Oil Sands and Orimulsion Market Potential

May 12, 2009 - PRLog -- Oil sands, tar sands, or extra heavy oil is a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen.

Many countries in the world have large deposits of oil sands, including the United States, Russia, and various countries in the Middle East. The world's largest deposits occur in two countries: Canada and Venezuela, both of which have oil sands reserves approximately equal to the world's total reserves of conventional crude oil.

The world's largest deposit is in the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela. Reserves there are estimated at more than 1.2 trillion million barrels of bitumen, an amount greater than 50 percent of the world's estimated oil reserves.

Orimulsion is a trademarked name for a bitumen-based fuel that was developed for industrial use by Intevep in Venezuela, following collaboration on oil emulsions with British Petroleum.

Orimulsion is produced from extra heavy bitumen-type oil found in large quantities in northern Venezuela.

Oil sand deposits have only recently been considered to be part of the world's oil
reserves, as higher oil prices and new technology enable them to be profitably extracted
and upgraded to usable products. Oil sand is often referred to as non-conventional oil or
crude bitumen, in order to distinguish the bitumen and synthetic oil extracted from oil
sands from the free-flowing hydrocarbon mixtures known as crude oil traditionally produced from oil wells.

As a result of the development of Canadian oil sands reserves, 44% of Canadian oil production in 2007 was from oil sands, with an additional 18% being heavy oil, while light oil and condensate had declined to 38% of the total. Because growth of oil sands production has exceeded declines in conventional crude oil production, Canada has become the largest supplier of oil and refined products to the United States, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Mexico.

Due to political problems within Venezuela’s national oil company, estimates of its
production data are not reliable. Outside analysts believe Venezuela's oil production has
declined in recent years, though there is much debate on whether this decline is depletion-related or not.

This report takes a look at the worldwide oil sands and orimulsion market.

View Details of this report at: http://www.energybusinessreports.com/shop/item.asp?itemid...

About the Publisher: This report, "Oil Sands and Orimulsion Market Potential" is published by Energy Business Reports (www.EnergyBusinessReports.com), an energy industry think tank and leading source for energy industry information and research products.

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