So, let me get this straight -- solar heat is much cheaper than natural gas, and they are using solar energy to extract really low quality oil?
Where Solar Power Meets the Oil Field - Technology Review
(click on image for link)
What an oxymoronic way to use solar power!
According to the MIT article, that on oil extraction site uses ~100,000,000 BTU's
per hour to extract low quality, sticky oil. Then, this difficult stuff has to be refined, and probably will not yield very much gasoline or diesel.