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EntityQ297322· pop 38· linked from 820 articles

Also known as tar sand, tar shale, oil sand, tar Sands, bituminous sand, oilsands, oilsand, tarsands

sands naturally soaked with petroleum

Wikidata facts

Image
Stalmeyer Quarry Tar Sands.jpg
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Commons category
Oil sands
topic's main category
Category:Bituminous sands
different from
oil shale
on focus list of Wikimedia project
WikiProject Climate change
Sources (4)

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Encyclopedic overview

The Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, Canada, are a very large source of bitumen, which can be upgraded to synthetic crude heavy oil, Western Canadian Select (WCS) Tar sandstone from California, United States

Oil sands are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. They are either loose sands, or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen (a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “oil sands” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.