What is it?
Sand soaked in oil so thick it will not flow — it has to be mined like ore or heated underground before it can move through a pipe.
Why does it matter?
Oil sands are the clearest example of the mining-energy overlap: giant shovels and trucks, ore grades quoted in percent bitumen, and a processing plant at the end.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Read the numbers correctly.
Quoted in barrels per day of bitumen or of upgraded synthetic crude; the two are different products.
Raw bitumen, diluted bitumen (dilbit), synthetic crude oil.
Mines that produce it
All mines →
Athabasca Oil Sands (Mildred Lake / Aurora) →
Follow it across the borders
All journeys →Where a consignment of this material actually goes — every country, every custodian, and what is left behind at each step.
Alberta oil sands: mined like ore, refined like oil The only oil in the world that is dug up with a shovel and graded like an orebody. Venezuelan extra-heavy crude to diesel, asphalt and aluminium anodes Oil so thick it will not flow down a pipe, and cannot be refined by most refineries on Earth.