Advantages and disadvantages of extracting petroleum products from oil sands

Advantages

- large resource of potential oil

- biggest resource is in Canada, whereas the largest reserves of crude oil are in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela

- It requires less processing than oil shale and presents fewer problems than oil shale

- Processing is mainly by hot water. - Exploitation has only started recently so low cost reserves are still available.

Disadvantages

- Most of the resource is uneconomic at present oil prices - so exploitable reserves are less than for crude oil

- Oil sands require mining, which is more complex and costly than drilling and pumping crude oil.

- Processing requires more energy than for crude oil.

- Resources are less than for oil shale - which is available in very large reserves in the US and Australia.

- Refining is more difficult because the product is in the form of bitumen - requiring cracking to produce a saleable product.

- because of the increased processing and refining, more carbon is released per unit of useable energy than for crude oil