[LOC1]

It is not nearly as thick as the bitumen locked in the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, nor as thick as the heavy oil from the Orinco area of Venezuela. Both of those countries have found a way to produce difficult crude oils.

[RayChuang88]

Here's the problem: it's REALLY expensive to extract out the oil from the Alberta Tar Sands and the Orinoco Oil Sands. The best method is a modified version of the high-pressure high temperature steam injection Shell did to extract oil from oil shale in Colorado so the oil can be extracted out in liquid form in situ, but that's a very exorbitantly expensive because you have to heat and pressurize the steam (and use a lot of water!) to accomplish this.