Producing heavy and extra-heavy crude oil was long considered to be unprofitable because, while reserves are vast, they are difficult to produce, process, transport and market. But, as is the case of deep offshore resources, technological advances now make it feasible to consider developing these resources, a key asset on which to build the future of the oil industry.

Resources for the Future

Scarcely tapped extra-heavy oil resources are the reserves of the future. Representing in Canada’s Athabasca region and Venezuela volumes equivalent to those of Saudi Arabia, they are critical to replacing world reserves.

The planet is home to enormous fields of extra-heavy oil that is particularly difficult to develop, since its high viscosity slows its natural flow. The Orinoco Belt in Venezuela and the Athabasca oil sands in western Canada contain large amounts of such oil, which is very immobile, even in the reservoir.
 
With existing technologies, forecast recovery rates are very low compared to the tremendous amounts of oil in place. In Venezuela, for instance, they are between 7 and 11%.
 
Future technological advances are expected to reduce operating costs and enhance recovery, which will in turn improve the profitability of development projects.

Sincor, a Unique Project
 
Since 1997, Total has led the Sincor project in Venezuela, which extracts some 200,000 barrels of viscous crude oil a day from sand reservoirs using conventional “cold production” techniques that have been stretched to their limits. The oil is then diluted with naphtha for transportation via a 200-kilometer pipeline to a processing plant in Jose, on the coast, where a deep conversion unit known as an upgrader transforms the extra-heavy crude oil into Zuata Sweet, a high-grade light syncrude with a very low sulfur content.
 
The project, which employed up to 13,000 people at peak and cost close to $4.2 billion, was inaugurated in March 2002.

Developing the Athabasca Oil Sands
 
Leveraging the experience gained with Sincor, Total further expressed its commitment to developing heavy oil by acquiring an interest in the Surmont lease in the Athabasca oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta, where we have been present since 1998. Unlike Orinoco crude oils, which retain a degree of mobility in the reservoir, Athabasca crudes are nearly solid and will require the use of thermal recovery, or hot production, methods.

A hot production technology in which steam is injected into the reservoir is currently being tested on the Surmont lease. The initial production target is 27,000 barrels of oil per day.