The Athabasca Oil Sands (or "Tar Sands") is a large deposit of tar sands in north-western Canada located mainly in the province of Alberta and, to a much lesser degree Saskatchewan. Oil from tar sands is recovered through various processes including strip mining, separation of oil from tar and sand by steam, and additional refining to convert the molasses-like bitumen into conventional light sweet crude oil.

Tar sands oil production has a larger environmental impact and is less efficient compared with conventional crude oil production. In particular, such production makes heavy use of water and causes greater groundwater pollution. As conventional sources of oil are depleted, non conventional sources of oil will increasingly be relied upon to make up the difference. Environmental impacts from tar sands oil fields will grow in direct relation to the expected exponential increase of production over the next 20 years.

Estimated size

It is estimated that the Athabasca Tar Sands field contains 174.5 billion barrels of oil. This is as much as one third of the world's total oil deposits (a similar amount is in the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands field). Current production at the Athabasca site yields 155,000 barrels of oil per day with an increase to 280,000 by 2010 at a cost of $4,000,000,000 expected. This is still just a fraction of the 84 million barrels of oil produced daily around the world.

Although not proven and highly doubted, and not even considered within the oil industry, according to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board , the Athabasca tar sands is the largest oil deposit in the world, with a claimed estimation of 1.6 trillion barrels (254 km³) of oil, of which at most 315 billion barrels are claimed to be recoverable by the oil companies given current technology. Syncrude, one of the oil companies involved in mining the tar sands, states that the entire tar sand deposit is twice the size of Lake Ontario. It is estimated the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands deposit is slightly larger than Athabasca (see tar sands article). (see [1] for more accurate estimations of about 174.5b barrels)

The Athabasca Tar Sands field is primarily located in and around Fort McMurray, an area that has only recently been heavily explored.

Alberta has huge deposits of oil bearing sands that underlie 140,800 square kilometres (54,363 square miles) of the province. These deposits are separated into three regions: Athabasca (Fort McMurray area), Peace River and Cold Lake on the Saskachewan border.

External links

• Athabasca Info
• Map of the Athabasca Tar Sands superimposed on map of Alberta
• University of Alberta FAQ on oil sands
• The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit - article from December 2004 Wired.
• [2]