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Thermal Recovery of Oil and Bitumen Roger M. Butler
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The onset that the 'tar sands' classification is scientifically incorrect , as he explains that “[tar sands] terminology should be avoided because oil sands are neither tar nor sands…tar is not a raw material; instead, it is a residual product that remains after severe thermal cracking of heavy oil”. In situ oil sands production means extracting bitumen from underground by drilling wells into the reservoir, as with conventional oil and natural gas production. Can oil sands/heavy oil/bitumen be mined or recovered through steam injection in an environmentally sustainable way that does not compromise valuable freshwater supplies? For example, this layout is taken from the application of 100% recovery, but EROEI may be less than SAGD. Facilities on its Peace River oil sands leases: the Cliffdale Battery, which uses cold or primary recovery methods, and the Peace River Complex which uses thermal or enhanced oil recovery techniques to extract bitumen from underground. Also, the reader should note that the hydrocarbon being obtained in the Alberta tar sands is "bitumen" which must be converted to a lower viscosity "oil" to be pumped in a pipeline and then refined. Typically several sets of wells are laid out beside each other to provide an interaction between the wells and heat the intervening oil so that it can be recovered. Genalta Power and Shell Canada have agreed to build a produced-gas-to-power plant that will make use of the gas associated with Shell's bitumen production in an effort to reduce gas flaring at its Peace River oil sands leases. It won't add any more to GHG emission than other sources of Oil, or indeed actually less, IF AND ONLY IF they use Nuclear Electricity, Nuclear Steam & Process Heat and Nuclear Hydrogen to extract & refine the bitumen. Understanding how crude oil biodegrades into methane, or natural gas, opens the door to being able to recover the clean-burning methane directly from deeply buried, or in situ, oil sands deposits, says Steve Larter, U of C petroleum geologist in the The oil sands industry would no longer have to use costly and polluting thermal, or heat-based, processes (such as injecting steam into reservoirs) to loosen the tar-like bitumen so it flows into wells and can be pumped to the surface. With today's technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. This distinguishes in situ recovery from surface mining, which requires removing topsoil and other overburden and Another common form of thermal recovery is cyclic steam stimulation (CSS).