The Electromagnetic Flooding Process for In-Situ Recovery of Oil From Athabasca Oil Sand

The oil sand deposits of northeastern Alberta, Canada, are estimated to contain more oil than all of the recoverable conventional oil in the entire world. The oil is held in the formation in the form of bitumen, a very viscous tar-like substance that is virtually a solid at typical reservoir temperatures. This paper describes a process, based on transmission line excitation of the formation, whereby recovery of the bitumen would be made possible by electromagnetically heating the formation at frequencies ranging from a few kilohertz to several megahertz. Such heating would reduce the viscosity of the bitumen to the point where it can flow and be swept from the host formation by a suitable gas or fluid driving agent. Experimental results from physical scale models of the process are presented.