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Athabasca Oil Sands Project
Athabasca Oil Sands Project
Canada’s oil sands contain the second largest oil resource after Saudi Arabia
Read how we are producing oil and limiting environmental impact
Canada’s oil sands contain the world’s second-biggest oil resource after Saudi Arabia. Surface mining can extract around 20% of the oil and currently covers about 550km2, one third the city of Los Angeles. We are one of over 30 companies active in the oil sands and at our Athabasca Oil Sands Project we mine the resource and separate the oil from the clay, sand and water. It represents 2.5% of our total production. We continue working to limit the environmental impact of our operations.
In this section
Athabasca Oil Sands Project- overview
Our oil sands operation extracts bitumen from oil sands and converts it to synthetic crude oil.
Mining the oil sands
We mine oil that is close to the surface and then process it into synthetic crude oil.
Economy and local community
Our project has created thousands of jobs and brings economic benefits. We work closely with the local community to address their concerns.
Managing CO2
We are working to reduce the CO2 emissions from our oil sands operations by increasing our energy efficiency and developing a project to capture CO2.
Managing water
Most of the water we use to extract the oil from the oil sands is recycled. We carefully manage waste water from our operations.
Managing land impact
We have developed and implemented a plan to manage our impact on the land and protect the region’s biodiversity.