How much does it cost to extract oil from oil sands?
In 2014, the cost to produce oil sands crude was more than $60 per barrel (expressed in WTI terms), but improvements and efficiencies have brought costs down to $46 to $53 per barrel, according to one estimate, and the mid $40s, by another.
How is Canadian tar sand oil extracted?
Currently, 20% of oil sands reserves are accessible via mining techniques. Large shovels scoop the oil sand into trucks which then move it to crushers where the large clumps of earth are processed. Once the oil sand is crushed, hot water is added so it can be pumped to the extraction plant.
Which Canadian province are most oil sand deposits found?
Significant bitumen deposits are reported in Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Venezuela.
How much does it cost to mine oil?
Production costs around $41 a barrel in Canada. In the United States, production costs are $36 a barrel — still below the trading price. Those findings are from Rystad Energy’s UCube database, which has information from roughly 65,000 oil and gas fields around the world.
How much does it cost to process a barrel of oil?
Crude Oil Cost The cost to produce a barrel varies from about $20 per barrel in Saudi Arabia’s desserts to $90 per barrel for some deep-water wells. In the example below, the crude cost is $1.39 per gallon ($58.26 per barrel).
How is tar sand produced?
Tar sands (also known as oil sands) are a mixture of mostly sand, clay, water, and a thick, molasses-like substance called bitumen. Common extraction methods include surface mining—where the extraction site is excavated—and “in-situ” mining, where steam is used to liquefy bitumen deep underground.
How is bitumen extracted from oil sands?
There are two ways to extract bitumen from the oil sands: either mine the entire deposit and gravity separate the bitumen, or extract the bitumen in-place (or in-situ) using steam without disturbing the land. The technique used depends on the depth of the deposit.
How does the Alberta oil sands affect the environment?
Tar sands extraction emits up to three times more global warming pollution than does producing the same quantity of conventional crude. It also depletes and pollutes freshwater resources and creates giant ponds of toxic waste. Refining the sticky black substance produces piles of petroleum coke, a hazardous by-product.
Where are the oil sands located in Canada?
northern Alberta
Canada’s oil sands are located almost exclusively in northern Alberta in three deposits that lie in the McMurray Formation, a layer of shale, sandstone and oil sand, formed during the Cretaceous period. the Athabasca region, some of the oil sands are near enough to the surface that they can be surface mined.
Where is oil found in Canada?
Oil is a powerful and versatile source of Canadian energy that will be a part of the global energy mix for decades to come. Canada has about six billion barrels of remaining oil reserves located outside the oil sands, found primarily in Alberta, Saskatchewan and offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.
How is SAGD technology used in the oil sands?
SAGD has proved to be a major breakthrough in production technology since it allows very high oil production rates and recovers greater than 60% of the oil in place. Most major Canadian oil companies now have SAGD projects in production or under construction in Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands area.
How much oil is extracted from oil sands?
In 2017, oil sands injected almost $13 billion into the economy. At the core of this value creating is bitumen extraction. There are two major methods of extracting crude oil from oil sands deposits: mining, accounting for 20% of total production, and in-situ (or in place), which accounts for 80% of total production.
What kind of oil is found in the oil sands in Canada?
The hydrocarbon resource found in Canada’s oil sands is called bitumen. Bitumen is very viscous – it doesn’t flow like conventional crude oil — and therefore requires special extraction methods to get it out of the ground and into a state where it is fluid enough for transportation to refineries.
How does in situ oil sands extraction affect the environment?
More GHG emissions:In-situ extraction requires a large volume of steam to heat the bitumen in the ground. This steam is produced by burning natural gas. In-situ facilities therefore generate more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per barrel of bitumen produced as compared to an oil sands mining facility.