![]() ![]() Despite the fascination of the early explorers, however, the existence of the sands did not excite commercial interests for more than a century. When fur trader Peter Pond travelled down the Clearwater River to Athabasca in 1778, he saw the deposits and wrote of "springs of bitumen that flow along the ground." A decade later, Alexander Mackenzie saw Chipewyan Indians using oil from the oil sands to caulk their canoes. According to an entry in the York Factory journal, on that day Cree Indian Wa-Pa-Sun brought a sample of oil sand to Henry Kelsey of the Hudson's Bay Company. The first recorded mention of Canada's bitumen deposits goes back to June 12, 1719. One of those deposits, the Athabasca oil sands, is the world's largest known crude oil resource. The volume of bitumen in those sands dwarfs the light oil reserves of the entire Middle East. Fields in northern Alberta include four major deposits which underlie almost 70,000 square kilometres of land. ![]() It is difficult to grasp the immensity of Canada's oil sands and heavy oil resource. This can be done by surface mining and processing and by underground in situ techniques. In the oil sands, this thick, black gunk is mixed with sand and many chemical impurities such as sulfur these must be separated from the bitumen for the oil to be useful. Oils with high viscosity and heavy gravity do not float on water, but sink. Bitumen refers to mixtures with the consistency of cold molasses that pour at room temperatures with agonizing slowness. Although the dividing line is fuzzy, the term heavy oil refers to slow-pouring heavy hydrocarbon mixtures. Heavy oil and bitumen, which have far more carbon mass than hydrogen, are heavy, black, sticky and either slow-pouring or so close to being solid that they will not pour at all unless heated. Most hydrocarbons are liquid under standard conditions, with greater viscosity associated with greater gravity. Those with more carbon atoms per hydrogen atom are heavier and denser. Organic compounds combining carbon and oxygen are many in number. Gases, of course, have no gravity at atmospheric temperatures and pressures. The next heavier hydrocarbon, ethane, has the chemical formula C 2H 6 and is a slightly denser gas. It has light gravity, and takes the form of a gas at normal temperatures and pressures. ![]() Methane ( CHĤ) - the simplest form of natural gas - has four hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom. Gravity refers to the weight spectrum of hydrocarbons, which increases with the ratio of hydrogen to carbon in a chemical compound's molecule. Generally heavier than water, bitumen typically has an API of 8-10 degrees API. The oil industry measures the weight of oil on terms of an artificial scale known as API ( American Petroleum Institute) gravity. To appreciate these resources, it is important to understand a simple concept from chemistry and physics: the "gravity" of crude oil and natural gas liquids. Much of Canada's petroleum effort has focused on producing oil from the oil sands (sometimes called " tar sands") of northern Alberta. Defining the resources A Matter of Gravity In recent years, oil sands and heavy oil development have been so successful that these resources now account for more than half of Canada's crude oil production. Despite comparatively high oil prices in world markets, for political reasons government kept prices for oil from these technological pioneers at artificially low levels until well into the 1980s. Although the promise of the oil sands deposits has been clear for more than a century, oil production from the Suncor and Syncrude oil sands plants did not become profitable until well after the 1979 energy crisis. The resources were so huge that experimentation began at about the same time as drilling for conventional petroleum in western Canada. The more difficult-to-extract resources are developed later, generally during periods of high commodity prices, such as the extended period of higher prices which began in the early 1970s.Īs has often been the case, the oil sands were different. This is because oil companies tend to extract the light, high-value oils first. The extent of these resources is well known, but better technologies to produce oil from them are still being developed.īecause of the cost of developing these resources (they tend to be capital intensive), they tend to come on stream later in the cycle of petroleum resource development in a given producing region. They include the vast oil sands of northern Alberta, and the heavy oil reservoirs that surround the small city of Lloydminster, which sits on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. Main articles: Unconventional oil, Heavy crude oil, and Oil sandsĬanada's oil sands and heavy oil resources are among the world's great petroleum deposits. ![]()
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