Practical Heavy Oil Recovery

The tar sands of Alberta alone contain over two trillion barrels of oil. The important question is: how much of this oil is recoverable and what techniques could be applied? In the prolific heavy oil reservoirs of California oil recovery by steam injection is 50-60% of the initial oil in place, and often much higher. In Alberta, recovery is considerably lower – 5 to 20% in better areas -because the main recovery method is cyclic steam stimulation. Undoubtedly this figure will go up as technology advances. The importance of heavy oil can be appreciated by the fact that nearly 10% of the oil production in the U.S.A. and 20% in Canada is from heavy oil and tar sands resources. These figures are increasing steadily every year.

This book is the draft of a text in preparation to be published in 1997.