For heavy-oil pipelining, an interesting alternative to dilution lays in the production of an emulsion of water-like viscosity. Pickering emulsions, or solid-stabilized emulsions, are generated with standard mixing equipment but do not require chemical surfactants while exhibiting extremely long shelf-lives and can be considered a valuable technological option. The fine solids positioned at the oil-water interface acts as the stabilizing agent and are thermodynamically more stable at this location than anywhere else if their affinity for the each phase is carefully selected. The rupture of the emulsion can be triggered by chemical or mechanical means instead of involving heat and consequently makes this type of emulsion very attractive from the economical perspective. In this work, the role of the dispersed phase viscosity in solid stabilized oil-in-water emulsions was studied using silicon oils of widely varying viscosities. Emulsification in controlled conditions showed that the viscosity of the dispersed phase acted as a damping factor for particle anchoring at the o/w interface. To our knowledge, this role had never been demonstrated. Furthermore, the emulsification results indicated the important combined effect of time and viscosity on the generation of a stable emulsion. It is demonstrated that, in the context of designing a continuous emulsification process for extra-heavy oil, the contact time is the dominating parameter.