A review of technologies for transporting heavy crude oil and bitumen via pipelines

Abarasi Hart

doi:10.1007/s13202-013-0086-6

Abstract

Heavy crude oil and bitumen resources are more than double the conventional light oil reserves worldwide. Heavy crude oil and bitumen production is on average twice as capital and energy intensive as the production of conventional oil. This is because of their extremely low mobility due to high viscosity at reservoir conditions alongside the presence of undesirable components such as asphaltenes, heavy metals and sulphur making it more challenging to produce, transport as well as refine. It is well know that pipelines are the most convenient means of transporting crude oil from the producing field to the refinery. However, moving heavy crude oil and bitumen is extremely challenging because of their inability to flow freely. As such, without prior reduction in the heavy crude oil and bitumen viscosity, transportation via pipeline is difficult. This is because of the huge energy (i.e. high pumping power) required to overcome the high-pressure drop in the pipeline due to their high viscosity at reservoir conditions. To reduce this high-pressure drop and cost of transportation, several technologies have been proposed to improve the flow properties of the heavy crude oil and bitumen through pipelines. In this study, different technologies are reviewed and the advantages and disadvantages of each technology are highlighted with the view that the review will provide direction for improvement and development of novel technologies for bitumen and heavy oil transportation via pipelines.

Highlights

The US Department of Energy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and World Energy Council have projected that energy demand would increase year in year out as the world population is ever-growing
The objective of this review is to assess the various technologies available for transporting heavy crude oil and bitumen and explore their individual advantages as well as disadvantages, with the aim that the findings would help direct further experiments and research towards providing a practical solution to improve the transportation of heavy oils economically
Bensakhria et al (2004) found that with the heavy oil as the centre of the pipe and water flowing near the pipe wall surface, the pressure drop reduction was over 90 % compared with that without water lubrication

Summary

Introduction

The world demand for crude oil has increased from 60 million barrels per day to 84 million barrels per day, in the past 20 years (Hasan et al 2010). With this mindset, it necessary to exploit other hydrocarbon sources as well as alternative energy resources to meet the ever-growing energy needs globally. Heavy crude oil and bitumen production was considered to be uneconomic, because of the intensive cost of recovery, transportation, refining and low market value. The decline of conventional middle and light crude oil as well as the ever-growing world energy demand drives the exploitation of this hydrocarbon resource. In Canada, about 700,000 barrels per day of synthetic crude oil is obtained from heavy crude oil and bitumen/tar sands and transported via pipelines to refineries in Canada and the USA (Hsu and Robinson 2006)

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion