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Successful heavy-oil development requires integration of technology and business know-how across the value chain from exploration and production through to refining. Some of the key technologies follow.

Despite the huge heavy-oil resources available globally, heavy oil remains underexploited for a number of reasons:

The historical crude oil price is shown on Fig. 10.2a for both West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Western Canada Select (WCS). As shown on this figure, the price differential seems to increase with increase in WTI price. Also, as shown on Fig. 10.2b, heavy-oil price seems to carry a fixed discount of approximately USD 10 plus a variable discount of approximately 90% of WTI price. Currently, the majority of heavy oil and bitumen is produced in countries that have low conventional oil resources and have encouraged the development of heavy oil through better incentives and lower royalty (e.g., Venezuela and Canada).

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