実際に動いているもの
Athabasca bitumen sits in sand near the surface. It is strip-mined, washed out with hot water, and then either upgraded on site into a synthetic crude or thinned with condensate and pipelined south. It is the clearest place where the mining industry and the oil industry are the same industry.
- 素材
- Oil Sands & Bitumen
- 種類
- Bitumen in sand, roughly 8° API, 10–12% bitumen by weight
- 起点
- Canada — The Athabasca deposit, northern Alberta
工程ごと、越境地点ごとに
Canada · Athabasca, Alberta 保管者 Oil sands operators (採掘会社)
A mine, in every sense
Overburden is stripped and the oil sand is loaded by electric shovel into 400-tonne haul trucks. The ore grade is quoted in percent bitumen exactly as a copper mine quotes percent copper.
なぜここか: Shallow deposits only. Where the bitumen is too deep to mine, steam is injected instead and it is produced through wells.
Canada · Extraction plant 保管者 Oil sands operators (採掘会社)
Washing the oil off the sand
The sand is slurried in hot water and agitated. Bitumen floats to the top as a froth; sand and clay sink and go to the tailings pond.
残りはどうなったか: About 890 tonnes of sand, clay and water per 1,000 tonnes mined goes to tailings. Managing that residue is the defining environmental question of the whole industry.
なぜここか: Hot-water separation only works on mined ore, and the ore is too heavy to ship anywhere. The plant is beside the mine because it has to be.
Canada · Upgrader, or a diluent blending terminal 保管者 Operators and midstream companies (精製業者)
Upgrade here, or dilute and send it south
An upgrader cokes and hydrotreats the bitumen into synthetic crude oil of about 31° API. The alternative is to blend in roughly 30% condensate to make dilbit, which can be pipelined but arrives as somebody else's refining problem.
残りはどうなったか: Upgrading rejects carbon as petroleum coke — millions of tonnes of it are stockpiled in Alberta because there is no local market.
なぜここか: Upgrading in Alberta keeps the conversion value in Canada; diluting exports it. The same decision the Venezuelan route faces, with the same trade-off.
United States · To the US Midwest and Gulf Coast 保管者 Pipeline operators (トレーダー)
1,500 km of pipeline
Pumped south. The condensate in dilbit is separated at the refinery and railed or piped back north to be used again.
なぜここか: Alberta is landlocked. Pipeline capacity, not geology, is what has capped this industry's growth for two decades.
United States · US Midwest refineries 保管者 Refiner (精製業者)
Refined into fuel
Midwest refineries were rebuilt specifically to run this heavy Canadian barrel, which is why it trades at a discount to lighter crude but has a dependable home.
なぜここか: A refinery configured for heavy crude cannot easily switch to light, and vice versa. Refineries and crude grades marry each other for decades.
これは計算例である。公表された標準的な歩留まりと回収率を用いて、明示された出発量を追うものであり、比率は検証可能だが、特定の荷物の記録ではない。経路に関する事実——どの国を経由するか、どのような工程を経るか、なぜその素材を他の場所では処理できないか——は公開情報から編集している。