Q:
How much oil does Alberta's oil sands contain?
A:
The four major oil sands deposits
in Alberta contain more than 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen.
Using current technology this could potentially be turned
into over 1 trillion barrels of synthetic crude oil, although
much of the bitumen probably cannot be recovered at a reasonable
cost (with current technology only 300 billion barrels are
recoverable). The Athabasca Oil Sands is the largest of
these oil sands deposits. It contains over one trillion
barrels of bitumen on its own, although only about 300 billion
barrels of bitumen can be recovered using current methods
of mining. There are other large oil sands deposits in Canada
as well, most notably a large deposit on Melville Island
in the Canadian Arctic. It is Canada's next largest oil
sands deposit after the Athabasca Oil Sands. It has the
potential to produce about 500 million barrels of crude
oil.
By
comparison, Alberta's conventional oil reserves are currently
estimated at about 4.5 billion barrels of oil. Put another
way, the Athabasca Oil Sands contain more oil than all the
known reserves in Saudi Arabia. Clearly Alberta's oil sands
hold the key to the long term production of oil and oil
products in Alberta, and as time goes by more and more of
Canada's oil needs will have to be met by Alberta's oil
sands deposits.
