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Oil Sands Global Market Potential New Study from
EnergyBusinessReports.com Phoenix, AZ – November 14, 2006 – With most
of the world’s known oil reserves concentrated in just a few countries,
unconventional energy resources, such as oil sands, are now seen as a viable
alternative to conventional oil and gas resources, and an attractive option
for energy risk abatement.
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Unconventional energy resources are resources that heretofore could not
be recovered due to economic and/or technological barriers. However, as the
price of oil and gas skyrockets and technology drives down the cost of oil
sands recovery and production, this resource has become the new “black
gold.” The demand for oil sands is expected to reach 10.31 million bbl in
2008, up from 8.59 million barrels in 2003 at an average annual growth rate
(AAGR) of 3.7%.
Oil sands are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen. They are
heavy, black and viscous, but can be mined and processed to extract the
oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in oil sands
cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead oil sand
deposits are mined using strip mining or open pit techniques or produced
in-situ by underground heating or other tertiary recovery processes. Because
oil sands require more complex production methods and additional upgrading
to be usable as fuel, they are more capital intensive (for development,
production, and upgrading) than conventional ones.
While the energy properties and potential of oil sands have been
recognized for centuries, there had been no significant attempt to develop
the resource until the mid 1960s. Investments in oil sands projects have
become more attractive due to the increasing price of crude oil and
technological advances that have enabled operators to bring down the cost of
production. In less than 20 years of mining and upgrading, production costs
have been cut in half.
The prospects for oil sands as an energy source depend on the rate and
costs at which they can be recovered and converted into quasi-conventional
reserves. This report addresses these issues as well as issues relating to
the recovery, production, upgrading, transport, and marketing of oil sands.
Oil Sands Resources: Although oil sand deposits are found in more than 70
countries, three quarters of the world's reserves are located in two
regions: Venezuela and the Athabasca region of northern Alberta and
Saskatchewan in Canada. Oil sands represent as much as 66% of the world's
total oil reserves, with at least 1.7 trillion barrels in the Canadian
Athabasca tar sands and 1.8 trillion barrels in the Venezuelan Orinoco oil
sands, compared to 1.75 trillion barrels of conventional oil, mostly located
in Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries.
Challenges and Opportunities: It is expected that high oil prices,
coupled with robust global oil demand, will continue to drive oil sands
expansion. New mining and transportation methods introduced in the 1990s
have improved the efficiency and reduced the cost of oil sands mining
considerably. However, challenges to extracting, transporting, and upgrading
the resource remain and production is sensitive to many outside factors,
including the price of natural gas, the availability of water, and pipeline
capacity to and from the oil sands site.
Production Methods: After mining, the oil sands are transported to an
extraction plant, where a hot water process separates the bitumen from the
sand, water, and minerals in separation cells. Hot water is added to the
sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is
agitated. The combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from
the oil sands, and causes tiny air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets
and float to the top of the separation vessel where the bitumen can be
skimmed off. Further processing removes residual water and solids. The
bitumen is then transported and eventually upgraded to synthetic crude oil.
Roughly 75% of the bitumen can be recovered from sand, and about two tons of
oil sands are required to produce one barrel of oil.
In-situ production methods are used on bitumen deposits that are buried
too deep to be mined economically. These techniques include steam injection,
solvent injection, and firefloods, in which oxygen is injected and part of
the resource is burned to provide heat. Some of these extraction methods
require large amounts of water and energy for heating and pumping.
Greatly increased pipeline capacity will ultimately be required to move
synthetic crude from oil sands sites to refineries. The pipeline network
currently in place will not be adequate to meet the transportation
requirements for oil sands in the future. The expansion of pipeline capacity
is extremely important because the current American market for oil sands
products is becoming saturated.
About the Publisher: "Oil Sands Global Market Potential” is published by
Energy Business Reports (www.EnergyBusinessReports.com),
an energy industry think tank and leading source for energy industry
information and research products. Other reports available from EBR include:
The Market for Cellulose Ethanol, Weather Risk Management, Natural Gas
Storage Effects on Energy Trading, Fuel Cell Technology, The Outlook for
Unconventional Gas, Securing Energy Assets and Infrastructure, The Market
for Solar Photovoltaics, and Understanding the China Energy Market. This
reports sells for $497 and can be ordered at
www.OilSandsPotential.com.
Contact: Barbara Drazga
CustomerCare@EnergyBusinessReports.com
Tel 800-304-0345
www.energybusinessreports.com |
