Bitumen processing plant

Basic information on tar sands, tar sands resources, and data recovery of oil from tar sands.

What Exactly Are Tar Sands?

Tar sands (generally known as oil sands) are a mix of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, huge black colored viscous oil. Tar sands are mined and prepared to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which can be then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands may not be pumped from surface with its normal condition; instead tar sand deposits tend to be mined, generally utilizing strip mining or open pit strategies, and/or oil is extracted by underground heating with extra upgrading.

Tar sands tend to be mined and processed to come up with oil just like oil pumped from traditional oil wells, but extracting oil from tar sands is much more complex than traditional oil recovery. Oil sands data recovery procedures include removal and separation methods to separate your lives the bitumen from the clay, sand, and water that comprise the tar sands. Bitumen also requires extra upgrading before it can be processed. Because it is therefore viscous (thick), it calls for dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines.

Tar Sands Sources

A lot of the world's oil (significantly more than 2 trillion drums) is in the type of tar sands, though it just isn't all recoverable. While tar sands are observed in several places worldwide, the largest build up on the planet are observed in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, and far associated with the rest can be found in various countries at the center East. In the United States, tar sands resources are mainly concentrated in Eastern Utah, mostly on public places. The in-place tar sands oil resources in Utah are approximated at 12 to 19 billion barrels.