According to the suit, for example, the State Department, failed properly to review expansion of an auxiliary pipeline that would carry a substance to Alberta to dilute the viscous oil-sands product so that it can flow back down through the Alberta Clipper line.
An inverse solution methodology is developed for the estimation of diffusion coefficient of gases in highly viscous, oil-sands bitumens from isothermal, pressure-decay measurements.
While thermal recovery is typically applied to heavy and viscous oils in sand matrices, thermal techniques are also applicable to lighter oils and to more heterogeneous formations.
The viscous, oil-rich sands are processed using a variety of toxic chemicals and the leftovers are put in tailings ponds, which currently take up about 70 square miles in Alberta.
In a nutshell: Keystone XL, if approved by the U.S. State Department, will carry viscous and dirty tar sands crude -- also known as diluted bitumen or "dilbit" -- from Alberta, Canada, down to Port Arthur, Texas.
PCP is capable of lifting highly viscous mixture of oil and sand as opposed to conventional pumps.
The foremost advantage of utilizing PCP is the high capacity of lifting highly viscous mixture of oil and sand, which initially contributed to the development of CHOPS.
In spite of the PCP's suitability for handling significantly higher sand cut in viscous heavy oil, some wells in the Elk Point area require frequent well services due to excessively high sand production.
Shell, for example, has delayed its expansion plans in Canada's tar sands, a particularly viscous form of oil that requires lots of processing and is therefore less profitable than the conventional sort.
In contrast to production of highly viscous bitumen from deep oil sands by steam injection, lower viscosity crude oil is often recovered by water injection and produced as a mixture of oil and water.
