The acquisition of North American Oil Sands Corporation (NAOSC) is an important step in the development of StatoilHydro’s production in the long term.
It has given StatoilHydro access to oil sands fields that are spread across a total area of 1,100 square kilometres of forest in the Athabasca region in Alberta.
The project has been given the name Kai Kos Dehseh, and the four fields contain roughly 2.2 billion barrels of bitumen.
We will utilise Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology, which involves drilling horizontal pairs of wells and injecting steam in the upper horizontal well. Condensate water and heated bitumen are then drained into the lower well before being pumped up to the surface.
Although the SAGD method causes far less harm to the environment than mining operations, there are still many challenges in connection with SAGD, e.g. in relation to the use of water and land, and carbon dioxide emissions.
Heavy oil can be divided into two main categories:
Heavy oil: The quality of the oil is 10-20 degrees API (American Petroleum Institute).
Extra heavy oil: The quality of the oil is 10 degrees API or lower (Sincor in Venezuela and NAOSC in Canada).
North Sea oil is usually between 20 and 30 degrees API, but it is frequently also above 30.
There is also heavy oil on the Ekofisk and Grane fields in the North Sea and on the Norne field in the Norwegian Sea.
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