Canadian oil-sand mines stuck as crude price plummets

Canada’s once booming oil sands industry is cooling fast as the plunging oil price undermines investment. More than US$60 billion (


As much as 175 billion barrels of oil are contained in the oil-rich sands of the Athabasca region – second only to Saudi Arabia in a ranking of different countries’ proven oil reserves. But the process of extracting crude from sand, either by mining or injecting steam to recover it in situ, is both environmentally controversial, requiring the use of huge amounts of energy and water, and expensive.

The cost of production can be as high as $70 a barrel compared with $5 a barrel for some of the largest onshore oilfields in the Middle-East.

Times of London