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The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of oil sands rich in bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventional oil in the world, making Canada a significant player in the global energy market. [27]
Tar sands have affected over 75% of the habitat in the Alberta taiga forest due to the clearing of the forests and the oil ponds that come from the extraction. These tar sands also create awful toxic oil ponds that affect wildlife and surrounding vegetation. Oil extraction also affects the forest soil, which harms tree and plant growth.
Their carbon footprints, however, are radically different: conventional reservoirs use the natural energy in the environment to flow oil and gas to the surface unaided; unconventional reservoirs require putting energy into the ground for extraction, either as heat (e.g. tar sands and oil shales) or as pressure (e.g. shale gas and CBM).
Tar sands get a lot of bad press, much of it to do with the fact that the extraction and processing of tar sands bitumen creates a lot more pollution than other fuel sources. A few companies are ...
In 1977 Strausz published his article on the chemistry of the oil sands, then also known as the tar sands attending the conference that year entitled the Symposium on Tar Sand and Oil Shale. [ 6 ] By 2003 with the rising price of oil , and the improvement of enhanced recovery techniques such as thermal in-situ methods, the Peace River oil sands ...
A number of oil companies started researching methods to mining and process the oil shale. In contrast to the boom of the 1920s, which featured hundreds of small startup companies operating on stock sales, the shale research after World War II was a well-financed, long-term effort by established oil companies.
Overexploitation of these resources for protracted periods can deplete natural stocks to the point where they are unable to recover within a short time frame. Humans have always harvested food and other resources they need to survive. Human populations, historically, were small, and methods of collection were limited to small quantities.
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