Why some mined bitumen has to go through an upgrader, and some can go straight to a pipeline.
Field guide entry · written September 23, 2026.
Mined oil sand goes through hot-water extraction, which leaves a froth of bitumen mixed with water and fine clay solids. Froth treatment cleans that up by diluting the froth with a light hydrocarbon and separating the three phases. The choice of hydrocarbon decides what comes out the other end, and that choice splits the industry in two.
The original process, used for 30-plus years at Syncrude and Suncor. It dilutes the froth with naphtha, a heavier, more viscous hydrocarbon. No asphaltenes precipitate, so the bitumen keeps its full asphaltene load (17 to 18 percent) and the product still carries about 2 percent water plus solids. That fails the pipeline spec for basic sediment and water, which sits below 0.5 percent. NFT bitumen is therefore upgrader-locked: it has to go through a coker or hydrocracker next door before it can be sold. NFT plants: Suncor Base (Suncor operates), Syncrude Mildred Lake (Syncrude Canada operates), and CNRL Horizon (CNRL operates).
First commercialized by Albian Sands (Shell) in 2002. It uses a light paraffinic solvent, typically pentane or hexane. About half the asphaltenes precipitate out, and as they drop out they drag the trapped water and fine solids with them. The product is 99.9 percent bitumen with less than 0.1 percent water plus solids, comfortably inside pipeline spec. It can be diluted and sold directly as dilbit to a high-conversion refinery, no upgrader needed. The trade: rejecting the asphaltenes costs 5 to 10 percent of bitumen recovery versus NFT. PFT plants: Muskeg River and Jackpine (CNRL operates), Kearl (Imperial operates), and Fort Hills (Suncor operates).
Paraffins are straight-chain alkanes: pentane and hexane, the light stuff at the top of the barrel. They are thin, low-viscosity solvents. When mixed into bitumen froth, they make the heaviest, most polar molecules in the bitumen, the asphaltenes, fall out of solution as solids. Those falling solids act like a sweep, binding the water droplets and clay fines that gravity separation alone cannot remove. That is the whole trick: precipitation as purification, paid for with a few percent of yield.
SAGD bitumen is not froth-treated at all; it comes up as an oil-water emulsion that is separated at the plant, and it flows both ways. About half of Firebag's output feeds Suncor's Base upgrader and the rest sells as dilbit; Long Lake went fully to dilbit after its upgrader idled in 2016. Kearl and Fort Hills sell their PFT bitumen directly as named dilbit streams: KDB (Kearl Lake Dilbit) and FRB (Fort Hills Dilbit).
Froth treatment decides a mine's commercial destiny. NFT barrels must be upgraded on site, so an upgrader outage strands them. PFT barrels are pipeline-ready, so they keep flowing as dilbit no matter what the upgrader is doing.
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