Heavy oil

Heavy oil is defined as liquid petroleum of less than 20°API gravity or more than 200 cp
viscosity at reservoir conditions. No explicit differentiation is made between heavy oil and oil
sands (tar sands), although the criteria of less than 12°API gravity and greater than 10,000 cp are
sometimes used to define oil sands.[1][2][3][4] The oil in oil sands is an immobile fluid under
existing reservoir conditions, and heavy oils are somewhat mobile fluids under naturally existing
pressure gradients. Unconsolidated sandstones (UCSS) are sandstones (or sands) that possess no
true tensile strength arising from grain-to-grain mineral cementation. Many heavy oil reservoirs
are located in unconsolidated sandstones.

Importance of heavy oil

World conventional oil (light oil greater than 20°API) supply rates will peak eventually and enter
into decline because of increasing world demand, inexorable reservoir production rate decline,
and the indisputable fact that few new sedimentary basins remain to be exploited. Many believe
that this will occur between 2005 and 2010.[5][6] Thereafter, light oil production will decline
gradually at a rate that may be slowed but not reversed by the introduction of new technologies
such as gravity drainage and pressure pulsing. Fig. 1 shows world oil production predictions.
Simply put, conventional oil is running out because new basins are running out. Furthermore,
exploitation costs are large in deep, remote basins (deep offshore, Antarctic fringe, Arctic
basins). Only larger finds will be developed, and recovery will be less than for "easy" basins.

Fig. 1-World oil production: past and predictions.

Nevertheless, the world will never run out of oil for several reasons. First, conventional oil
comprises a small fraction of hydrocarbons in sedimentary basins. Table 1 shows relative
hydrocarbon resource size. Second, as technology evolves, other energy sources (ethanol,
hydrogen cycle) will displace oil, just as oil displaced coal. Third, even if all the organic carbon
(oil, gas, coal, kerogen) in basins is consumed, oil can be manufactured from wood or assembled
from its elements, given a sufficiently high commodity price. To put the available heavy-oil
resource into context, in Canada alone it is so large (~400 × 109 m3) that, at a US and Canadian
consumption rate of 1.2 × 109 m3/yr, there is enough heavy oil to meet 100% of this demand for
more than 80 years if the overall extraction efficiency is approximately 30%.
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Table 1-Relative Hydrocarbon Resource Size.

The claim that the world is irresponsible in rapidly consuming irreplaceable resources ignores
technical progress, market pressures, and the historical record.[7] Commodities have never been
cheaper, efficiency is increasing, and new ideas such as deep biosolids injection may generate
new sources of energy or may recycle energy.[8] It is interesting to read the predictions of
doomsayers[9] in the context of continued technological advances. For example, the "Club of
Rome," with the use of exponential growth assumptions and extrapolations under static
technology, predicted serious commodity shortages before 2000, including massive oil shortages
and famine.[10]

These predictions relate to heavy oil for the following reasons. First, new production
technologies are proof that science and knowledge continue to advance and that further advances
are anticipated. Second, oil prices will not skyrocket because technologies such as manufacturing
synthetic oil from coal are waiting in the wings. Third, the new technologies have been forced to
become efficient and profitable, even with unfavorable refining penalties. Fourth, exploration
costs for new conventional oil production capacity will continue to rise in all mature basins,
whereas new technologies can lower production costs in such basins. Fifth, technological
feedback from heavy-oil production is improving conventional oil recovery. Finally, the heavy-
oil resource in UCSS is vast. Although it is obvious that the amount of conventional (light) oil is
limited, the impact of this limitation, while relevant in the short term (2000 to 2030), is likely to
be inconsequential to the energy industry in the long term (50 to 200 years).

Source : https://petrowiki.org