Unlike other ways to recover oil, the oil found in the oil sands is locked in sand, in a substance called bitumen. To extract the oil from the sand, industry has invested billions of dollars to develop a massive infrastructure with sophisticated processes and technologies.
In the 1920s Dr. Karl Clark’s research found that it was necessary to heat the ore, mix them and grind them up with water in order to get the oil out of the sand and clay it was trapped in. While Clark and his colleagues were on to something, the extraction process needed a great deal more refinement, and it wasn’t until the late 1970’s that Syncrude produced the first barrel of oil from the oil sands.
In the most basic terms, the main process of mining extraction is ’surface mining’, and looks like this:
- The ‘overburden’ (trees, plants, muskeg, streams) is removed from the land, with topsoil being maintained for projected future ‘reclaimations’;
- Huge trucks and machines haul the bitumen – a sandy tar like substance – out of the ground and mix it with hot water to pipe it to extraction plants;
- In the first phase of extraction the bitumen is mixed with hot water to separate the sand, water and bitumen froth;
- In the second phase of extraction the bitumen is spun with a solvent called naptha to remove more of the clay, sand and water particles.
- The bitumen is then siphoned off and the water, clay, sand and some residue of bitumen (waste-water) is then dumped into large ‘tailings ponds’ in the hopes that it will resettle, a process that will take decades by some estimates while others think it could be upwards of 150 years. Industry recycles some of this water within this process, taking down the number of barrels utilized from 8 to 10 barrels of water for each barrel of oil, to 2 to 4 barrels of water for one barrel of oil.
- The final process is upgrading, that then creates the crude oil that is the primary export from the Oil Sands, 72% of which is used for transportation fuels (gas, diesel and jet fuel).
Other less prevalent extraction processes include Cold flow, Cyclic Steam Simulation (CSS), and Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). Processes currently being experimented with in Alberta include the Vapor Extraction Process (VAPEX), and the Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) process.
Industry investment into development of the oil sands now totals $23 billion with $7 billion worth of projects under construction and $30 billion of projects forecast to be completed by 2012.