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The global increase in production of heavier, more expensive crude oil has created the need for technology to reduce crude oil viscosity while allowing pipelines to operate more efficiently and at lower costs. Save The World Air (STWA), a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based developer of energy efficiency technology, in October conducted a successful field test of its Applied Oil Technology (AOT), which reduces the viscosity of crude oil. The field tests, conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center near Casper, Wyo., showed that AOT delivered immediate pipeline efficiency gains of 13.14 percent to 13.55 percent when...

Following a lengthy delay after the completion of a $100 million heavy oil test facility on Alaska’s North Slope, BP has now put a heavy oil test well into operation — at 6 a.m. on April 22 a change in torque in the well’s down-hole pump finally signaled the flow of oil through the well, something of an historic event for the North Slope oil industry, Eric West, manager of BP’s Alaska renewal team, told Petroleum News April 27. For a couple of days the well had been producing brine, injected into the oil reservoir during the drilling of the...

It has been nearly a year since BP completed construction of its $100 million heavy oil test facility on Alaska’s North Slope, but the company has finally completed commissioning of the facility and is about to start operations at the plant, Eric West, manager of BP’s Alaska renewal team, told a group of state legislators at a “lunch and learn” session in Juneau on March 10. “It’s essentially ready to go,” West said. The facility, on S-pad, the most southerly well pad in the BP-operated Milne Point field, will try extracting heavy oil from the relatively shallow Ugnu formation using...

Russia and Venezuela will invest $20 billion over 40 years in a giant Venezuelan oilfield to produce almost half a million barrels per day of oil that can be shipped to U.S. markets, Russian officials said on Monday. A consortium of Russian firms and Venezuela's state-run PDVSA agreed on Monday to set up a venture to tap the Junin 6 oil field in the Orinoco oil belt, which Venezuela says has the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves. "I don't rule out it (supplies) could be to U.S. markets," Russia's top energy official, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, said after the signing...

Heavy oil is thick as honey and hard to pump out of the ground. That's where most of it has stayed while lighter crude is available. But heavy oil may be the future of Alaska's petroleum development, despite higher costs and more environmental concerns… … Lawmakers will be interested in knowing whether some of the North Slope's vast natural gas resources would be best used helping to reach heavy oil fields. "If we want to develop new sources within known fields, then you have to talk about heavy oil," said Paskvan, D-Fairbanks. … The North Slope has an estimated 30...

The Alberta firm that put “fire in the ground” oil production on the map with successful tests in a Athabasca bitumen deposit opened operations in Saskatchewan on Tuesday. And what it hopes to learn at this second test site for toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) — this time in a conventional heavy oil deposit which runs south from Lloydminster into the Kerrobert, Sask. area, east of Hardisty — could help Petrobank tap into a global market. “Most of the world’s heavy oil is similar to what is found in the Alberta/Saskatchewan belt, so what we learn from Kerrobert will have implications...

Venezuela and Russia reached an agreement that opens the way for a Russain consortium to "be in the Junin 6 block of the Orinoco petroleum belt," Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said here Sunday. The Venezuelan oil minister said he cut the deal with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is attending the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, meeting Sunday in the Austrian capital as an observer. They can enter all above-water activities in a joint venture with (Venezuelan state-owned oil giant) PDVSA, which is what we are going to do," Ramirez told reporters before the OPEC...

MegaWest Energy has provided a corporate update to shareholders along with filing its second quarter interim financial statements and management's discussion and analysis on SEDAR's website at www.sedar.com. Update: We are pleased to report that MegaWest Energy has achieved a number of significant milestones in the quarter ended October 31, 2008. It has increased its leased acreage in Missouri/Kansas, Kentucky and Montana to over 110,000 net acres. More specific project milestones are as described below: MISSOURI Oil sales from the Marmaton River Project (Phase I) commenced in August 2008. The construction and commissioning of the Grassy Creek Project was completed...

BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. achieved success in an initial test for production of heavy oil from the Ugnu formation at Milne Point S-Pad on Alaska’s North Slope, according to a company spokesman. The test well succeeded in bringing sand and oil to the surface with a peak rate of about 120 barrels per day. By the end of the test Sept. 15, about 700 barrels of the oil with a consistency similar to chocolate syrup had been mixed with conventional crude produced at Milne Point and shipped down the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, BP’s Steve Rinehart told Petroleum News Sept. 30....

N. Korea puts new demand, may delay nuclear shutdown By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent Mon Jul 2, 3:49 PM ET North Korea has said it wants to get promised shipments of oil before shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, delaying again a key obligation under a February nuclear agreement, U.S. officials said on Monday. Administration critics of the agreement said the demand was further evidence of North Korean bad faith, but two other senior officials said they believe the agreement was on track and any delay in shuttering Yongbyon would not be prolonged. Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said last...

With global energy demand soaring, Saudi Arabia, whose abundant reserves of light oil have supplied the world for decades, is looking to unlock its huge, hard-to-tap and largely unexploited reservoirs of heavy crude. If it succeeds in overcoming the technical hurdles, the effort could significantly increase Saudi Arabia's oil reserves over the next several years, potentially adding some slack to tight energy markets. It would also be a blow to so-called peak-oil theorists who have forecast that world oil production is on the brink of peaking. Crude-oil prices have more than tripled since 2002 as increases in global demand have...