Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) pumps steam into the ground to liquefy the bitumen and stiff crude oil, making it thin enough to be pulled out of the ground.
The primary difference between bitumen and ordinary crude is the size of the hydrocarbon molecules: in liquid oil, these molecules contain between five and twenty carbon atoms, while in bitumen they contain more than twenty. (At room temperature, pure bitumen is so viscous that it will not flow.) The main job of the upgrader is to break down the oversized hydrocarbons into smaller units.
The prolifically productive shale oil formations, like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas, produce very high quality crude that is in no way similar to Bitumen.
FORBES: Shale Oil and Natural Gas - Whose Bubble is Really About to Burst?
Extracting the bitumen from the clay and sand and upgrading it into crude oil--by breaking its big hydrocarbon molecules into smaller, less viscous ones--is an expensive, energy-intensive process that consumes 650 cubic feet of natural gas for every barrel.
It is estimated that there is enough bitumen in Alberta to yield 1.7 trillion barrels of synthetic crude.
In fact, Canadian diluted bitumen, sometimes called dilbit, is actually less corrosive than crude oil from Mexico, Colombia, and even California.
Indeed, the Anglo-Dutch multinational announced today that it had inked an agreement to acquire Koch Materials China , which is involved in the manufacture and marketing of bitumen--that black viscous residue taken from the distillation of crude petroleum--in the country.
The line is critical to ensure a continued, smooth ramp-up in oil sands production, because producers need to send the heavy bitumen extracted from the sands to refineries able to handle that kind of crude.
FORBES: If U.S. Says No To Canadian Oil Sands Pipeline, China Will Say Yes
Bitumen is derived from oil, which means its price has risen over the past decade alongside that of crude oil.
ECONOMIST: Quieter traffic: When the rubber hits the road | The
应用推荐