable heavy oil, equivalent to five years' supply for the planet... Venezuela has perhaps even more in the Orinoco River delta. By comparison, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of more traditional crude, or 8.5 years."DamianFinol 04:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Canada's Oil Sands Resource and Its Future Impact on Global Oil Supply notes that there are two components to classifying oil, American Petrolium Institute (API) specific gravity, measured in degrees (see: this API gravity chart), and viscosity, measured in centiPoise (water = 1 cPo). There are several grades of heavy oil. The paper mentioned above gives the following ranges:
Medium Heavy Oil - 10 to 100 cPo, API gravity 18 to 25 degrees
Extra Heavy Oil - 100 to 10,000 cPo, API gravity 7 to 20 degrees
Tar sands & bitumen - greater than 10,000 cPo, API gravity less than 12 degrees
Note that those numbers overlap and don't quite match with the numbers on the API gravity chart in the second link. That's because the oil industry is rife with things that aren't strict standards; rather, they are treated as guidelines that different organizations and companies set and interpret differently. The relationship between API gravity, viscosity, and grade of oil is one of those things.
The oil from the Athabasca oil sands is not uniform. You can't really say that it has any one API gravity. Typically, it hovers about 8 to 10 degrees, but it occasionally gets as high as 14 degrees.
API gravity is an inverted density scale: API gravity = (141.5/SG) - 131.5 where SG = specific gravity relative to water at 60 Fahrenheit. (141.5 was chosen as a result of bad chemistry, it should have been 140 but by the time they realized they had goofed, too many people were using it so the American Petroleum Institute made it a standard). Anyhow, the Canadian industry doesn't use it, it uses density in kilograms per cubic metre. The difference between bitumen and heavy oil depends on whether the oil will flow into an oil well under reservoir conditions, and that depends a variety of things, including temperature. What is bitumen in Canada is extra-heavy oil in Venezuela. RockyMtnGuy 05:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Man, I love this little tidbit about API gravity. It would be great if you could work it somewhere into the 'pedia (if it isn't there already!) SaulPerdomo 04:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] billion/trillion

I think the term trillion needs to be clarified. Some confusion about what is meant might arise for in Britain we would talk about a trillion as being 1x10^18. However, this number seems to me quite large. The trillion that is persumably meant is in fact 1x10^12 which would be one billion in Britain. However, the EIA talks about a billion as 1x10^9. I am not a mathematician, so maybe I am wrong, but I still think it needs clarification.

Further, I am wondering where these numbers come from. A reference might be helpful. Also, one might want to clarify the terms reserve and deposit somehow. For reserves descibes how much oil is known to be producible, within a known time, with known techniques, at known costs and in known fields. However, as far as I interpret the article, it talks about resources: Oil theoretically present in an area. In my opinion, these terms ought to be clarified as well since it leads to significant differences in numbers and to further confusion.

Yes, I heard Brits are strange. ;-) I think a thousand million to mean a US billion and a million million for a US trillion is the way to go? I think there is a wikipedia article somewhere on experssions that are different between US and british in english. Using mathematical notation exclusively also works. I do not know where the figures come from exactly, but I recall reading similiar numbers in articles linked off of the Athabasca Tar Sands article, though those may be oil company PR numbers. Zen Master 03:07, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, I did a little bit of research, and found some sources for these numbers. I will add them later on along with a clarification of the reserve/resource/deposit thing. Actually, the math thing is clear since it is also given in km². However, one might want to add a little (10^9) anyway.

[edit] Question

Arent these huge Tar sand mines a giant fire risk? What prevents the whole thing going up in one giant hellish inferno at the slightest spark??--Deglr6328 02:45, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Tar sand is basically sticky mud. There is too little bitumen in the sand to make it flammable. In fact I'm not even sure if pure bitumen is flammable. Not before being refined. TastyCakes 19:25, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Bitumen is flammable but the flash point (temperature and pressure at which it self ignites) is "very high". Very large Diesel-type like combustion engines, such as those which are sometimes used in large ships can be operated with a type of fuel which is basically solid at room temperature.

[edit] Article name

Is "tar sands" the best name for this article? I had only heard the term "oil sands" before, and according to Google, there are approximately 5 times more links for "oil sands." JeremyBicha 23:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

They were only called "Tar Sands". You can thank spin doctors for the invention of the less accurate, recent term "Oil Sands". If you found five times as many links for oil sands that shows that the spin doctors are succeeding. Personally, I think the wikipedia should stick with the more accurate term. Tar Sands contain a very heavy form of petroleum, so "tar" is a more accurate term. It is also a very dirty form of petroleum to extract and refine. Unlike other fossil fuels extracting and refining tar sands leaves large quantities of toxic tailings. I regard this as another reason to use the term tar, which implies mess. -- Geo Swan 02:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't see it as spin--just a change in emphasis. Oil is the resource being extracted, not tar. Advances in technology have made the sands a feasible source of oil; previously they were just a curiousity.
—wwoods 18:29, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Your note shows the success of the spin doctors. Although there may have been some minor advances in technology in tar sands extraction technology the new excitement about the resource is not due to technological advance at all. The new attention being paid to tar sands, and oil shale is due, almost entirely, to the increase in the market price for a barrel of oil. When the market price for a barrel of oil spiked it made the recovery of once marginal petroleum resources economically viable. The same holds true for oil shale, and for previously abandoned oil fields, that were economically uvialble at the lower price, and are now economically viable at the higher price. -- Geo Swan 19:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
That's sort-of right and sort-of wrong. The advances in technology may have been "minor", but they pushed oil-sand oil over a tipping point, because they were sufficient to reduce the production costs below the market price. And that was back in the early 2000s, when US$35/bbl seemed absurdly far-fetched.
—wwoods 23:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
A sidebar from the DOE's International Energy Outlook 2003, May 2003 (DOE/IEA-0484(2003)):
And the Country with the Second Greatest Proved Oil Reserves Worldwide Is . . .

Six months ago, “Iraq” was the correct completion of the above phrase. Its 112.5 billion barrels of proved oil reserves was second only to Saudi Arabia’s imposing 259.3 billion barrels. However, in the December 23, 2002, issue of the Oil & Gas Journal, proved oil reserves in Canada catapulted from an estimated 4.9 billion barrels in 2002 to an amazing 180 billion barrels in 2003. How was this possible? A methodology change by the Oil & Gas Journal now includes western Canada’s oil sands in its definition of proved oil reserves. Heretofore, oil sands were considered “nonconventional” and were not counted as proved oil reserves; however, dramatic reductions in development and production costs have brought oil sands into the realm of economic viability. With today’s technologies and oil prices, it is entirely appropriate to consider western Canada’s vast oil potential as being commensurate with “conventional” crude oils.[a]

How much is there? It is estimated that there are about 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in the oil sands of Canada, and that about 15 percent (255 billion barrels) of the total oil in place is recoverable. Canada accounts for about 75 percent of the world’s oil sand resources. Other countries and regions that have significant, but more modest, resources include the United States, China, the EE/FSU, the Caribbean Basin, and Pakistan. About 700 thousand barrels per day of Canadian oil sands are currently being produced. This supply is divided into two categories, “oil sands in situ” (often referred to as bitumen) and “oil sands mining.” These two categories reflect the method of recovery. The bitumen is extracted by injecting very hot steam into the rock formation to heat up the oil, lower its viscosity, and allow it to flow more like conventional oil. Slightly more than half (about 400 thousand barrels per day) of Canadian oil sands production is derived from the more expensive “oil sands mining” method. Those deposits that are close enough to the surface are actually mined.

How much does recovery from oil sands cost? Supply costs are expressed as “full cycle” costs. They include all costs associated with exploration, development, and production; capital costs; operating costs; taxes and royalties; and a 10-percent real rate of return to the producer. Capital costs average $5 to $9 per barrel, and operating costs average $8 to $12 per barrel. Such costs are presented as a range, reflecting the variance in reservoir quality, depth, project size, and operating parameters. The remainder of the supply cost is dominated by the cleaning and upgrading methods that are required to turn a very low quality hydrocarbon into a more conventional oil that can be accepted by a refinery. Such methods include the removal of sulfur, heavy metals, and noncombustible materials, as well as conversion to a more hydrogenated and lighter hydrocarbon. These costs are typically in the $3 to $5 per barrel range. None of the aforementioned costs include transportation to market. This past summer, Suncor Energy opened the upgrading units of its Millennium Project in Alberta with production costs around $9 per barrel. The company’s near-term goal is to lower production costs to $5.50 per barrel, which would make Suncor the lowest-cost oil producer in North America.[b]

What is the long-term outlook for production from oil sands? IEO2003 projects that Canadian oil sand production in the reference case will increase to more than 2.2 million barrels per day by 2025. The projection assumes that world oil prices will moderate in the next few years and gradually increase to over $26.50 per barrel (all prices expressed in 2001 dollars) by the end of the forecast period. The IEO2003 high oil price case (over $33 per barrel by 2025)[!!!] shows Canadian oil sand production increasing to almost 2.5 million barrels per day by 2025. The only thing that prevents Canadian oil sands production from being considerably higher (both now and in the future) is the lack of transportation infrastructure (most likely pipeline capacity) for moving production to market. The United States is expected to import almost 1 million barrels per day of production from Canadian oil sands by 2025. If potential pipeline projects from Western Canada into PADDs II and IV materialize over the next two decades, the share of Canadian oil sand production going to U.S. imports could grow substantially.

[a] ”Worldwide Look at Reserves and Production,” Oil & Gas Journal, Vol. 100, No. 52 (December 23, 2002), pp. 114–115.

[b] National Energy Board, Canada’s Oil Sands: A Supply and Market Outlook to 2015 (Calgary, Alberta, October 2000), pp. 34–40.
Burning petroleum from even the cleanest light, sweet crude oil, or from Natural Gas, results in a certain amount of pollution. Heavy crude oil is more polluting. Some of the energy in the oil has to be spent to crack it into lighter fractions. The petroleum in the tar sands is heavier than the heaviest crude oil. More of its energy has to be spent to crack it. Cracking means the distillation tower raises the temperature of the oil high enough that the individual molecules of the longer hydrocarbon fractions are broken into two or more molecules of shorter hydrocarbon fractions.
Current extraction techniques pump water into convention oil fields to push out the oil. That is environmentally destructive, particularly in dry areas. But extracting the tar from tar sands uses more water, and when the water is used, it is still present on the surface, and it is toxic, it can't be returned to local aquifers. Further, the extraction leaves behind the tailings, the fine sand the tar was bound to, and it too is toxic. When I was a kid I felt sorry for the poor Ozark mountain people who had nearby mountains strip-mined. Extracting the oil from the Alberta tar sands will require strip-mining a vast area of Alberta.
The recent introduction of the term "oil sands" sanitizes the perception of tar sands extraction, without any change in the environmental impact. -- Geo Swan 19:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
The original pioneers called it "tar sands" because it reminded them of coal tar. However, tar is produced from destructive distillation of organic matter, usually coal. What is found in the bituminous sands of Canada is a partially biodegraded form of crude oil in which the lighter fractions have been devoured by bacteria. It looks like tar, but it ain't. RockyMtnGuy 05:42, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe advances in cellulosic ethanol technology will reduce the demand for petroleum enough to cut the price below $10/bbl, taking oil sands back off the market.
—wwoods 23:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Don't bet money on it. RockyMtnGuy 05:42, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
  1. I think the term coal tar antedates the discovery of petroleum tar, not vice versa.
  2. Leaving aside that heavy petroleum fractions are innately more polluting than light petroleum fractions, because they have to be cracked, to make the light fractions we prefer, extracting petroleum products from tar sands is more polluting than extraction from oil wells, because it requires multiple times as much clean water, and it leaves behind toxic tailings, -- Geo Swan 19:05, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
  1. Coal tar was produced in the 19th century as a byproduct of coal gas manufacturing, before the introduction of natural gas. When the Athabasca sands were found, the Brits had quite a lot of coal tar laying around the countryside. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered bitumen, although I think they used some dead language to describe it.
  2. Keep in mind that heavy petroleum fractions are already saturating the ground in vast quantities along the Athabasca River. It's an oil spill the size of Belgium and the river cuts right through it. The whole area is already pre-polluted. When they dig it up, refine it, and sell it to the Americans, they're just moving the problem to Los Angelese's air.
  3. And the toxic tailings are biodegradable. For a really toxic pond, you have to see the abandoned copper mine at Butte, Montana. Sulphuric acid, copper sulphate and arsenic are not biodegradeable. RockyMtnGuy 14:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
  1. Ho'd on a moment ... if you scan the patents related to tar sand oil extraction, a significant fraction deal with removal / disposal methods for all the toxic, non-biodegradable heavy metals entrained in the oil. User:axharr 0859 EST 9 Aug 2006.

[edit] Percentage discussed

I have a question about the percentages discussed: If Canada sits on 32% of the world's oil, Venezuela sits on 34% of the world's oil, and the entire Middle East (combined) shares 33% of the world's oil, then, unless I'm screwing up my math: the rest of the world is sharing 1%??? I don't think so. These numbers seem way, way off.

Just a guess. The "proven reserves" are estimated to be 20% or less of the total volume. Perhaps the claims that the tar sands holding a comparable amount of oil to the reserves in Arabia are counting both the proven and estimated reserves? Perhaps, after a century of extraction, the proven reserves in Arabia and the actual reserves are close to equal. I'd like to know how much of Arabia's oil have already been extracted. We have to compare like with like. -- Geo Swan 19:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
The middle east only became a serious producer arout world war 2 didn't it? You might be able to find out how much oil has been extracted from the middle east, but numbers as to how much is left are going to be sketchy at best. I think estimating the amount in the oil sands is easier since they just do a volume calculation of a huge area. A large portion of that huge number is too deep to mine like they (mainly) do now, although SAGD may be able to. TastyCakes 02:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
There was production pre-WWII (hence the German tanks rumbling around North Africa) but the really big fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were only put on production in the 40's and 50's. Prior to that, Texas was the world's biggest producer.
There have been thousands of gas wells drilled right through the Athabasca oil sands into the underlying gas fields. The Alberta government has all the drilling cores from these wells. Estimating the size is a simple matter of pulling a representative sample of cores from the Core Lab, measuring the bitumen content, and plugging it into a computer. Their estimates are extremely conservative - for instance, they assume that only 20% of the oil in place can be recovered, whereas the oil companies claim they can get three times that much.
80% of oil sands are too deep to surface mine. Every Canadian oil company that is halfway serious has a SAGD project in production or on the drawing boards. RockyMtnGuy 14:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sands and Shales

What's the difference between tar sands and oil shales? --Atlastawake 20:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Well I'm no expert, but it seems to me oil shales is more like loose, flaky rock (see shale)with oil trapped within it (I don't know how exactly), while oil sand is.. well sand ;), but more like clay (mud and dirt) with oil between the particles of sand and dirt. I don't know if one contains more oil than the other, although I would suspect Tar Sand would. And since it says $40 per barrel is break even cost for shale while oil sand is something like $12/barrel, I guess it's considerably harder to extract oil from shale. TastyCakes 21:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Sand is sand, and shale is is flakey rock. However, the oil in oil sands is actually bitumen, a semi-solid form of oil that will not flow under normal conditions, whereas the oil in oil shale is really a waxy oil precursor called kerogen. The difference is that bitumen will flow if you heat it, whereas kerogen must be baked at high temperatures to cook it into oil. In the case of conventional oil, mother nature did the job by burying kerogen under thousands of feet of rock, where high temperatures cooked it to oil and it flowed into conveniently placed oil reservoirs (maybe). However, if you have to excavate the rock and bake it in ovens, it's far more expensive. Bitumen is expensive to produce, but not as expensive. RockyMtnGuy 04:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In-situ extraction

The article says a bit about "in-situ extraction", where bitumen is extracted by underground steam injection rather than by open-pit mining. The article describes this as a possible future technology.

Things are further along than that. The Long Lake Project (http://www.longlake.ca) is a rather large in-situ extraction operation that's been under construction for several years. (9 minute streaming video of the construction project: http://www.nexeninc.com/files/streaming/opti512k.html) Long Lake should start to extract bitumen in late 2006, and start upgrading it to oil in 2007. Long Lake produces asphalt as a byproduct, which is (somehow?) used to generate the gas burned to produce the steam used to power the operation. The whole operation is thus supposed to power itself, without natural gas inputs, once it's fully operational. Projected output is 60,000 bbl/day for 40 years.

Something about this should go either in Tar Sands or Athabasca Tar Sands. Which? --Nagle 05:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd say Athabasca. I'm pretty sure there has been a SAGD project before though, called Firebag or something. Can't remember which company... TastyCakes 02:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I added a section on in-situ techniques, including references to nine of the larger SAGD projects under development in the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake oil sands (including Suncor's Firebag River project). RockyMtnGuy 19:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


This thing about the "Closed-Loop Solvent Extraction" seems a bit like an advertisement because of its very recent development and claims on process efficiency. These in particular: "utilizing a patent-protected, proven, closed-loop solvent extraction technology", and "leaving the ecosystem in better-than-original condition". Either someone took it from the company's press release without much thinking, or someone put it up for promotion. Further, "zero solvent loss", as in not at all, it almost impossible anywhere, and especially in a very large scale operation; "oil recovery rate of 99.9%" and "average cost of $12.50 USD per barrel", I doubt that these are obtained at the same time. 99.9% recovery of anything is very good, but usually not necessary in production scale. I suggest the tone be modified, or the section removed since it is not an evaluation of the technique's merrits and makes no specific mention of being tested in tar sand deposits. David 67.169.202.49 08:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heavy Oil In Carbonates

Anyone know of any heavy oil production from carbonate reservoirs?

I believe there is one in Egypt, anybody know of any others?

Shell EP Americas (A different division of Royal Dutch Shell than Shell Canada) recently spent around half a billion dollars to buy 10 leases in the Carbonate Trend of northeastern Alberta, immediately outside the Athabasca oil sands. There's oil (bitumen) trapped in carbonate rock there, but nobody knows how to get it out. Presumably Shell has some ideas, but they aren't sharing them... RockyMtnGuy 19:20, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misc

Somebody seemed to screw up the article. Could somebody else fix it?

Looks fine to me right now. This is why people should sign comments with at least the date. SaulPerdomo 04:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oil Sands

In keeping with political correctness, Canada has renamed its "tar sands" to be "oil sands". Recommend making the primary article "oil sands" and have teh redirector go from "tar sands" to "oil sands". DLH 14:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I second your proposal. I suggested this same idea a year ago, but we did not reach consensus. Actually, Geo Swan seems to have been the only major one to disagree. Since Google indicates that Alberta and Venezuela both predominantly use the term "oil sands," I think tar sands should be listed as a secondary name, not the primary. Furthermore, the three major articles (including Athabasca & Orinoco) already use the term oil sands too frequently to be consistent. JeremyBicha 01:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/a/r/Talk%7ETar_sands_795f.html"