Most of the heavy oil and bitumen produced in Western Canada is transported through pipelines to refineries in North America. Prior to transportation, the high viscosity of those fluids must be reduced by either dilution with a light solvent or upgrading. The high costs associated with handling diluents has increased the interest in upgrading; that […]

Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, mostly in oil sands located in the northern Alberta, which is estimated to be 166 billion barrels. Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) has been the only commercially viable in-situ recovery method available to date. Application of SAGD is known to be energy intensive and has […]

Most of the heavy oil and bitumen produced in Western Canada is transported through pipelines to refineries in North America. Prior to transportation, the high viscosity of those fluids must be reduced by either dilution with a light solvent or upgrading. The high costs associated with handling diluents has increased the interest in upgrading; that […]

Shale reservoirs store gigantic volumes of petroleum (oil and gas). However, because of the complex nature of the reservoir rock, it is difficult to recover the oil and/or gas stored in shales. Under normal conditions, it is possible to extract only as much as 10% of the resources in place, thus leaving behind a huge […]

Shale reservoirs have become a very important source of hydrocarbons, especially in North America. Shales are rocks with very low permeability and therefore, produce the hydrocarbons stored in them is difficult. In order to do it, oil companies have to inject high pressurized fluids to break the rock. But, by using this unique strategy, most […]