Applying Knowledge Discovery in Databases to Canadian In Situ Oil Sands Extraction

Alberta’s oil sands play a critical role in Canada meeting its commitment to the Paris Climate Change Agreement. However, few studies published the actual operation data for extraction operations (schemes), especially fuel consumption data to accurately project greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for development and expansion of oil sands projects. In this study, we mined 2015–2018 operation data from over 29 million records in Petrinex via knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) process, and described GHG and fuel consumption patterns for 20 in situ oil sands extraction schemes (representing > 80% in situ extractions in 2018). The discovered patterns were interpreted by a range of performance indicators. From 2015 to 2018, GHG emission intensity (EI) for the schemes dropped by 7.5% from 0.6193 t CO2e/m3 bitumen (oil) to 0.5732 t CO2e/m3 bitumen. On the four-year average, the in situ oil sands extractions used 3.8632 m3 steam to produce 1 m3 of oil (3.8632 m3 steam / m3 oil) with a range of 1.8170 to 7.0628 m3 steam / m3 oil; consumed 0.0668 103m3 steam generator fuel (SGF) to produce 1 m3 of steam (0.0668 103m3 SGF/ m3 steam) with a range of 0.0288 to 0.0910 103m3 SGF/m3 steam; consumed 0.2995 103m3 of stationary combustion fuel (SCF) to produce 1 m3 of bitumen (0.2955 103m3 SCF/m3 bitumen) with a range of 0.1224 to 0.6176 103m3 SCF/m3 bitumen. The Peace River region had the highest solution gas oil ratio. The region produced 0.0819 103m3 of solution gas from 1 m3 of bitumen produced (0.0819 103m3 solution gas/m3 bitumen). On average, cyclic steam stimulation recovery method used 53.5% more steam to produce 1 m3 of bitumen and used 11.1% more SGF to produce 1 m3 of steam, compared to steam assisted gravity drainage recovery method. With the carbon price at C$30/t CO2e and Western Canadian Select (WCS) crude oil price at US$38.46/bbl, the GHG costs account for 0.33% to 8.81% of WCS crude price using Alberta’s emission benchmark. The study provides methods to mine the public database – Petrinex for studying GHG, energy, and water consumption by the oil and gas industry in Canada. The results also provide more accurate energy and emission intensity, which can be used for GHG life cycle assessment and compared with other energy extraction methods on a life cycle basis