How much oil does Albertas oil sands contain?
The four major oil sands deposits in Alberta contain more than 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen. Using current technology this could potentially be turned into over 1 trillion barrels of synthetic crude oil, although much of the bitumen probably cannot be recovered at a reasonable cost (with current technology only 300 billion barrels are recoverable). The Athabasca Oil Sands is the largest of these oil sands deposits. It contains over one trillion barrels of bitumen on its own, although only about 300 billion barrels of bitumen can be recovered using current methods of mining. There are other large oil sands deposits in Canada as well, most notably a large deposit on Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic. It is Canada’s next largest oil sands deposit after the Athabasca Oil Sands. It has the potential to produce about 500 million barrels of crude oil. By comparison, Alberta’s conventional oil reserves are currently estimated at about 4.5 billion barrels of oil. Put another way, the At
