A (sort-of) twin to the Canadian oil sands is Venezuela's Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt. This link here (PDF) compares the Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands. Page 2 tells us an independent estimate puts the amount of OOIP at 1.2 trillion barrels while the Venezuelan government puts it higher at over 2 trillion. In either case, it's a huge amount.
From page 14 of the document is this summary of the Venezuelan deposits compared to the Canadian ones:
Nevertheless, no matter what arguments are made, the Venezuelan reservoirs in the Faja del Orinoco are of substantially higher quality than Canadian heavy oil reservoirs; they have higher permeability, slightly higher porosity and oil saturation, slightly higher formation compressibilities, higher average gas contents, lower clay content, and so on. As mentioned previously, even after correcting for all known factors, the mobility of the oil in the Venezuelan deposits appears to be from 2 to 3 times more than in the Canadian oil deposits. Vertical wells in the Faja will produce substantial amounts of oil (100-200 bbl/d) even though sand is totally excluded; similar wells in Canada, albeit in somewhat lower permeability reservoirs, may produce 5-15 bbl/day
So, now we know that this is a bit better than the stuff in Canada. And they don't have to worry about frigid cold weather, either!
Development of this area has had a much later start than the Canadian oil sands, so now we get to watch it all start up. So much fun!
