When petroleum occurs in a reservoir that allows the crude material to be recovered by pumping operations as a free-flowing dark- to light-colored liquid, it is often referred to as conventional petroleum. Heavy oil is a type of petroleum that is different from the conventional petroleum insofar as it is much more difficult to recover from the subsurface reservoir. These materials have a much higher viscosity (and lower API gravity) than conventional petroleum, and primary recovery of these petroleum types usually requires thermal stimulation of the reservoir.
Heavy oils are more difficult to recover from the subsurface reservoir than light oils. The definition of heavy oils is usually based on the API gravity or viscosity, and the definition is quite arbitrary although there have been attempts to rationalize the definition based upon viscosity, API gravity, and density.
For many years, petroleum and heavy oil were very generally defined in terms of physical properties. For example, heavy oils were considered to be those crude oils that had gravity somewhat less than 20°API with the heavy oils falling into the API gravity range 10°–15°. For example, Cold Lake heavy crude oil has an API gravity equal to 12° and extra heavy oils, such as tar sand bitumen, usually have an API gravity in the range 5°–10° (Athabasca bitumen = 8°API). Residua would vary depending upon the temperature at which distillation was terminated but usually vacuum residua are in the range 2°–8°API (Speight, 2000 and references cited therein; Speight and Ozum, 2002 and references cited therein).
Heavy oils have a much higher viscosity (and lower API gravity) than conventional petroleum, and primary recovery of these petroleum types usually requires thermal stimulation of the reservoir. The generic term heavy oil is often applied to a crude oil that has a less than 20°API and usually, but not always, a sulfur content higher than 2% by weight. Furthermore, in contrast to conventional crude oils, heavy oils are darker in color and may even be black.
The term heavy oil has also been arbitrarily used to describe both the heavy oils that require thermal stimulation of recovery from the reservoir and the bitumen in bituminous sand (tar sand, q.v.) formations from which the heavy bituminous material is recovered by a mining operation.
Extra Heavy Oil
Briefly, extra heavy oil is a material that occurs in the solid or near-solid state and generally has mobility under reservoir conditions.
The term extra heavy oil is a recently evolved term (related to viscosity) of little scientific meaning. While this type of oil may resemble tar sand bitumen and does not flow easily, extra heavy oil is generally recognized as having mobility in the reservoir compared to tar sand bitumen, that is typically incapable of mobility (free flow) under reservoir conditions. For example, the tar sand bitumen located in Alberta, Canada, is not mobile in the deposit and requires extreme methods of recovery to recover the bitumen. On the other hand, much of the extra heavy oil located in the Orinoco belt of Venezuela requires recovery methods that are less extreme because of the mobility of the material in the reservoir (Schenk et al., 2009).
Whether the mobility of extra heavy oil is due to a high reservoir temperature (that is higher than the pour point of the extra heavy oil) or due to other factors is variable and subject to localized conditions in the reservoir.
