Heavy oil, Nigeria's Alternative to the conventional crude oil

Most people don't actually know that crude oil actually exists in four basic forms. These are the light, medium, heavy and extra-heavy crude oils. The basic difference among these forms is their viscosity, i.e. The ease at which a sample would flow. Nigeria is uncommonly blessed with all these crude oil forms. The one form that is currently grabbing the attention of the government is the light/medium crude oil. This is not unconnected with the fact that this form of crude is less expensive to refine unlike the heavy ranges.

Nigeria has almost abandoned the heavy oil category which is the mainstay of economies like that of Canada and Venezuela to name a few. What does heavy oil offer? Heavy crude oils provide an interesting situation for the economics of petroleum development. The resources of heavy oil in the world are more than twice those of conventional light crude oil. Heavy oil provide us with high asphaltenes content. That means we would be able to produce sulfur, asphalt, waxes amongst others. If you don't know already, Nigeria imports asphalts for road pavements from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. This in return makes the cost of refining to be on the high side. The Kaduna refinery as the capacity to refine this heavy oil that we have. Disadvantages of Heavy oil The major demerit of this form of mineral is that it is found mixed with sand, mud, water and some other impurities. Also considering the fact that it hardly flows, work would have to be done to bring it to any surface facility. First and foremost, Engineers would have to device media of reducing the viscosity, this brings about the concept of 'Enhanced oil recovery'. In a nutshell the economics of this could be very poor if a proper plan is not put in place to explore the Enhanced oil recovery technique that is the most suitable for a particular oil formation. Conclusively, I would say that if the Nigerian government doesn't start planning for life after the conventional crude oil, owing to the fact that one day it would run dry, the country might struggle to keep up with the megabucks currently earned from oil in future. God heal Nigeria