The Athabasca oil sands in north-west Canada, a short geological overview

The province of Alberta contains the natural resource oil sand. Demaison (1977) described the Alberte tar sands as “the world largest selfcontained accumulation of hydrocarbons”. 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay. This oil sand deposit is pri...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Maria Kleindienst
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.461.9075
http://www.geo.tu-freiberg.de/oberseminar/os05_06/maria_kleindienst.pdf
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Summary:The province of Alberta contains the natural resource oil sand. Demaison (1977) described the Alberte tar sands as “the world largest selfcontained accumulation of hydrocarbons”. 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay. This oil sand deposit is primarily located in and around Fort McMurray. The McMurray Formation is a lower Cretaceous oil-bearing quartz sandstone. Much of this oil is wrapped as a coationg around individual, water wet sand grains, so the extraction problem is not of getting the oil out of the sand but of getting the sand out of the oil ( North 1985).