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The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of oil sands rich in bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventional oil in the world, making Canada a significant player in the global energy market. [27]
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of oil sands rich in bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventional oil in the world, making Canada a significant player in the global energy market.
The Tar Sand Triangle is the largest deposit of oil sands in the United States known today. It contains about 6.3 billion barrels of heavy oil, but is thought to have originally held more. At one point the Tar Sand Triangle could have consisted of 16 billion barrels of heavy oil, almost as much as in Utah today. [3]
Tar sands get a lot of bad press, much of it to do with the fact that the extraction and processing of tar sands bitumen creates a lot more pollution than other fuel sources. A few companies are ...
Their carbon footprints, however, are radically different: conventional reservoirs use the natural energy in the environment to flow oil and gas to the surface unaided; unconventional reservoirs require putting energy into the ground for extraction, either as heat (e.g. tar sands and oil shales) or as pressure (e.g. shale gas and CBM).
This is because oil companies tend to extract the light, high-value oils first. 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. As has often been the case, the oil sands were different.
Chattanooga Process is an extraction process that uses a fluidized bed reactor and an associated hydrogen-fired heater. In this process, retorting occurs at relatively low temperatures (1,000 °F or 540 °C) through thermal cracking and hydrogenation of the shale into hydrocarbon vapors and spent solids. The thermal cracking allows hydrocarbon ...
With present technology, the extraction and refining of heavy oils and oil sands generates as much as three times the total CO 2 emissions when compared with conventional oil, [20] primarily driven by the extra energy consumption of the extraction process (which may include burning natural gas to heat and pressurize the reservoir to stimulate ...