energy/surface_mineable_area (FeatureServer)

View In: ArcGIS JavaScript ArcGIS Online Map Viewer

Service Description: The Surface Mineable Area (SMA) feature class polygon represents an Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) administrative boundary that identifies the geographic extent of oil sands resources where it is presumed the primary resource recovery method will be through surface mining methods rather than in situ bitumen recovery.Surface mining is used when the oil sands are close to the surface, using huge trucks and power shovels. The oil sands are transported to a processing facility where hot water is used to separate the bitumen from the sands. About 20 per cent of the oil sands are shallow enough to be recoverable through surface mining. Once a company has finished mining in an area, the AER regulates how the land is returned to its original (or equivalent) state.Oil sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen. Bitumen is extremely viscous oil (up to 4 times more viscous than peanut butter) that does not flow on its own. Heat or other lighter hydrocarbons are added to reduce the viscosity of the bitumen to allow it to flow. To produce bitumen, methods such as mining, steam-assisted gravity drainage (or SAGD, mainly in Athabasca), or cyclic-steam stimulation (or CSS, mainly in Cold Lake) must be used. Oil sands shallower than 75 m are extracted in open pit mining operations. For areas deeper than this, the clearing of overburden becomes too costly and requires underground in situ methods using steam or steam with solvents.

All Layers and Tables

Has Versioned Data: false

MaxRecordCount: 2000

Supported Query Formats: JSON

Supports Query Data Elements: true

Layers:

surface_mineable_area (0)

Description:

Service Item Id: 72a072cef4b049c6b0dfa16407e93099

Copyright Text: Alberta Energy, Government of Alberta

Spatial Reference: 0 (0) LatestVCSWkid(0)

Initial Extent:

Full Extent:

Units: esriMeters

Document Info:

Enable Z Defaults: false

Supports ApplyEdits With Global Ids: false

Support True Curves : true

Only Allow TrueCurve Updates By TrueCurveClients : true

Supports Return Service Edits Option : true

Supports Dynamic Layers: false

Child Resources: Info Query Data Elements Relationships

Supported Operations: Query Query Contingent Values QueryDomains Extract Changes