Petroleum Engineer

Oil sands, also known as tar sands, or extra heavy oil, is a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela.[1]

Oil sands reserves have only recently been considered to be part of the world's oil reserves, as higher oil prices and new technology enable them to be profitably extracted and upgraded to usable products. Oil sands are often referred to as unconventional oil or crude bitumen, in order to distinguish the bitumen and synthetic oil extracted from oil sands from the free-flowing hydrocarbon mixtures known as crude oil traditionally produced from oil wells.