Canada's oil sands are well recognized internationally, with Alberta's mined and in situ oil sands reservoirs being well developed with mature commercial technologies. The next frontier in Canadian petroleum development will be the shallow in situ oil sands residing in both Saskatchewan and Alberta. Presenting opportunities and challenges that are distinct from the mining and deeper in situ reservoir situations, the shallow reservoirs will probably need to be developed with new "gamechanger" in situ technologies that will reduce and/or replace the use of steam, reduce the use of fresh water, and dramatically reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2. Significant R&D programs are now aimed at developing and demonstrating such new technologies. Piloting new shallow in situ development technologies for Saskatchewan's oil sands deposits will enable a new source of Canadian "technology oil" and serve to test more environmentally friendly technologies that could be adapted to current commercial operations. This paper will provide a detailed description of the oil sands geology and physical properties as well as highlighting Saskatchewan's oil sands and some of the novel recovery technologies that are being developed for shallow in situ reservoirs.
The world liquid petroleum (oil) resources are huge, comprising over 600 billion m3 (about 4 trillion barrels). Of this around half, about 320 billion m3, is represented by the bitumen contained in oil sands. The remainder is made up of conventional medium and light gravity crude oil. A practical basis for distinguishing among conventional light crude, heavy crude, and bitumen is given in Table 1. As the data in Table 1 show, conventional light and heavy crude oils can flow at reservoir temperatures. Athabasca bitumen, whose viscosity at reservoir temperature is over 1 million mPa.s is essentially immobile.
A significant fraction of the world's conventional crude oil and most of the world's bitumen is contained in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Bitumen comprises the majority of Canada's liquid petroleum resources (see Table 2) at about 410 billion m3 (2.6 trillion barrels), of which only about 28 billion m3 are considered to be reserves, that is, economically recoverable with current technology[1].
Current daily oil (bitumen and synthetic crude) production has risen to 180,000 m3 (1.1 million barrels) which represents about 40% of crude oil produced in Canada. The bitumen production in Canada is expected to more than triple by 2030 based on a moderate growth case[2] and taking into account the current economic slowdown. In a time of the peaking of conventional oil production and an expansive growth in energy demand the search for new oil reserves has led to unconventional in situ bitumen and heavy oil resources, for which operators are moving into substantially more challenging reservoirs than ever before. Schramm and Isaacs[3] have used the term "technology oil" to describe the products derived from oil sands and heavy oil reservoirs because technology development has been the key to allow these hydrocarbons to be produced at competitive costs.
