Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of 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.
Suncor Energy Inc. is a Canadian integrated energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. It specializes in production of synthetic crude from oil sands. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Suncor Energy was ranked as the 48th-largest public company in the world.
Teck Resources Limited, known as Teck Cominco until late 2008, is a diversified natural resources company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is engaged in mining and mineral development, including coal for the steelmaking industry, copper, zinc, and energy. Secondary products include lead, silver, gold, molybdenum, germanium, indium and cadmium. Teck Resources was formed from the amalgamation of Teck and Cominco in 2001.
Invest in Canada is an arms-length Government of Canada organization that promotes and attracts foreign direct investment into Canada. It was created through the Investment Canada Act and launched on March 12, 2018 as a departmental corporation.
Syncrude Canada Ltd. is one of the world's largest producers of synthetic crude oil from oil sands and the largest single source producer in Canada. It is located just outside Fort McMurray in the Athabasca Oil Sands, and has a nameplate capacity of 350,000 barrels per day (56,000 m3/d) of oil, equivalent to about 13% of Canada's consumption. It has approximately 5.1 billion barrels (810,000,000 m3) of proven and probable reserves situated on 8 leases over 3 contiguous sites. Including fully realized prospective reserves, current production capacity could be sustained for well over 90 years.
CNOOC Petroleum North America ULC, formerly known as Nexen, is a Canadian oil and gas company based in Calgary, Alberta.
Petroleum production in Canada is a major industry which is important to the overall economy of North America. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world and is the world's fourth largest oil producer and fourth largest oil exporter. In 2019 it produced an average of 750,000 cubic metres per day (4.7 Mbbl/d) of crude oil and equivalent. Of that amount, 64% was upgraded from unconventional oil sands, and the remainder light crude oil, heavy crude oil and natural-gas condensate. Most of the Canadian petroleum production is exported, approximately 600,000 cubic metres per day (3.8 Mbbl/d) in 2019, with 98% of the exports going to the United States. Canada is by far the largest single source of oil imports to the United States, providing 43% of US crude oil imports in 2015.
Canada's oil sands and heavy oil resources are among the world's great petroleum deposits. They include the vast oil sands of northern Alberta, and the heavy oil reservoirs that surround the small city of Lloydminster, which sits on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. The extent of these resources is well known, but better technologies to produce oil from them are still being developed.
Pengrowth Energy Corporation was a Canadian oil and natural gas company based in Calgary, Alberta. Established in 1988 by Calgary entrepreneur James S Kinnear, it was one of the largest of the Canadian royalty trusts ("Canroys"), with a market capitalization of US$4.12 billion at the end of 2007. Its assets were approximately evenly distributed between oil and natural gas.
Obsidian Energy Ltd. is a mid-sized Canadian oil and natural gas production company based in Calgary, Alberta.
The Clearwater Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous (Albian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta, Canada. It was first defined by R.G. McConnell in 1893 and takes its name from the Clearwater River near Fort McMurray.
Although there are numerous oil companies operating in Canada, as of 2009, the majority of production, refining and marketing was done by fewer than 20 of them. According to the 2013 edition of Forbes Global 2000, canoils.com and any other list that emphasizes market capitalization and revenue when sizing up companies, as of March 31, 2014 these are the largest Canada-based oil and gas companies.
Pembina Pipeline is a Canadian corporation that operates transportation and storage infrastructure delivering oil and natural gas to and from parts of Western Canada. Since 2003, storage has also included ethylene at one location. Western Canada is the source of all products transported by Pembina pipeline systems which include the Syncrude pipeline, Horizon pipeline, and Cheecham oilsands pipelines.
Canadian Natural Resources Limited, or CNRL or Canadian Natural is a senior Canadian oil and natural gas company that operates primarily in the Western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, with offshore operations in the United Kingdom sector of the North Sea, and offshore Côte d'Ivoire and Gabon. The company, which is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, has the largest undeveloped base in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It is the largest independent producer of natural gas in Western Canada and the largest producer of heavy crude oil in Canada.
Western Canadian Select (WCS) is a heavy sour blend of crude oil that is one of North America's largest heavy crude oil streams and, historically, its cheapest. It was established in December 2004 as a new heavy oil stream by EnCana, Canadian Natural Resources, Petro-Canada and Talisman Energy. It is composed mostly of bitumen blended with sweet synthetic and condensate diluents and 21 existing streams of both conventional and unconventional Alberta heavy crude oils at the large Husky Midstream General Partnership terminal in Hardisty, Alberta. Western Canadian Select—the benchmark for heavy, acidic crudes—is one of many petroleum products from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin oil sands. Calgary-based Husky Energy, now a subsidiary of Cenovus, had joined the initial four founders in 2015.
Oil sands tailings ponds are engineered dam and dyke systems used to capture oil sand tailings. Oil sand tailings contain a mixture of salts, suspended solids and other dissolvable chemical compounds such as acids, benzene, hydrocarbons residual bitumen, fine silts and water. Large volumes of tailings are a byproduct of bitumen extraction from the oil sands and managing these tailings is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. An October 2021 Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) report said that in 2020 the tailings ponds increased by another 90 million cubic meters and contained 1.36 billion cubic metres of fluids.
Gulf Canada was a Canadian integrated petroleum company that existed between 1944 and 2001. Gulf Oil Corporation began operating in Canada in 1942, and two years later formed a Canadian subsidiary called the Canadian Gulf Oil Company. In 1956 Canadian Gulf Oil merged with the British American Oil Company and until 1969 operated under the British American name. In 1969, British American amalgamated with its subsidiaries into a new company called Gulf Oil Canada Limited.
The Alberta Energy Company Ltd. was a Canadian independent petroleum company that existed from 1973 to 2002. The AEC was created by the Government of Alberta under Premier Peter Lougheed as a mechanism for Albertans to invest in the Syncrude oil sands project. Besides its participation in Syncrude, the AEC also received the rights to produce gas in the Suffield Block. The company was established as a mixed enterprise and at its inception was half owned by the provincial Crown and half owned by the public. A restrictive charter, which prevented individual shareholders from acquiring more than one percent of the company and mandated directors be residents of Alberta, ensured control remained within the province. Until 1982, the company was barred from participation in conventional oil and gas exploration, but after that time was given the right to compete with private companies in that area. In 1983 the government began to decrease its equity, and in 1993 divested of its remaining shares.
3.912 billion CAD (2014) [1] 
