North American Heavy Oil and Bitumen Deposits

The declining availability of conventional oil and the expectation of peak oil occurring globally in the next 10 or 20 years are accelerating the search for alternate energy sources. This decline accompanied with rising demand, particularly in the rapidly growing economies of China and India, have driven up oil prices. Unfortunately, it’s likely that these high prices are here to stay. A very promising alternative source of petroleum is called “Heavy Oil” which includes heavy crude oil and bitumen.

Heavy oil is a type of crude oil which is very viscous and does not flow easily with API gravity lower than 20 degrees. Natural bitumen’s are even weaker raw materials, with API gravities lower than 10 degrees. The higher the API gravity the more valuable the oil is. Heavy crude oil and natural bitumen are difficult to produce economically because of their low gravity and high viscosity that retard their ability to flow within a reservoir.

The high price of oil has accelerated investments in the exploration and extraction of heavy oil. The U.S. oil industry alone has invested $86 billion since 2000. They have developed technologies to recover and convert these inferior grades of oil into a more usable form for refineries, and are turning the waste and residue hydrocarbons into high-value products.

Deposits of heavy oil worldwide are estimated to total almost 5 ½ trillion barrels, and four-fifths of these deposits are in the Western Hemisphere. In the United States, heavy oil deposits are estimated to be more than eight times that of the nation’s remaining reserves of conventional crude oil. The top heavy oil reserves in North America are: Venezuela’s Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt; Canada’s Athabasca Oil Sands; Brazil’s offshore Campos Basin and Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. The United States Geologic Survey (USGS) estimates there are 35 billion barrels of heavy oil recoverable in North America. Approximately 7.7 billion barrels are assigned to known producing accumulations in the lower 48 United States, and 7 billion barrels are assigned to the north slope of Alaska.

Heavy oil offers a viable source of alternate energy for the United States. There hasn’t been a major U.S. oil discovery in over 40 years. The estimated remaining U.S. reserves of conventional oil total about 22 billion barrels. Deposits of heavy oil and natural bitumen total more than 140 billion barrels. The largest deposits are in Alaska, Utah and California.

As foreign imports of conventional oil are now 60 percent of U.S. oil supplies the exploration and extraction of heavy oil is an alternate energy source oil companies like,

Western Pipeline Corporation, are heavily investing in. They offer great hope that the U.S. can increase its domestic oil supply and rely less on foreign oil.