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About the Resource

View of the Alberta oil sands region from a helicopter. Alberta has proven oil reserves of 171.3 billion barrels, consisting of bitumen (169.9 billion barrels) and conventional oil (1.4 billion barrels). These reserves make up the third-largest proven crude oil reserve in the world, next to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. This is enough oil to meet Canada’s current oil demand for almost 400 years.

 

 

 

Recovering the Resource

Bitumen is a viscous form of oil that has combined with sand and water. The bitumen must be removed from the sand and water prior to being upgraded into crude oil and other petroleum products.

There are two types of oil sands extraction methods: in situ (which means in place) recovery and surface mining.

For deeper oil sands reservoirs, an in situ recovery method is used to produce bitumen through wells that look like those used for conventional oil and gas production.

  • 80% of recoverable bitumen will be produced via in situ techniques.
  • In situ operations result in much less land disturbance and are able to reclaim areas much sooner than surface mines. In situ projects also eliminate the need for tailings ponds.
  • The majority of in situ operations use steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). This involves pumping steam underground through a horizontal well to liquefy the bitumen, which is then pumped to the surface through a second well.

Surface mining requires an open-pit mine operation, similar to many coal, iron ore, copper and diamond mine operations. Oil sands are dug up and moved by trucks to a cleaning facility where the material is mixed with hot water to separate the recoverable oil from sand.

Map showing Alberta's boreal forest, oil sands deposits, surface-mineable area, and mineable area. Click for a larger map.

Oil sands are located in three major areas in northeast Alberta underlying 140,200 square kilometres. The majority of this resource can only be developed using in situ (or in place) recovery. To date, about 602 square kilometres of land has been disturbed by oil sands mining activity.

As of June 2010, there are 91 active oil sands projects in Alberta. Of these, four are mining projects; the remaining projects use various in situ recovery methods.

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