(79b) Technology Requirements for Sustainable Oil Sands Production

The oil sands of Alberta have the potential to expand production to millions of barrels per day of bitumen and upgraded products, and become a major source of petroleum for North America. Although the resource can sustain this level of production, the current technology cannot reach or sustain these production levels. The technologies currently used in the oil sands industry were based on abundant water supplies, low natural gas prices relative to crude oil, low environmental costs, and substantial volumes of conventional crude oil. All of these drivers of process technology are changing rapidly, therefore, long-term growth in oil sands production will require new technologies.

This presentation will outline some research opportunities for new technologies for production, extraction, and upgrading of oil sands. Current in situ production relies on steam, generated from natural gas. Substitution of alternate energy sources or alternate production technologies is essential to produce the 80-85% of the bitumen that is too deep to mine. Current extraction technology uses warm water, but the growth of the oil sands industry is straining water supplies, at a time when droughts are limiting water resources. The prospects for non-aqueous extraction technologies will be discussed. The current upgrading technologies use only a portion of the raw material, rejecting a substantial amount of energy in waste byproducts such as coke. Even when up to 20% of the bitumen is discarded, the final synthetic crude cannot easily substitute for synthetic crude oil. A major barrier to developing better technology is the lack of information on the molecular character of the bitumen. Recent results on the properties and composition of the heavy fractions of bitumen will illustrate approaches to developing new upgrading technology.