Location: the Arbour Green Room at South Common CC

A Summary of the Athabasca Oil Sands

Date: October 6, 2009

Location: The Arbour Green Room at South Common CC

Speaker: Brian Jackson, P.Eng. General Manager at Bantrel Canada

Number of Participants: 42

Mr. Brian Jackson’s presentation had a lot of detail and described the technology past, present and future on the mining and extraction of oil from bitumen. He began the presentation with a history of the Athabasca Oil Sands that included the discovery of the oil sands by the Europeans and the first attempts to extract the bitumen from the oil sands.

Mr. Jackson proceeded to talk about the mining and extraction of the bitumen.There are two methods to mine and extract the bitumen. The first method is surface mining or truck and shovel. Earlier techniques used drag lines, bucket wheels and conveyors to remove the oil sands and move it to the processing plant for the extraction of the bitumen. Today huge power shovels remove the oil sands and trucks move it to the processing plant.At the processing plant, crushers crush the oil sands and mix it with water to form a slurry. The mixture moves on to further processes that remove the sand and silica from the slurry leaving the bitumen behind.

In-situ extraction is the second method. The oil companies use this method for oil sand depositsthat are too deep for surface mining. This method involves heating the oil sands in the ground that causes the bitumen to flow to the surfaceMr. Jackson outlined two current methods for in-situ recovery:

The first method is Cyclic Steam Stimulation. This involves injecting steam into the oil sand reservoirto heat the oil sands and reduce the viscosity of the bitumen causing it to flow. The oil sand producer can pump the mixture of water and bitumen to the surface.

The second method is Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage. This involves drilling two horizontal wells. Steam is injected continuously into the upper well and bitumen flows in the lower welland can be pumped to the surface.

Mr. Jackson also outlined two newer technologies for in-situ recovery of bitumen. First technology is Vapour Recovery Extraction. This process involves injecting a solvent into a well to make the bitumen less viscous and enabling it flow.It has the advantage of lower energy cost and it does not use any process water. The second technology is Toe to Heel Air Injection. This involves injecting air into a well and using the bitumen as fuel to heat the oil sands. This process has the advantage to reduced energy consumption and reduced cost.

Mr. Jackson talked about pipelines under construction to move the synthetic crude from the Athabasca Oil Sands to the United States. He also mentioned the oil refineries in the US being up graded to handle the heavier crude oil. This indicates that the Americans have an interest purchasing Canada’s oil sands crude.

Close to the end of his presentation, Mr. Jackson talked about the environmental issue surrounding the Athabasca Oil Sands. The mining and processing operations use 2 to 5 barrels of water for every barrel of crude oil produced. There is a limit of three percent of the flow of the Athabasca River at high levels and one percent during low flow. For In Situ mining the Oil Sands companies use 0.2 to 0.5 barrels of water for every barrel of bitumen recovered. About ninety percent of the water gets recycled. These companies continue to look for ways to improve the mining and extraction process to use less water.

There are 130 square kilometres of tailing ponds. Tailings are a mixture of bitumen, sand, silica and water. The oil sand companies continue to look into methods to reclaim the tailing ponds as fast as possible. After the these have mined the oil sands they reclaim the land. They have submitted reclamation plans and post financial security before they can begin the mining of the oil sands.

For more information go to the following web sites:

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Expenses

Hall Rental:$80.42

Refreshments$42.24

Honorarium$20.00

Total $142.66