The Athabasca oil sands in north-west Canada, a short geological overview

The province of Alberta contains the natural resource oil sand. Demaison (1977) described the Alberte tar sands as “the world largest selfcontained accumulation of hydrocarbons”. 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay. This oil sand deposit is primarily located in and around Fort McMurray. The McMurray Formation is a lower Cretaceous oil-bearing quartz sandstone. Much of this oil is wrapped as a coationg around individual, water wet sand grains, so the extraction problem is not of getting the oil out of the sand but of getting the sand out of the oil ( North 1985)