Since Venezuela also has insufficient refinery capacity to produce its home market, supplies of naptha are insufficient to make use of as pipeline diluent, and it is having to import naptha to fill the gap. Since Venezuela additionally has monetary issues – because of the nation's financial crisis -, and political disagreements with the US government and oil corporations, the state of affairs remains unresolved. When major manufacturing is used in the Venezuelan oil sands, the place the additional-heavy oil is about 50 levels Celsius, the standard oil restoration rates are about 8–12%. Canadian oil sands are much colder and more biodegraded, so bitumen recovery charges are normally only about 5–6%. Historically, primary recovery was used within the extra fluid areas of Canadian oil sands. However, it recovered only a small fraction of the oil in place, so it's not often used today.

In the absence of recent pipeline capacity, corporations are more and more delivery bitumen to US markets by railway, river barge, tanker, and different transportation methods. Other than ocean tankers, these alternatives are all more expensive than pipelines. Oil sands production forecasts released by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers , the Alberta Energy Regulator , and the Canadian Energy Research Institute are comparable to National Energy Board projections, when it comes to total bitumen production. None of these forecasts take into account probable international constraints to be imposed on combustion of all hydrocarbons in order to restrict international temperature rise, giving rise to a scenario denoted by the time period "carbon bubble".
CSS has been in use by Imperial Oil at Cold Lake since 1985 and can be utilized by Canadian Natural Resources at Primrose and Wolf Lake and by Shell Canada at Peace River. In this methodology, the well is put via cycles of steam injection, soak, and oil manufacturing. Once the production rate falls off, the well is put by way of one other cycle of injection, soak and manufacturing. This process is repeated until the price of injecting steam turns into larger than the money created from producing oil. A giant variety of oil sands mines are at present in operation and more are within the levels of approval or development. The Syncrude Canada mine was the second to open in 1978, Shell Canada opened its Muskeg River mine in 2003 and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd opened its Horizon Oil Sands project in 2009.
The third mine within the Athabasca Oil Sands, the Albian Sands consortium of Shell Canada, Chevron Corporation, and Western Oil Sands Inc. started operation in 2003. Petro-Canada was additionally creating a $33 billion Fort Hills Project, in partnership with UTS Energy Corporation and Teck Cominco, which misplaced momentum after the 2009 merger of Petro-Canada into Suncor. In addition to the three major Canadian oil sands in Alberta, there is a fourth major oil sands deposit in Canada, the Melville Island oil sands in the Canadian Arctic islands, which are too remote to count on business production in the foreseeable future. bitumen sheet malaysia lie, typically, within the watershed of the Peace River.

Supplies Life

Since Western Canada only produces about 150,000 bbl/d (24,000 m3/d) of condensate, the availability was expected to turn into a significant constraint on bitumen transport. However, the recent huge improve in US tight oil manufacturing has largely solved this problem, as a result of a lot of the manufacturing is just too light for US refinery use but best for diluting bitumen. The surplus American condensate and light-weight oil is being exported to Canada and blended with bitumen, and then re-imported to the US as feedstock for refineries.