8 June 2014 UTC I m very tired of this debate too but Sunray is correct dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum referred to as bitumen or colloquially tar pretty much defines it Since this is a generic article on oil sands rather than Athabasca oil sands or Canadian oil sands I would have to change that to extra heavy oil bitumen or colloquially tar The Venezuelan government has the largest oil reserves in the world in the Orinoco oil sands but they call it extra heavy oil which is technically correct since it is not bitumen but is heavier than heavy oil Canada probably produces more extra heavy oil than Venezuela does but there is no such category in Canada If someone finds extra heavy oil in a designated oil sands area the governments deem it to be bitumen and if they find it outside they deem it to be heavy oil It s completely arbitrary Husky Energy produces bitumen in the Cold Lake oil sands but then ships it to Lloydminster via a heated pipeline and feeds into its Lloydminster heavy oil upgrader Is there any difference between Cold Lake bitumen and Lloydminster heavy oil Not really a chemical analysis on both is about the same It s just that the Cold Lake oil is colder and the Lloydminster oil is hotter It goes through the same upgrader and then is blended with about 17 other different kinds of oil to make the benchmark crude oil Western Canadian Select WCS which is deemed by Canadian and American authorities to be a conventional heavy oil Unconventional is the new conventional in the Canadian oil industry 16 15