Published Paper Details:

Heavy oil comprises of 75% of petroleum resources in the world. Only a small fraction of these resources have been produced due to crucial and expensive techniques than those of the conventional oils. Due to the decline in the production of easy oil, industries are striving hard for utilizing unconventional oil resources which consists of mainly heavy oils, extra heavy oils and bitumen.These resources consists of viscous oils so their use requires extra efforts to ensure the viability of the oil recovery from the reservoir and its subsequent transportation to production wells and to ports and refineries. For satisfying the demand of the market the oil companies need to improve the efficiency of upstream, midstream and downstream. The paper mentions the challenges faced by the oil companies during production and transportation. Different technologies are reviewed and the benefits and constraints of each technology are highlighted with the view that this will provide direction for improvement and development of novel technologies for heavy oil transportation via pipelines. The main properties of heavy crude oils like high viscosity, density, etc as well as traditional and emergent methods for their recovery and transportation are discussed. The challenges to achieve viable recovery and transportation of unconventional oils are compared for the different alternatives purpose. The work specifically focuses on the heavy oils, its properties, efficient methods of recovery and transportation. If the challenges mentioned in the review are handled properly than there is a significant potential for the upcoming innovative projects to become economically flexible