Oil Sands Review
Time Magazine has described the Alberta oil sands as “Canada’s greatest buried energy treasure… that could satisfy the world’s demand for petroleum energy for the next century.” Alberta’s oil sands contain one of the world’s largest basins of oil reserves; current estimates show that these reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia.
Eighty percent of all bitumen resources in the Athabasca oil sands region is too deep to mine.
Canada's oil sands deposits contain as much as 173 billion barrels of economically viable oil. Currently oil sands production is about one million barrels of oil per day. It is anticipated that by 2020 Alberta oil sands will generate nearly 4 million barrels per day, or an estimated 80 percent of Canada’s projected crude oil production.
Alberta’s oil reserves are located in three major areas: Peace River, Cold Lake, and Athabasca. The Athabasca oil sands, where OPTI and Nexen own substantial resources, is the richest of the three and has the most concentrated oil sands development.
