Why is much of Canadian Athabasca oil inaccessible?
Currently the Athabasca reserves are 176.1 billion barrels, but only 23-30% of the total resource (354 billion barrels) (Ref: Alberta Energy and Utilities Board) is considered to be recoverable with current technology (open pit mining and various hot water injection well techniques). The reason for such a low recovery estimate for this large reserve is due to the fact that much of the reserve is too deep to mine by open pit methods and drill hole extraction technologies are currently inefficient and expensive.
