Suncor, Partners Test Radio Frequency-Based Crude Extraction

By Chester Dawson 

CALGARY, Alberta--Canadian oil sands company Suncor Energy Inc. said Tuesday that it and several partners will begin a pilot project using radio frequencies to produce heavy crude, the first such test designed to leach out buried oil deposits with the promising new technology.

The consortium, which includes oil sands producers Devon Energy Corp. and Cnooc Ltd. unit Nexen Energy ULC, along with Melbourne, Florida-based Harris Corp., will start test production at Suncor's Dover site in northern Alberta and run the pilot for about two years.

Suncor didn't disclose the estimated cost or production volumes.

Radio frequency-based extraction holds the promise of becoming a more environmentally friendly and lower cost method than traditional oil sands production. It could reduce or eliminate the need for steam generated by heating water with natural gas, an expensive and carbon-intensive process.

"If successful and commercially viable, [it] has the potential to improve economic and environmental performance in the oil sands by eliminating the need for water" to produce oil, Gary Bunio, Suncor's general manager of oil sands strategic technology, said in a statement.

The new technology involves sending electromagnetic waves into hockey puck-hard deposits of oil embedded in sand underground, something like an underground microwave oven. The liquefied crude, or bitumen, is then mixed with a recyclable chemical solvent and retrieved via a horizontally-drilled well.

Known as enhanced solvent extraction incorporating electromagnetic heating, it is one of a handful of cutting edge technologies that may be used in the future to develop large-scale deposits of oil sands that are too deep underground to reach by for strip mining.

Experts says it could ultimately work in conjunction with or even replace the prevailing methods of tapping into those deeply buried oil sands with injections of steam, currently the preferred technique for surfacing heavy crude supplies.

Suncor said its consortium began working on the technology in 2011.

Write to Chester Dawson at [e-mail]

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