It is about as thick as peanut butter when it is in the reservoir at natural temperature and pressure. Its like molasses when its warmed up with steam.
The oil itself is lower quality like that because of exposure to fresh water and bacteria over long periods of time. The bacteria consume the light ends which degrades the oil.
It covers a massive area in three major deposits - Cold Lake, Athabasca and Peace River.
The Cold Lake deposit is mostly in the clearwater formation which is quite shaley and is produced using a steam process called CSS (cyclic steam stimulation), or Huff and Puff, where you inject steam into a vertical wellbore, allow pressure and heat to increase in proximity to the well, and then the same well is allowed to flow back for a production phase. Imperial oil has been doing this in the Cold lake region for decades economically and still does it.
The athabasca region is the "famous" Wabiskaw/McMurray type deposits that are usually cleaner sands, but have other issues such as being closer to surface than the clearwater deposits in the Cold Lake region. This is the region and formation famously associated with the open pit mines that are about 40 years old at their oldest. CSS is not an appropriate technology for that reservoir for the most part, which is why it hasn't been developed until recently. A majority of this resource is still fairly deep and will not be accessable by mining or CSS, and the popular technology these days is drilling pairs of horizontal wells to inject steam and produce the formation at the same time. There are also processes that inject air into the formation and literally burn part of the oil that is in place in order to create heat and allow the oil to flow, very similar to traditional "fire flooding", except horizontal wells are used. Although the pilot projects that use this technology still do not produce commercially viable rates, it is still a technology that is being pursued hard academically and by a handful of producers.
The cold lake region is predominantly populated by carbonate (limestone) formations that are deep, but do not accept steam injection well for a variety of reasons. These formations represent significant upside to the amount of recoverable reserves (not currently booked or reported) if and when an appropriate technology is developed for their production. Many operators and academics are also exploring the potential for this type of deposit.
The reservoir/recovery processes, as well as the oil separation and water treatment processes vary significantly from project to project and its difficult to use rules of thumb that apply to all of them equally. However, in general gas is burned to generate steam and electricity (or electricity is used from the grid to generate steam), and a very high percentage of the water that comes back from the reservoir is recycled for use in the processing of the oil. Typically the oil is blended with liquids rich natural gas or synthetic crude oil before entering into a pipeline for being sold. Most of this volume goes to US sites for upgrading and refinement.
There is some effort being made to build a pipeline to a terminal on West Coast BC to allow better access to Asian markets. It would be beneficial if rail reached these projects for both the delivery of major equipment and for the shipment of unrefined product to various markets. I believe this is also underworks...
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