Athabasca Oil Sands

1392 Words3 Pages

Introduction
The Athabasca oil sands are the second largest producer of crude oil in the world, with a surface area of approximately 100 000 square kilometres (Anderson, Giesy & Wiseman, 2010). The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board estimates that the oil sands contains approximately 1.7 trillion barrels of crude bitumen, however only 19% can be ultimately recovered (Raynolds, Severson-Baker & Woynillowicz, 2005; Humphries, 2008). The availability of recoverable bitumen makes Canada’s oil sands deposit larger even than that of Saudi Arabia (Czarnecki, Hamza, Masliyah, Xu & Zhou, 2004).The process of surface and in situ mining of the Athabasca oil sands is causing rapid and significant degradation of the regional environment surrounding Fort McMurray and the Athabasca River. Production is expected to increase to three million barrels per day by 2015 from approximately 2 million currently (Humphries, 2008). This increase will further exacerbate the existing environmental impacts of crude oil production. The Canadian oil and natural gas industry is extremely lucrative, but despite the short-term economic benefits of the mining of the Athabasca oil sands, the remediation of the negative environmental impacts of the extraction of oil on terrestrial and aquatic environments, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions are a priority.
Background: Oil Sands and the Extraction Process
The extraction of crude oil from the Athabasca oil sands is carried out by surface mining and in situ mining. 90% of recoverable bitumen is located too deep to be recovered by surface mining (Mossop, 1980). Both techniques require invasive processes to successfully extract the bitumen from the subsurface and result in degradation of the land upon which they ar...

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...sands. Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, 82, 628-654.

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Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.

LeBlanc, N., Timilsina, G.R., and Walden, T. (2005). Economic impacts of Alberta’s oil sands.
Canada: Canadian Energy Research Institute.

Lee, P., and Timoney, K.P. (2009). Does the Alberta tar sands industry pollute? The scientific evidence. The Open Conservation Biology Journal, 3, 65-81.

Mossop, G.D. (1980). Geology of the Athabasca oil sands. Science, 207(4427), 145-152.

Raynolds, M., Severson-Baker, C., and Woynilloicz, D. (2005). Oil sands fever: The environmental implications of Canada’s oil sands rush. Canada: The Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development.

Strahan, D. (2009, December 8). Have greens got it wrong about tar sands? The Ecologist.

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