Developing Alberta's Oil Sands

Developing Alberta's Oil Sands

Author: Paul Anthony Chastko

Publisher: University of Calgary Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1552381242

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Alberta's oil sands represent a vast and untapped oil reserve that could reasonably supply all of Canada's energy needs for the next 475 years. With an estimated 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil at stake, the quest to develop this natural resource has been undertaken by many powerful actors, both nationally and internationally. Using research that integrates the economic, political, scientific, and business factors that have been influential in discovering and developing the sands, this book provides a comprehensive history of the oil sands project and a window on the nature of the complex relationships between industry, government, and transnational players. This book is the first comprehensive volume that examines the origins and development of the oil sands industry over the last century.


Tar Sands

Tar Sands

Author: Andrew Nikiforuk

Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd

Published: 2010-08-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 155365627X

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Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.


Oil Sand Production Processes

Oil Sand Production Processes

Author: James G. Speight

Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing

Published: 2012-10-23

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0124045529

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The combination of global warming and peak oil has made finding alternative sources of energy more important than ever. Written in an easy-to-read format, Oil Sands Production Processes provide the reader with an understandable overview of the chemistry, engineering, and technology of oil sands. The various chapters have been written to include the latest developments in the oil sands industry, including evolving and new processes as well as the various environmental regulations. Overview of the chemistry, engineering, and technology of oil sands Updates on the evolving processes and new processes Evolving and new environmental regulations regarding oil sands production processes


Ethical Oil

Ethical Oil

Author: Ezra Levant

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 077104643X

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Canada's "no. 1 defender of freedom of speech" and the bestselling author of Shakedown makes the timely and provocative case that when it comes to oil, ethics matter just as much as the economy and the environment. In 2009, Ezra Levant's bestselling book Shakedown revealed the corruption of Canada's human rights commissions and was declared the "most important public affairs book of the year." In Ethical Oil, Levant turns his attention to another hot-button topic: the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well. With his trademark candor, Levant asks hard-hitting questions: With the oil sands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia, and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can't live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable? In Ethical Oil, Levant exposes the hypocrisy of the West's dealings with the reprehensible regimes from which we purchase the oil that sustains our lifestyles, and offers solutions to this dilemma. Readers at all points on the political spectrum will want to read this timely and provocative new book, which is sure to spark debate.


Extracting Home in the Oil Sands

Extracting Home in the Oil Sands

Author: Clinton N. Westman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1351127446

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The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important energy sources and the subject of global attention in relation to climate change and pollution. This volume engages ethnographically with key issues concerning the oil sands by working from anthropological literature and beyond to explore how people struggle to make and hold on to diverse senses of home in the region. The contributors draw on diverse fieldwork experiences with communities in Alberta that are affected by the oil sands industry. Through a series of case studies, they illuminate the complexities inherent in the entanglements of race, class, Indigeneity, gender, and ontological concerns in a regional context characterized by extreme extraction. The chapters are unified in a common concern for ethnographically theorizing settler colonialism, sentient landscapes, and multispecies relations within a critical political ecology framework and by the prominent role that extractive industries play in shaping new relations between Indigenous Peoples, the state, newcomers, corporations, plants, animals, and the land.


Introduction to Enhanced Recovery Methods for Heavy Oil and Tar Sands

Introduction to Enhanced Recovery Methods for Heavy Oil and Tar Sands

Author: James G. Speight

Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 0128018755

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Introduction to Enhanced Recovery Methods for Heavy Oil and Tar Sands, Second Edition, explores the importance of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and how it has grown in recent years thanks to the increased need to locate unconventional resources such as heavy oil and shale. Unfortunately, petroleum engineers and managers aren't always well-versed in the enhancement methods that are available when needed or the most economically viable solution to maximize their reservoir’s productivity. This revised new edition presents all the current methods of recovery available, including the pros and cons of each. Expanded and updated as a great preliminary text for the newcomer to the industry or subject matter, this must-have EOR guide teaches all the basics needed, including all thermal and non-thermal methods, along with discussions of viscosity, sampling, and the technologies surrounding offshore applications. Enables users to quickly learn how to choose the most efficient recovery method for their reservoir while evaluating economic conditions Presents the differences between each method of recovery with newly added real-world case studies from around the world Helps readers stay competitive with the growing need of extracting unconventional resources with new content on how these complex reservoirs interact with injected reservoir fluids


Tar Sands

Tar Sands

Author: Andrew Nikiforuk

Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1553655559

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Co-published by the David Suzuki Foundation.


The Patch

The Patch

Author: Chris Turner

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 150111509X

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"In its heyday, the oil sands represented an industrial triumph and the culmination of a century of innovation, experiment, engineering, policy, and finance. Fort McMurray was a boomtown, the centre of a new gold rush, and the oil sands were reshaping the global energy, political, and financial landscapes. The future seemed limitless for the city and those who drew their wealth from the bitumen-rich wilderness. But in 2008, a new narrative for the oil sands emerged. As financial markets collapsed and the scientific reality of the Patch's effect on the environment became clear, the region turned into a boogeyman and a lightning rod for the global movement combatting climate change. Suddenly, the streets of Fort McMurray were the front line of a high-stakes collision between two conflicting worldviews--one of industrial triumph and another of environmental stewardship--each backed by major players on the world stage. The Patch is the seminal account of this ongoing conflict, showing just how far the oil sands reaches into all of our lives. From Fort Mac to the Bakken shale country of North Dakota, from Houston to London, from Saudi Arabia to the shores of Brazil, the whole world is connected in this enterprise. And it requires us to ask the question: In order to both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch?"--


Alberta Oil Sands

Alberta Oil Sands

Author: Kevin E Percy

Publisher: Newnes

Published: 2012-11-29

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 008097760X

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At 170 billion barrels, Canada's Oil Sands are the third largest reserves of developable oil in the world. The Oil Sands now produce about 1.6 million barrels per day, with production expected to double by 2025 to about 3.7 million barrels per day. The Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) in northeastern Alberta is the largest of the three oil sands deposits. Bitumen in the oil sands is recovered through one of two primary methods - mining and drilling. About 20 per cent of the reserves are close to the surface and can be mined using large shovels and trucks. Of concern are the effects of the industrial development on the environment. Both human-made and natural sources emit oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, trace elements and persistent organic compounds. Of additional concern are ground level ozone and greenhouse gases. Because of the requirement on operators to comply with the air quality regulatory policies, and to address public concerns, the not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA) has since 1997 been closely monitoring air quality in AOSR. In 2008, WBEA assembled a distinguished group of international scientists who have been conducting measurements and practical research on various aspects of air emissions and their potential effects on terrestrial receptors. This book is a synthesis of the concepts and results of those on-going studies. It contains 19 chapters ranging from a global perspective of energy production, measurement methodologies and behavior of various air pollutants during fossil fuel production in a boreal forest ecosystem, towards designing and deploying a multi-disciplinary, proactive, and long-term environmental monitoring system that will also meet regulatory expectations. Covers measurement of emissions from very large industrial sources in a region with huge international media profile Validation of measurement technologies can be applied globally The new approaches to ecological monitoring described can be applied in other forested regions