Canada stores up problems at its booming energy frontier

Alberta’s blue-eyed sheikhs offered a plaintive prayer in the early 1990s as sliding oil prices plunged the energy-rich Canadian province into recession. “Dear God,” ran their plea, featured on a popular bumper sticker. “Let there be another oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time.”

Their wish has been granted in spades. Huge investment in bitumen-like oilsands in Alberta has unleashed one of north America’s most frenzied resource booms since the Klondike gold rush of 1897.

But with prices sagging for oil and natural gas, which it also produces, there is anxiety that Alberta has again failed to keep its side of the bargain.
Financial Times