how unconventional oil works
there are two primary reasons why unconventional oil has become increasingly common in recent years the first has to do with the economic climate surrounding the oil extraction industry for instance in periods when the price of oil is relatively low companies face pressures to develop new technological means of extracting oil more efficiently in practice this means increasing the speed and reliability of equipment reducing the reliance on personnel through increased automation developing new techniques that reduce the amount of equipment or personnel altogether or some combination of the above all of these developments can cause the methods used for oil extraction to differ substantially from the traditional vertical wells used in conventional oil extraction directional drilling techniques for example have allowed companies to access multiple underground reserves using a single vertical well something which would have required multiple vertical drill sites in the past the same is true when oil prices are persistently high in those circumstances oil reserves that had previously been considered too difficult to be exploited economically may suddenly find themselves to be commercially viable targets for example increased oil costs helped encourage the development of the techniques now known as hydraulic fracturing which involves using steam gas and chemical injections to break up rock formations and extract the hydrocarbons contained within them ultimately it seems inevitable that a growing percentage of oil extraction techniques will come to be seen as unconventional by historical standards as oil becomes increasingly scarce and challenged by alternative energy sources such as solar wind and nuclear power it is likely that the techniques for oil extraction will continue to change and the industry works to continuously improve the efficiency of its production methods example of unconventional oil frackingperhaps the most famous example of unconventional oil extraction is hydraulic fracturing which was first invented in 1947 by engineers at the stanolind oil and gas corporation the basic premise of hydraulic fracturing is that it is possible to create newly accessible reserves of oil by releasing the hydrocarbons that are trapped within underground rock formations this is done by injecting highly pressurized fracking fluid into a well which then creates fissures in an underground rock formation the resulting oil which escapes from the fissures then gradually flows up through the well in the direction of the low pressure surface the movement of the oil toward the surface is further accelerated by artificially increasing the pressure inside the underground reservoir while also using chemical injections to adjust the viscosity of the oil example of unconventional oil oil sandsanother example is oil sands also known as tar sands these refer to soil and rock material that contains crude bitumen a dense viscous form of crude oil bitumen is too thick to flow on its own so specialized extraction methods are necessary as a result recovering usable crude oil from oil sands is a complex and expensive method of extraction however technological advances have made it less expensive over time and when oil prices are expensive in the market this type of unconventional oil becomes profitable oil sands are found primarily in the athabasca cold lake and peace river regions of northern alberta and saskatchewan canada and in areas of venezuela kazakhstan and russia bitumen is extracted and processed using two methods mining and in situ 