A modeling study of the effect of carbon dioxide mitigation strategies, natural gas prices and steam consumption on the Canadian Oil Sands operations

This paper presents a study that shows the effect of key environmental and operational factors on the Canadian Oil Sands operations for the production of synthetic crude oil (SCO) and commercial bitumen. Using an integrated energy optimization model developed in the GAMS platform, the present study determined the most economical oil schemes and energy commodities configurations at different CO2 capture levels, natural gas prices and steam-to-oil ratios (SOR). The sensitivity of these factors on the different aspects of the Oil Sands operations are explicitly discussed in this work, i.e., SCO unitary energy costs, energy commodity prices, energy plant's configuration. According to the CO2 emission target planned by the Canadian federal government for year 2020 (50 MT of CO2 eq/yr), 38% of CO2 emission reduction with respect to the baseline emission is required from the Oil Sands industry. Similarly, the natural gas price is the operational factor that affects the energy costs associated to every product considered in this study. Furthermore, the SOR factor has a significant impact on the energy production costs of SAGD SCO and commercial bitumen.