OIL RESERVOIR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1941, Page 6

OIL RESERVOIR

LOCATED IN NORTHERN ALBERTA EXTRACTION FROM SANDS. COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION. One of the world's large oil reservoirs is located in northern Alberta, some 300 miles north of Edmonton, writes an Ontario correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor.” Because of transportation and mining difficulties, commercial production of the oil sands has not been feasible till recent years. Early in 1941 the first commercial extraction plant is expected to be in full operation. The Alberta oil sands, according to Canadian Government geological estimates. contains at least 100,009,000.000 barrels of oil. The United States Bureau of Mines estimates the field contains 250.000.0(19.000 barrels. Other estimates place the gasoline supply of this field at 35,000.000,000 barrels. Economically it is figured that only 1 per cent of the oil reserves of this area can be exploited at present. The field is roughly located along the Athabasca .River, and the present industry to extract oils from the sands is at McMurray, at the end of the railway.

COMPLICATED PROCESS. A number of companies have tried to extract the oil from the sands along the shores of the Athabasca River, where stripping has shown the oil sands close to the surface. One of these companies has been building a plant near McMurray since 1936. using new processes and machinery devised in the United States. This company expects to start commercial production this year. The plant lias a capacity of handling 400 tons of oi! sands daily, and Includes an excavator for stripping the over-burden, a shale planer for mining the sand, conveying equipment for moving the sand to the separai'en plant. a separation plant for separating the oi! from the sand. and a specially designed refinery cap-

able of producing a wide variety of oil products. It took 11 years of research work to develop the present ■ method of separating the oil from the sand. The oil forms the sole cementing material of the sand and is in the format a film round each grain of sand. £\lild abrasion and warm water break the film and give a pulp of water and sand through which are disseminated particles of oil.

In a properly designed flotation cell the oil particles are picked up by air and form bubbles that float to the surface. The froth thus formed is high in mechanically-entrained water and mineral matter. It will not settle out because of the high viscosity and specific gravity of the oil. but does so quickly when the crude oil is diluted with naphtha or kerosene, leaving a clean oil readily pumped through a pipe line. The diluent is recovered in the refinery and returned for reuse. KNOWN FOR LONG TIME. The deposits have been known since 1788 when the first explorers to the region found Indians using the oil with pitch to caulk their canoes. These oil-saturated sands range in thickness from a few feel up to 225 feet, and in oil content up to 25 per cent by weight.

They cover an area estimated variously from 10.000 to 50.000 square miles of northern Alberta. The oil will not flow into wells fast enough to be pumped commercially. Erosion on the Athabasca River and its tributaries has left benches that can be mined by open pit methods. While the area in which the commercial development of the oil sands is some 600 miles north of the CanadaUnited Slates boundary, the climate permits year-long operation.