Monday afternoon, I attended a "Feed Your Brain" lunch time discussion. The discussion was led by Jen Russel-Houston. Jen works at Osum Oil Sands Corp. located in Alberta, Canada.
What are oil sands you may ask? Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, saturated with a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen.
Canada is right behind Saudi Arabia for number or oil reservoirs. Most of this oil that comes from Canada will filter to the United States for refining. Canada ranks in at number 3 and the United States ranks in at number 6 for producing oil. Together however, we are ranked number 1.
In Jen's talk, she stated that retrieving oil from oil sands is hard. Her company is developing new ways in better locating and extracting it. One method that the company uses is called Steam Assisted Gravity Drilling or (SAGD)
Using such method requires a lot of wells, more water, and a larger footprint
Jen's goals is to eventually lower cost, safer operations, lower water use, and reduce the footprint
In the future she [Jen] wishes to optimize and become more efficient with steam, she wants to put more wells on one pad, and wants to have better well placement and reservoir quality
~Ryan J. Hefley
No comments:
Post a Comment