Athabasca exceeds Saudi reserves

As conventional supplies of oil and gas in Canada are depleted, the oil sands of northern Alberta offer the world an increasingly important energy source with low political risk.

Oil sands in Alberta are found in four major deposits — the Athabasca, Peace River, Wabasca and Cold Lake regions — which together contain more than 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen (a thick, sticky form of crude oil). This translates into one trillion barrels of synthetic crude oil.

Alberta’s oil sands comprise one of the world’s two largest sources of bitumen, the other being in Venezuela.

On their own, the Athabasca oil sands contain more than a trillion barrels of bitumen, of which only about 300 billion barrels are considered economically recoverable using today’s technology. By comparison, Alberta’s conventional oil reserves are currently estimated to be 4.5 billion barrels of oil.

Put another way, the Athabasca deposit contains more oil than all the known reserves in Saudi Arabia.

In Alberta, bitumen makes up 10-12% of the actual oil sands, with the rest consisting of 80-85% mineral matter (including sands and clays) and 4-6% water. Generally, about two tonnes of oil sands must be dug up and processed to recover one barrel of oil.

The first commercially successful oil sands plant opened in 1967 when Great Canadian Oil Sands began producing synthetic crude oil near Fort McMurray, Alta. It was the forerunner of Suncor’s Oil Sands operation. From this small beginning grew the three massive operations built and operated by the Syncrude consortium, Suncor and Shell. Furthermore, over the next 10 years, production from the Athabasca oil sands is projected to more than double.

For conventional processing, oil sands are mixed into a hot water slurry and pumped through pipelines. Extraction involves separating bitumen from the sand in giant separation cells, where fine clay particles are removed.

The water, clay and residual bitumen, called fine tailings, are pumped to holding ponds where they are treated with the consolidated tailings process.

Meanwhile, the thick bitumen is diluted with naphtha and processed to remove the remaining minerals and water. This diluted material is stored in holding tanks before being delivered to the upgraders for further refining. In upgrading, naphtha is removed from the bitumen and recycled to the extraction process. The bitumen is heated in furnaces and sent to drums where petroleum coke, the heavy bottom material, is removed to be used as a coal-like fuel source in the utilities plant. The remainder of the coke is stockpiled or sold for use in ammonia plants or other industrial applications.

Any remaining hydrocarbon vapours are sent to the fractionators, where they are separated into naphtha, kerosene and gas oil.

Depending on a customer’s requirements, sulphur can be removed by hydrotreating the products, with recovered sulphur sold to fertilizer manufacturers.

Synthetic crude oil derived from the oil sands is shipped by pipeline to refineries in Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta, as well as farther east to refineries in Ontario and elsewhere.

Already, high-quality crude from Alberta’s oil sands accounts for roughly 34% of Canada’s daily petroleum production.

By 2007, more than half of Canadian crude oil production is expected to come from the oil sands, and oil sands will make up 10% of North American production.