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More information showing Quadrise's potential in this government article on



Second only to the Saudi Arabia reserves, Alberta's oil sands deposits were described by Time Magazine as "Canada's greatest buried energy treasure," and "could satisfy the world's demand for petroleum for the next century."
Oil Sands are deposits of bitumen, a molasses-like viscous oil that will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons. They are contained in three major areas beneath 140,800 square kilometres of north-eastern Alberta - an area larger than the state of Florida, an area twice the size of New Brunswick, more than four and half times the size of Vancouver Island, and 26 times larger than Prince Edward Island. However, only about two per cent of the initial established resource has been produced to date.

Alberta Energy encourages the responsible development of these extensive deposits through planning and liaison with government, industry and communities to ensure a competitive royalty regime that is attractive to investors, appropriate regulations and environmental protection and the management of Crown rights to oil sands while taking into account some of the barriers - higher technological risk and higher capital costs - faced by oil sands developers.

Alberta's oil sands industry is the result of multi-billion-dollar investments in infrastructure and technology required to develop the non-conventional resource. In the last five years alone, industry has allocated $24.7 billion towards oil sands development.

In 2003 Alberta's oil sands were the source of about 52.7 per cent of the province's total crude oil and equivalent production and about 34.8 per cent of all crude oil and equivalent produced in Canada. Over the last three fiscal years, from 2001/2002 to 2003/2004, oil sands development returned $565 million to Albertans in the form of royalties paid to the provincial government.

Annual oil sands production is growing steadily as the industry matures. Output of marketable oil sands production increased to 858,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2003, up from 741,000 bbl/d the year before. It is anticipated that in 2005, Alberta's oil sands production may account for one-half of Canada's total crude output and 10 per cent of North American production. It is also predicted that the oil sands will create a total of 102,000 new jobs across Canada by 2012.

Development of Alberta's oil sands resources represents a triumph of technological innovation. Over the years, government and industry have worked together to find innovative and economic ways to extract and process the oil sands and energy research is more important today than ever before. Working through the Alberta Energy Research Institute, the Alberta government is committed to a collaborative approach to spur new technology and innovation programs that will reduce the impact of greenhouse gases and other emissions, and reduce the consumption of water and gas.