The Alberta oil sands are spread across more than 54000 square miles but were taking a look at just a small part of that the red line is an approximate outline of the entire deposit the. Canadian Oil and Gas Companies Lead the Way.

Alberta Tar Sands Before And After The Oil Companies Arrive Tar Sands Climate Change Environmental Issues

Greenpeace are calling for an end to oil sands mining in the.

Oil sands alberta before and after. For an oil-producing province like Alberta the trend should lead to some serious strategic reimagining. Albertas oil sands has the third largest oil reserves in the world after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Ecologist Brett Purdy worked on oil sands reclamation for the Alberta government before he moved to Alberta Innovates Energy and Environment Solutions a research organzation funded by the provincial government.

The images above show slow growth between 1984 and 2000 followed by a decade of more rapid development. View of an oil sands mine near the town of Fort McMurray in Alberta on October 23 2009. A new book of aerial photographs Beautiful Destruction captures the awesome scale and devastating impact of Albertas oil sands with stunning colours contrasts and patterns.

Over millions of years that oil became trapped in. Suncor Energy formerly the Great Canadian Oil Sands is the oldest commercial-scale company in the Canadian tar sands and it produces 831000 barrels of oil equivalent per day alone 6. There are four oil refineries in total in Alberta with approximately 28 million barrels per day of synthetic oil made there 5.

Albertas oil sands proven reserves equal about 1654 billion barrels bbl. The oil sands give Alberta the third largest reserves in the world but extracting the oil is energy-intensive and destructive. Athabasca Cold Lake and Peace River which combined cover an area more than 142000 square kilometres km2.

By the time this image was taken in 1984 the company now known as Suncor Energy. Canadas oil sands are found in three regions within Alberta and Saskatchewan. Continuous oil sands reclamation where replanting forests is front and centre is just one of the activities that these companies engage in which shows their commitment to the environment and sustainable production.

Every company mining Albertas oil sands even those that perform in situ mining reclaims the landscape section by section as the bitumen runs out. Great Canadian Oil Sands opened the first large-scale mine in 1967 but growth was slow until 2000 because the global cost of a barrel of oil was too low to make oil sands profitable. The province is already beleaguered by a lack of pipeline capacity that pushed its oil prices down drastically.

Twenty thousand years ago most of present-day Canada lay frozen under the enormous Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Crude bitumen production mined and in situ totaled about 28 million barrels per day bbld in 2017. Oil and gas companies in Canada are held to some of the highest regulatory standards in the world.

History of the Oil Sands Although the oil sands of Alberta have only been developed commercially since the late 1960s their documented history dates back nearly three centuries to 1717 when Waupisoo of the Cree people brought samples of the oil sands to the Hudsons Bay Company trading post at Fort Churchill ERCB 2008b. Albertas oilsands - oil sands stock pictures royalty-free photos images. Given the enormous machines that currently operate in Albertas oil sands it is perhaps appropriate that the contemporary landscape of the region was shaped by an event of truly epic proportions.

Soon thereafter Champion changed the name of the company to Oil Sands Ltd and in 1944 he negotiated a deal with the Government of Alberta to construct a completely new oil sands separation pilot plant at Bitumount. Contrary to some exaggerated reports the current active mining footprint is about 1030 km2 an area slightly larger than the City of Calgary. With the potential for more than 100 years of oil sands production in Alberta reclamation is by necessity a broad endeavor.

Albertas oil sands were formed millions of years ago as tiny marine creatures died and drifted to the sea floor and were covered by layers of sediment that exerted enough pressure and temperatures to transform the organic matter into oil. And after the 2015 global oil price crash Albertas annual revenue from oil sands royalties declined from more than 6 billion to less than 1 billion. The Syncrude oil sands plant is seen north of Fort McMurray Alberta.

This birds-eye view shows the mine that launched Canadas oil sands industry on the banks of the Athabasca River. Champion received 250000 from the Alberta government to offset the cost of constructing the plant. He suggests that it may be unrealistic to expect that plant and animal communities similar to those found on previously undisturbed landscapes can be established on all reclaimed.