A Tour of Alberta's Oil Sands Miners — Course Preview

There are 6 oil sands mining projects in Alberta that collectively produce 1.6 million bbl/day of bitumen:
1 Suncor’s Base Plant, operated by @suncorenergy
2 The Syncrude Project, operated by @SyncrudeCanada
3 Albian Sands, operated by @CanadianNaturalCNRL
4 Horizon, also operated by @CanadianNaturalCNRL
5 Kearl, operated by @ImperialOil
6 Fort Hills, operated by @suncorenergy

Mining accounts for half of all output from the oil sands, and one-third of Canada’s total crude oil production. But how exactly do miners get oil from the oil sands?

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
1:14 Lease map - the big 6 mines
1:26 Mining pit and oil sands geology
1:42 Five components of an oil sands mine
2:24 Upgrader integration - integrated vs non-integrated mines
3:02 The bitumen production process
4:08 Tailings storage and reclamation
4:55 Differences in technology selection
5:47 Froth Treatment - naphthenic vs paraffinic
6:13 Tailings reclamation technologies
7:43 Bitumen production profile (annual to 2022)

SHORT COURSE — A Practical Guide To Alberta’s Oil Sands Miners

RESOURCES — Our complete mining technical library:

CONNECT

[purplehazel]

Thank you for sharing that informative video. I've lived in Alberta all my life. And I've never really made an effort to find out how they do it.

[foobeats]

Came here cause I'm reading ducks by kate beaton. Very interesting video, didn't know that Canada was the second oil producer in the world

[neilreid]

Very interesting and very clear in telling what happens! Well done and thank you!

[RioSul]

I worked as an operator at both Suncor and Syncrude in the 1980's. Great jobs but very cold in the winter and not many dates for single men.

[bit]

Is it safe to drink from the Athabasca River?

[BrendanDunne]

What is the demand for labour like? I'm moving to Canada next year and would love a job being an equipment operator in the oil sands.

[Ostsol]

Honestly, I had little idea what the tailings ponds really were. I also liked the explanation of how reclamation works. It'd be interesting to see more information about that. It's tempting the make the long drive up there to see the reclaimed land.

[HumphreyDeFirst]

Are/can petroleum & gas byproducts be extracted from the oil sands? What are all the possible byproducts from Alberta's oil sands?

[purrington]

How hot is the water used to extract the bitumen?

[alfredfleming]

World’s largest cleanup of a natural oil spill.

[NickGj-kv]

Mining or excavation oil sand to produce bitumen is really effective technology because these achieve high coefficient on bitumen recovery. This old technology has improvement during decades, but a) is capital intensive, b) cost intensive, c) energy intensive and emission intensive, d) water use intensive even the water partly is reused, e) tailing ponds need decades reclamation, f) pollution and land disturbance harms habitat and humans.
Industry has the highest emission and highest cost, but has advantages when bitumen are upgraded.
The mining technology used on industry must phase out many operations, starting from excavation, crushing and other processes. The bitumen must be and can be produced underground without disturbing the environment and without tailing ponds. Keep only upgrading plants which must increase the API of bitumen produced from underground.

[NorthernDancer]

Thanks for your enormous contribution to climate change and global warming. Alberta should be proud of itself.

[sunroad]

"In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
Time taken in stocking energy to build an energy system, adding to it the time taken in building the system will always be longer than the entire useful lifetime of the system.
No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all systems.
Energy, like time, flows from past to future" (2017).

[steventhibert]

A lot of Information thank's. I was tired of the yelling a pure bs

[krukpolny]

Open Oil Pipelines from Canada to USA. You Tube.

[charlieyonish]

Has a pro mining tilt ignoring the how bad oil sand production really is.

[jackhaus]

Very very dirty for the enviroment to extract