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From the Rigzone Team
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Heavy Oil Articles
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Heavy Oil Interactive Learning
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Heavy Oil: Catching the Wild Beast
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Getty's formula has worked for American oil enthusiasts, yet oil is becoming increasingly difficult to find -- let alone recover. Among other concerns, peak oil theories and geopolitical agitations in OPEC nations have left operators scrambling to find inexpensive, more efficient methods of recovering nonconventional hydrocarbons, like heavy oil, that will satisfy the world’s demand for petroleum into the next century.
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China: Far East Measures In As Heavy Oil Hotspot
After spending considerable time investing in Canadian and Venezuelan heavy oil ventures, China is looking to its own oil fields as a next source of production. To date, heavy oil has been discovered in 70 oil fields throughout 12 basins. All of these sources have remained largely unexploited.
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Heavier Crude Feedstocks: Gaining Respect
Long regarded as virtual pariahs among crude oil feedstocks, heavier slates of crude are increasingly proving their worth at oil processing facilities worldwide. Cheaper to buy but costlier to refine, heavy oils have often taken the proverbial back seat to more expensive but easier-to-process light- and medium-gravity crudes. Now, heavier crudes are getting their due.
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Heating up the Job Market
Whether or not conventional oil has a "peak," the world’s heavy oil reserves have only just been tapped. In fact, some experts estimate that heavy oil represents more than half of the globe’s known reserves - and those are just the known resources. Many heavy oil deposits remain unexplored.
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Where is Heavy Oil Found?
Heavy oils are found around the world, with an estimated 69 percent of the world's technically recoverable heavy oil and 82 percent of the technically recoverable natural bitumen located in the Western Hemisphere.
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Why Does Heavy Oil Matter?
Because the challenging, yet almost entirely untapped, deposits of heavy oil hold some of the largest reserves of hydrocarbons in the world. According to Bill Bush of the API, "Heavy oils, oil sands, and potentially shale, could contribute substantially to future U.S. and world oil supplies."
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Keys to Heavy Oil: Characterizing Fluids and the Reservoir
Success with heavy oil depends as much on understanding the fluid properties of the reservoir as it does on knowing the geology of the reservoir itself.
The reason is that the chemical differences between heavy oil and conventional oil ultimately affect their viscosity.
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Venezuela's New Focus on Heavy Oil
Home to the world's largest single accumulation of heavy and extra-heavy oil, Venezuela boasts an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of oil in place. With current and developing technologies, approximately 270 billion of those barrels could be recovered and produced from the South American country's much-heralded Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt.
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Heavy Oil Contributes to Brazil's Energy Self-Sufficiency
Brazil is set to achieve energy self-sufficiency this year, thanks in large part to its production of heavy oil. Most of its crude oil production is offshore in the Campos, Espírito Santo, and Santos basins in deep and ultra-deep waters, and the majority of oil in these basins is heavy. In fact, heavy oil constitutes nearly one-half of Brazil's proved oil reserves of 13 billion barrels.
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How is Heavy Oil Produced?
Because heavy oil is so viscous, conventional methods, such as vertical wells, pumps, and pressure maintenance, are inefficient at extracting the oil. So, new technologies are being used to recover heavy oil including: cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS), vapor extraction (VAPEX), and thermal in situ methods.
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Keys to Heavy Oil: The Importance of Planning Ahead
Until recently, many producers thought commercial quantities of heavy oil were unique to a handful of large fields in Canada, Venezuela and the United States. Now that market conditions have changed, prospects are quickly
opening up around the world.
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What is Heavy Oil and How is it Formed?
Heavy oil is thick crude oil that is viscous and has a low API gravity, making it difficult to produce using conventional methods.
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Alberta's Oil Sands: Not Just for Caulking Canoes
Used in previous centuries for tasks ranging from waterproofing canoes to paving roads, the abundant bitumen found in Alberta's Athabasca Oil Sands may serve another purpose: securing Canada's role as an important oil producer for generations to come with nearly 500 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil.
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Husky Steams Ahead with Tucker Project
Husky Energy, a fixture in Canada’s oil and gas industry for 60 yrs with extensive experience in heavy oil production, recently completed construction of its first-ever oil sands project.
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Russian Riches: Untapped Heavy Oil
For decades, Russia has been a major player on the global energy scene. At times, the vast country has even bested Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer. Throughout its modern history, the country has relied on its impressive yet largely mature supply of conventional oil. However, with increased world interest in unconventional resources, Russia has an opportunity for the future; technology development is rapidly advancing and the door to heavy and extra-heavy crude production is opening.
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Heavy Oil Stats
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Heavy Oil |
Bitumen |
| North America |
35.3 |
530.9 |
| South America |
265.7 |
0.1 |
| Africa |
7.2 |
43 |
| Middle East |
78.2 |
0.0 |
| Asia |
29.6 |
42.8 |
| Russia |
13.4 |
33.7 |
| Western Hemi |
301 |
531 |
| Eastern Hemi |
128.4 |
119.5 |
| Worldwide |
429.4 |
650.5 |
| source: U.S. Geological Survey |
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Heavy Oil Resources
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