Notes From All Over, Part 2 -- October 2, 2019

Dilbit: back to that story on dilbit which is still a burr under my sadde. From wiki:

The most common diluent used to dilute bitumen is natural gas condensate (NGC), especially the naphtha component. Due to insufficient quantity of natural gas condensate in Alberta, bitumen shippers also use refined naptha and synthetic crude oil (SCO) as diluent, and import a considerable amount from the U.S. Although SCO requires a higher volume percentage to achieve the same viscosity, at least one study found that SCO provides better blend stability than NGC.

Definitions at this oil sands magazine site. This is a nice reference article for all things, "Canadian heavy oil."

Best (?) up-to-date article on this subject: market snapshot -- production of condensate and "pentanes plus" reached an all-time high in western Canada in 2018. Article release date: February 6, 2019, earlier this year. Article includes great graphics.

"Pentanes plus" has been the largest contributor to western Canadian diluent production. However, since 2013, condensate production has been growing faster than pentanes plus production. This is because of growing condensate production from unconventional, liquids-rich gas wells in the Montney and Duvernay formations in Alberta and British Columbia. The share of pentanes plus production dropped from 87% in 2012 to 67% in 2018, and is expected to further decrease as future condensate production is expected to increase quickly.

I have found that once a wiki article is published it is often not updated. I do believe this is another such case.

Wiki? Trust but verify.

Neatbit: that word also recently used the other day. I thought it was something new. Not. Here is an article from 2016. I completely missed it.  And another article all the way back to 2014.