Califor nia
HEAVY
Sharing Alberta’s unconventional oil knowledge with the Golden State
Despite the significant differences in size and quality of the resource
between the heavy oil
fields in California’s Kern
County and Alberta’s much more viscous oilsands, there’s been a long history of knowledge exchange between
the two areas.
Heavy oil was identified in Kern
County in 1865, a few years after
explorer Peter Pond noticed bitumen
oozing along the banks of the
Athabasca River. Production there—
which is comprised of drilling, with no
surface mining—started a century ago.
That’s about 20 years before mining
started up oilsands development in
Alberta.
Kern County continues to be the
highest-producing oil region in the
United States, while the oilsands hold
the best promise for Alberta’s energy
production for the foreseeable future.
That’s pretty much where the simi-larities end.
Kern County’s centre of production
is Bakersfield, 160 kilometres north of
Los Angeles, at the southern end of the
San Joaquin Valley; only the kangaroo
rats are comfortable in this sand-blast-ed desert, where at press time the temperature was recorded at 46 degrees
Celsius with 35 per cent humidity, compared to Fort McMurray’s 21 degrees
Celsius and 68 per cent humidity.
The reservoir temperature in
California is higher, the oil less viscous,
and the resource smaller.
“It’s a 40-billion-barrel resource, a
drop in the bucket compared to what’s
in Alberta and Saskatchewan,” says
David Olsen, a consultant to the U.S.
Department of Energy and director of
