实际流转的物质
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.
- 材料
- Oil Sands & Bitumen
- 品种
- Bitumen in sand, roughly 8° API, 10–12% bitumen by weight
- 起点
- Canada — The Athabasca deposit, northern Alberta
逐步追踪，逐境跨越
Canada · Athabasca, Alberta 持有方 Oil sands operators (矿业公司)
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.
为何选择此地: Shallow deposits only. Where the bitumen is too deep to mine, steam is injected instead and it is produced through wells.
Canada · Extraction plant 持有方 Oil sands operators (矿业公司)
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.
其余部分的去向: 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.
为何选择此地: 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 持有方 Operators and midstream companies (精炼商)
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.
其余部分的去向: Upgrading rejects carbon as petroleum coke — millions of tonnes of it are stockpiled in Alberta because there is no local market.
为何选择此地: 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 持有方 Pipeline operators (贸易商)
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.
为何选择此地: Alberta is landlocked. Pipeline capacity, not geology, is what has capped this industry's growth for two decades.
United States · US Midwest refineries 持有方 Refiner (精炼商)
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.
为何选择此地: A refinery configured for heavy crude cannot easily switch to light, and vice versa. Refineries and crude grades marry each other for decades.
本文为示例演算，以公开的典型产率和回收率对既定起始量逐步推算，各比例可供核验；这不是某批具体货物的记录。路线事实——途经哪些国家、经历哪些工序，以及为何该材料不能在其他地方简单处理——均来源于公开报道。