Keep in mind, you can get far different qualities of oil from the same surface location but different fields at different depth below ground. There is no set rule all are the same in an area. The fields are from sediment 10s of millions of years apart. Far different conditions exist in these time periods and produce different oils. Also the “cooking” time tends to be less in shallower fields resulting in heavier oils from nearer time periods.
The oil sands are “young” or more exactly “less thermally mature”, ie less cooking has been done. They technically don’t produce oil but rather Bitumen. Very heavy but also with a lot of BTU’s per barrel. It can be cooked or processed (thermally cracked) to produce lighter more valuable hydrocarbons more suited for transportation fuel. Some of this is done on or near site with an upgrader, producing a synthetic crude, or it is diluted with something like Naptha or Natural Gas Liquids (butane, propane) to get in thin enough to pump to a refinery, where they do the same cracking.
The Bakken shale play produces Light Sweet Crude, 41° (very light without being too light) and 0.2% sulfur (very sweet). Their problem is the pipeline bottlenecks, including to Cushing, OK. Today more of the Bakken oils moves out of state by rail than by pipeline.
Courtesy of Buffet. My guess the TransCanada will be delayed for sometime because of the Buffet/Obama connection.
I was at a meeting with some RR execs and a RR car leasing agent. He said tankers were a boom. They couldn’t make enough. Was he exaggerating?