The Alberta tar sands are one of the biggest oil reserves in the world. Yet extracting the fossil fuel costs more than the profits it's fetching.
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or more technically bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit.Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen.
In their 11th annual review of oil sands supply costs, the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) pegs breakeven costs at $43.31/bbl for SAGD projects (steam-assisted gravity drainage) and $70.08/bbl for a stand-alone mine. The figures exclude blending and transportation costs but include capital expenditures. The higher mining costs stem from higher capital requirements, higher non-fuel ...
The cost to produce oil in the oil sands is made up of the upfront capital cost required to first construct a facility, the cost to operate a facility once it is online, and the periodic cost to sustain production by replacing worn out equipment or parts or, in case of in situ projects to drill new wells pairs over time.
Instead, tar sands are mined in two main ways: [1,2] Open-pit mining – if tar sands are found near the surface, as in Alberta, Canada, they can be mined directly – much like open-pit coal mining – and then transferred to an extraction plant where the bitumen can be separated from the sand, clay, and water.
Tar Sands Extraction. Alberta’s Athabasca tar sands lie under about 142,000 square kilometers of land, much of which is locked deep underground, making it hard to extract (CAPP, 2017). Tar sands are known as one of the dirtiest forms of fossil fuel because of the vast economic and environmental costs that are associated with its extraction.
The extraction and refining processes related to tar sands cost companies mining tar sands in Canada approximately $27 per barrel. However, despite the extraction costs of oil from tar sands, in today's current market, with the purchase price of oil at $80 per barrel, the production of petroleum from tar sands is still an extremely profitable affair for companies mining Canadian tar sands.
Scientific American is the essential ... How Much Will Tar Sands Oil ... environmental group Oil Change International estimates that tar sands refined on the Gulf Coast would produce 16.6 ...
Canada's oil sands survive, but can't thrive in a $50 oil ... for processing at the Suncor tar sands mining operations near ... projects struggling even to cover their operating costs.
What does new tar sands oil cost in per-barrel terms? In short, how high must oil prices be to make the economics favorable? Here's a mining report from December 14, 2012.
The profit of any oil company depends on the costs it needs to produce 1 barrel of oil, technically spoken 1 barrel of oil equivalent (boe). Oil sands are a maj
Oil sands are actually found all over the world, and are sometimes referred to as tar sands or bituminous sands. A typical oil sands deposit in Alberta contains on average about 10% bitumen, 5% water and 85% solids, mostly in the form of coarse silica sand. Oil sands also contain fine solids and clays, typically in the range of 10 to 30% by weight.
Robert Rapier continues to report on his recent visit to the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta. This week, he explores the cost of production and the energy return from surface mining and
However, Canada is not likely to meet its 2020 carbon emission reduction target, experts warn. Nor is it likely to meet its 2030 Paris climate target—and that's almost entirely due to increasing ...
With Tar Sands Development, Growing Concern on Water Use Environmental questions about Canada’s massive tar sands development have long centered on greenhouse gas emissions. Now there are mounting concerns about the huge volumes of water used by the oil industry and the impact on the vast Mackenzie River Basin.
Whether mining tar sands oil makes sense financially, depends on the world market price of oil—and on whether a company has already paid off its infrastructure costs or is building a new mine.
Tar sands oil production in Canada is expected to increase by 9 percent in 2016, even though the oil currently sells for less than the cost of production. That's because the wells can't be ...
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray.These oil sands, hosted primarily in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen (a semi-solid rock-like form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water.
Economic, Environmental Costs of Developing Tar Sands Oil Shale 'Unthinkable' We've written so many times about the unmitigated environmental disaster that is tapping unconventional sources of ...
17-6-2019 Only 20% of Canada's oil reserves are in a shallow enough area that they can be mined using trucks to access the dirt. Learn how oil sands mining works, and ...
How Much Does It Cost To Produce One Barrel Of Oil From Oil Sands (Cenovus, Canadian Natural Resources, Canadian Oil Sands In 2014)? Mar. 19, 2015 12:53 PM ET
Tar sands also impact water supplies. For every gallon of gasoline produced by tar sands, about 5.9 gallons of freshwater are consumed during the extraction, upgrading, and refining process. That’s roughly three times as much as used for conventional oil. Much of this water is polluted by toxic substances harmful to human health and the ...
Tar sands mining operations present a much more significant risk, because they produce large volumes of waste in the form of mine tailings (six barrels of tailings per barrel of bitumen extracted).
The oil sands can be extracted in two ways: open-pit mining for oil sands located on or just below the surface, and in situ recovery for oil sands located underground. About 80 percent of the oil sands are located deeper then 70-80m below surface and some large proportion can be extracted but only via in situ techniques (Mawdsley et al. 2005).
At current prices, Canadian tar sands oil producers are losing money on every barrel of oil they dig out. Despite signs earlier this year the industry would “turn profitable in 2018,” a much more likely scenario at this point is a fourth straight year of losses.. Producers are forced to keep cranking out product and selling it at a loss to cover the massive costs required to start one of ...
The Canadian tar sands industry has seen better days. Energy giant Statoil announced last week that it would postpone a major mining project in Alberta for at least three years. It was just the ...
This could be the end of Canadian tar sands. ... But the true climate cost of oil sands is potentially much greater because U.S ... Oil prices need to be above $80 per barrel for oil sands mining ...
19-8-2015 Canada's largest synthetic crude project is not likely to shut down operations, its biggest owner said on Wednesday, even as a company presentation showed it is
24-8-2017 Cenovus Energy Inc. said they can now sustain production with oil at $40 a barrel without jeopardizing the dividend they pay shareholders. While that’s not yet near the economics of shale ...
1-6-2020 Overview. The data provided gives an overview of the costs, revenues and royalties paid for each oil sands project in Alberta for 2018. The information published here is royalty project data, and is only relevant to and arises from royalty calculations.
1-6-2020 Overview. The data provided gives an overview of the costs, revenues and royalties paid for each oil sands project in Alberta for 2018. The information published here is royalty project data, and is only relevant to and arises from royalty calculations.
A key area of controversy over mining in the boreal region is the exploitation of tar (or oil) sands, which are areas with sand or sandstone saturated with bitumen, a viscous form of petroleum, which can be mined and processed to produce oil. Tar sands are extracted by either surface (open pit) mining or in-situ extraction. For surface mining, areas are first cleared of trees, bogs are drained ...
Oil Sands: Economic contributions. ... from coast to coast and covers about 30 percent of the country’s land mass. Footnote 2 After almost 50 years of oil sands development, oil sands ... Oil sands mining research includes processes to separate the bitumen from the sand more efficiently and to reduce energy and water requirements as ...
Tar-sands oil mining has now ... tar sands, or oil sands, are much more carbon-laden than most ... be left in the ground in order for the globe to cost-effectively keep global warming ...
Contact. Connect with Oil Sands, Coal and Mineral Operations: Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays) Email: Oil Sands Royalty Project Applications and Compliance [email protected] Oil Sands Royalty Administration [email protected] Oil Sands Royalty Information Management [email protected] Oil Sands Tenure [email protected]
The pros and cons of tar sands show us that short-term gains happen, but at the expense of long-term problems. We must work to find a solution that will limit emissions and habitat damage to benefit from this natural resource. If we cannot find this solution, we may run out of bitumen one day and leave a more polluted planet for future generations.
The Dirty Fight Over Canadian Tar Sands Oil. ... Knight was describing tar sands, a sludgy deposit ... a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that would deliver tar sands crude to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The Opposite of Mining: Tar Sands Steam Extraction Lessens Footprint, but Environmental Costs Remain. Melting bitumen in place is less unsightly than mining tar sands, but increasing efficiency ...
Oil Sands Mining. Definition. Oil sands are a mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen found in several locations around the globe, with the largest reserve located in Alberta, Canada. Oil sand can be upgraded into synthetic crude oil and other petroleum products Alberta Energy. What is Oil Sands
First - in the oil patch, nothing is "typical". According to one report, Canadian Oil Sands operating expenses hit $52.63 (Canadian) a barrel in the second quarter, down $7.01 from the same period last year. Canadian Oil Sands attributed the sav...