oil sand — Oil & Gas Glossary
In the context of heavy oil, an oil sand is a porousrocklayer, often considered to be a mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen. The term is predominantly used in Canada, where over 170 billion barrels of bitumen are estimated to be held by large oil sand deposits in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River regions of Alberta. Oils
Detailed Explanation
from such sands may have a gravity of less than 10° API. Both in-situ recovery and mining methods are used to extract the resource, with surface mining used for extracting deposits of extra heavy oil at shallow depths of less than 100 m [328 ft].
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