Alberta Historical Context
Alberta is the largest producer of oil and gas in Canada. Underlying almost the entirety of Alberta is the hydrocarbon-rich Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, which stretches across much of Western Canada and has been the source of the province’s wealth of fossil fuels. There were a series of major oilfield discoveries, beginning in with Leduc in 1947 by Imperial Oil, and continuing with major finds at Goldenspike, Bonnie Glen, Pembina, Swan Hills, Judy Credy, until the last, Rainbow, in 1965. Accordingly, production of conventional oil peaked in 1973, and has since declined to less than a third of that production level. The conventional oil and gas industry in Alberta is, accordingly, described as relatively mature.
The provincial economy has been heavily tied to the financial fate of its oil and gas industry for several decades. In 1965, O&G activity accounted for nearly a third of Alberta’s GDP, growing by 1978 to over half, while in the longer-term, from 1971-2004, accounted for 42% of GDP. In order to offset declining production levels and maintain hydrocarbons as the basis of the provincial economy, the Alberta government facilitated an industrial expansion into new “unconventional” frontiers, such as open-pit and in-situ tar sands, coalbed methane, and shale gas.
When Alberta’s bitumen deposits were included in Canada’s official reserves in 2002, Canada became the second largest holder of oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia (and has since moved into third behind Venezuela). Development of the tar sands has been rapid, both in total volume and as percentage of total oil produced in Alberta. Production levels over the last two decades have more than quadrupled, and in 2003, production of synthetic crude oil and raw bitumen was for the first time higher than that of conventional crude oil. This trend has continued since, and according to the AER, in 2012 bitumen and SCO production accounted for 79% of the province’s total crude oil and equivalent production, while forecasting this relation to reach about 90% in 2022 with bitumen production levels nearly doubling.
Further/Suggested Reading:
Laxer, J. (1983). Oil and Gas: Ottawa, the Provinces and the Petroleum Industry. James Lorimer & Company: Toronto.
Marsden, W. (2008). Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Brining Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn’t Seem to Care. Vintage Canada: Toronto.
Nikiforuk, A. (2008). Tar Sands: Dirty oil and the future of a continent. Vancouver: David Suzuki Foundation & Greystone Books.
Pratt, L. (1976). The Tar Sands: Syncrude and the Politics of Oil. Hurtig Publishing: Edmonton.
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The content for this province was peer-reviewed in Sept 2013. We’d like to acknowledge the assistance of the external reviewers and Dave Campanella, Dave Vasey, Amanda Chrisanthus and Leanne Ross who contributed to this webpage content.
