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Heavy Oil Overview

The lack of ability to find enough light oil to replace depleted light oil reserves has caused a monumental shift in the future of oil production. Combined with soaring worldwide demand, the oil world is facing unprecedented production problems. New technologies exist today to remedy heavy oil production problems and through this heavy oil are capable of supplying the world with plenty of transportation fuel from Medium - Heavy reserves. 

Heavier crude oil (heavy oil) provides tremendous economic potential for petroleum development. The resources of heavier oil (heavy oil) in the world are more than twice those of conventional light crude oil approximately 900 billion barrels. heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil

Due to increased refining costs and high sulfur content for some sources, heavy oil crudes are often priced at a steep discount to light oil. The increased viscosity and density of the heavy oil also makes production slightly more difficult. On the other hand, large quantities of heavy oil crudes have been discovered in the Americas and in the Middle East. The relatively shallow depth of heavy oil fields offer much lower production costs; however, these are offset by the difficulties of heavy oil production and transport that increase costs. Advanced heavy oil technologies have been developed for exploration and production of heavy oil such as the Genoil GHU process and others. heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil

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Heavy oil crude or extra heavy oil crude is any type of crude oil which does not flow easily. It is referred to as "heavy" because its density or specific gravity is higher than that of light crude oil. Heavy crude oil has been defined as any liquid petroleum with an API gravity of less than 20°.  Extra heavy oil is defined with API gravity below 10.0 °API heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil

Medium crude oil or Arab heavy oil is around 27 °API with approximately 2.7% sulfur. Sour crude oil is crude oil (light or heavy oil) containing high levels of sulfur. Since light sweet crude oil is not capable of supplying the world with it's growing needs for oil, the lesser grade oil's will need to be pumped to make up the difference between demand and lack of production capacity of the light. The obvious place to start would not be the heaviest crude but the next grade down which would be the medium grade crude. Sour crude is more common than sweet crude in the US.  In March 2009 Platts released a new sour crude benchmark called "Americas Crude Marker (ACM)". Dubai Crude (and Oman Crude) both sour crude oils have been used as a benchmark for the Middle East crude. heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil, heavy oil,

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With current production and transportation methods, heavy oil crudes have a more severe environmental impact than light ones. With more difficult production comes the employment of a variety of techniques, including steam flooding and tighter well spacing, often as close as one well per acre. Heavy crudes also carry contaminants.  In Venezuela, Orinoco extra heavy oil contains 4.5% sulfur and is high in nickel and Vanadium. Heavy crude oils contain more carbon in relation to hydrogen, thus releasing more carbon dioxide per amount of usable energy when burned.