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Oil Sands Survival — a Prediction

Posted February 03, 2016 12:00 AM by Engineering360 eNewsletter

Oil sands production has tripled over the last 15 years, but will it continue increasing its 2.3 million bbl/day production rate? IHS Engineering 360 thinks so, despite some daunting challenges. The big hurdles - labor, power, and transportation - have not gone away (watch). As a result, producers are focused on cost cutting and expansion of existing projects, rather than opening up new fields. Capital expenses are also falling, due in part to modular offsite fabrication and smaller-scale projects. The real question remains pricing - how long will prices stay low, and whether oil sands projects remain competitive at current levels.


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#1

Re: Oil Sands Survival — a Prediction

02/04/2016 10:27 AM

I'm thinking that oil sands won't be feasible and won't survive. Fracking has completely changed everything since the United States has access to so much oil and natural gas because of it. With oil prices so low it's also not feasible for oil sands since the energy is uses to get the oil out of the sands makes it not profitable with current prices. With the price of oil expected to be at low prices for a while, the companies that are in the oil sands are going to lose a lot of money and it's a good chance they go out of business. On a side note it's interesting that you don't hear anything anymore about building the Canadian pipeline into the United States anymore since the price of oil has plummeted.

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#2

Re: Oil Sands Survival — a Prediction

02/04/2016 11:06 AM

Confusing terminology indeed has been adopted by the oil producing industry. What do we produce oil from in the oil fields of NW Pa? The Bradford sands, the Warren sands, the Venango sands - tad bit different than what you are talking about. So what do we call the Bradford sands now? The Bradford reservoir sand formation???

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#3

Re: Oil Sands Survival — a Prediction

02/25/2016 2:26 PM

Oil sands production is needed to compliment the light sweet crude that is produced by the majority of north american fracking operations. Oil sand is heavy in bitumen and is blended with the light sweet crude in order to increase the efficiency of fractional distillation. If your bet is that fracking will prevail, maybe it will alongside oil sands production.

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