Heavy Oils and Oil Sands: Global Distribution and Resource Assessment

Liu, Zuodong; Wang, Hongjun; Blackbourn, Graham; Ma, Feng; He, Zhengjun; Zhixing, Wen; Wang, Zhaoming; Yang, Zi; Luan, Tiansi; Wu, Zhenzhen

doi:10.1111/1755-6724.13778

Cited by 81 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…UHR are located worldwide in 476 formations and 363 oil and gas basins in 60 countries. The recoverable oil resources in the world account for 30,855x10 8 barrels (billion barrels, Bb) and 6,900x10 12 cubic feet (trillion cubic feet, Tcf) of natural gas, excluding gas hydrates (2,8).…”

Section: Unconventional Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical factors for unconventional hydrocarbon resources development

Bravo

Hernández

2021

CT&F Cienc. Tecnol. Futuro

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Countries all over the world struggle to exploit their Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources (UHR) to secure energy supply, but only a few of them have succeeded. Regulators and decision-makers should understand the critical factors required for companies to attract capital, technology, and good practices to promote innovation and generate the virtuous cycle that translates into sustainable production. This study seeks to identify the most relevant factors for UHR commercial development. We assessed the UHR exploiting state in 60 countries and identified the critical common development factors for the 22 that are most active. The proposed Unconventional Hydrocarbon Development Index (UDI) allows to model, rank, benchmark, and forecast UHR development activity for any given country. We focused on the case of Colombia to illustrate the validity of this Index. Evidence suggests countries where National Oil Companies (NOCs) address the challenge of exploiting UHR on their own, may lack the required expertise, despite having governmental support and capital availability. It is easier for them to emulate resilient North American firms exploiting UHR by partnering with them to effectively incorporate best practices Governments can facilitate the process through UHR support, surface and subsurface risk reduction, a proper tax regime, and ESG practice promotion.

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Section: Unconventional Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical factors for unconventional hydrocarbon resources development

Bravo

Hernández

2021

CT&F Cienc. Tecnol. Futuro

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“…Canada possesses ample human resources, a stable political system, a well-developed infrastructure, a robust monetary system, and an established monitoring system. All these contribute meaningfully to Canada's OS industry [ 22 ]. Also, employment creation and revenues from taxes and royalties are some of the added benefits [ 5 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconventional energy resources: a system dynamics evaluation of social, environment and economic aspects

Falebita

Koul

Taylor³

2022

Int J Energy Environ Eng

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This study substantiates the usefulness of a systemic approach to investigate the multi-dimensional challenges regarding environmental, economic, and social impacts facing the sustainable development of unconventional energy resources, particularly oil sands (OS) in Canada. This research uses the system dynamics (SD) methodology to examine the impact of shocks in oil demand using real and theoretical scenarios. This was done by identifying leading indicators critical to OS resource development to capture sustainable development effects. The study identifies the contribution of OS resources in Canada to global sustainable development and has developed a model structure that captures the critical parameters associated with the economic-dynamics, socio-dynamics, and enviro-dynamics for the next 30 years. It also includes the impact of sudden oil supply and demand shocks and presents various recovery scenarios. The results from these scenarios indicate that it may take up to 25 years for the industry to return to its pre-shock trajectory, even assuming a rapid recovery. As such, the study proposes an adaptive model to assist sustainable energy development policies and decision-making. Accordingly, the approach can be helpful for academicians, policymakers, and practitioners for objective decision-making regarding sustainable development. Meanwhile, it provides cogent and valuable information for natural resource governance.

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“…Out of that, a total of 70% of the 1734 billion barrels of oil are composed of unconventional oils (i.e. heavy oils and bitumen) (Elahi et al 2019 ; Guo et al 2016 ; Liu et al 2019 ). This implies that conventional light oils make up the remaining 30% of the recoverable resources (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

Ado

2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

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The current commercial technologies used to produce heavy oils and bitumen are carbon-, energy-, and wastewater-intensive. These make them to be out of line with the global efforts of decarbonisation. Alternative processes such as the toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) that works as an in situ combustion process that uses horizontal producer well to recover partially upgraded oil from heavy oils and bitumen reservoirs are needed. However, THAI is yet to be technically and economically well proven despite pilot and semi-commercial operations. Some studies concluded using field data that THAI is a low-oil-production-rate process. However, no study has thoroughly investigated the simultaneous effects of start-up methods and wells configuration on both the short and long terms stability, sustainability, and profitability of the process. Using THAI validated model, three models having a horizontal producer well arranged in staggered line drive with the injector wells are simulated using CMG STARS. Model A has two vertical injectors via which steam was used for pre-ignition heating, and models B and C each has a horizontal injector via which electrical heater and steam were respectively used for pre-ignition heating. It is found that during start-up, ultimately, steam injection instead of electrical heating should be used for the pre-ignition heating. Clearly, it is shown that model A has higher oil production rates after the increase in air flux and also has a higher cumulative oil recovery of 2350 cm3 which is greater than those of models B and C by 9.6% and 4.3% respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that for long-term projects, model A settings and wells configuration should be used. Although it is now discovered that the peak temperature cannot in all settings tell how healthy a combustion front is, it has revealed that model A does indeed have far more stable, safer, and efficient combustion front burning quality and propagation due to the maintenance of very high peak temperatures of mostly greater than 600 °C and very low concentrations of produced oxygen of lower than 0.4 mol% compared to up to 2.75 mol% in model C and 1 mol% in model B. Conclusively, since drilling of, and achieving uniform air distribution in horizontal injector (HI) well in actual field reservoir are costly and impracticable at the moment, and that electrical heating will require unphysically long time before mobilised fluids reach the HP well as heat transfer is mainly by conduction, these findings have shown decisively that the easy-and-cheaper-to-drill two vertical injector wells configured in a staggered line drive pattern with the horizontal producer should be used, and steam is thus to be used for pre-ignition heating.

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Heavy Oils and Oil Sands: Global Distribution and Resource Assessment

Cited by 81 publications

References 16 publications

Critical factors for unconventional hydrocarbon resources development

Critical factors for unconventional hydrocarbon resources development

Unconventional energy resources: a system dynamics evaluation of social, environment and economic aspects

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

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