Biodegradation and origin of oil sands in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin

The oil sands deposits in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) comprise of at least 85% of the total immobile bitumen in place in the world and are so concentrated as to be virtually the only such deposits that are economically recoverable for conversion to oil. The major deposits are in three geographic and geologic regions of Alberta: Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River. The bitumen reserves have oil gravities ranging from 8 to 12° API, and are hosted in the reservoirs of varying age, ranging from Devonian (Grosmont Formation) to Early Cretaceous (Mannville Group). They were derived from light oils in the southern Alberta and migrated to the north and east for over 100 km during the Laramide Orogeny, which was responsible for the uplift of the Rocky Mountains. Biodegradation is the only process that transforms light oil into bitumen in such a dramatic way that overshadowed other alterations with minor contributions. The levels of biodegradation in the basin increasing from west (non-biodegraded) to east (extremely biodegraded) can be attributed to decreasing reservoir temperature, which played the primary role in controlling the biodegradation regime. Once the reservoir was heated to approximately 80 °C, it was pasteurized and no biodegradation would further occur. However, reservoir temperature could not alone predict the variations of the oil composition and physical properties. Compositional gradients and a wide range of biodegradation degree at single reservoir column indicate that the water-leg size or the volume ratio of oil to water is one of the critical local controls for the vertical variations of biodegradation degree and oil physical properties. Late charging and mixing of the fresh and degraded oils ultimately dictate the final distribution of compositions and physical properties found in the heavy oil and oil sand fields. Oil geochemistry can reveal precisely the processes and levels that control these variations in a given field, which opens the possibility of model-driven prediction of oil properties and sweet spots in reservoirs.