Black Bonanza: Canada's Oil Sands and the Race to Secure North America's Energy Future [Hardcover]

For years, Canadians have been hearing nothing but bad news out of the Athabasca Oil Sands. From 20th Century economists decrying it as a perpetual money-loser in the face of more easily-extracted foreign oil to green groups around the world declaring it the world's worst industrial enterprise, sometimes it seems as though no good could ever come from this so-called dirty resource.

But what if developing Canada's Oil Sands was the key to bridging the gap between current petroleum-based economies and the alternative energies that aren't ready for market yet? What if it meant eliminating the threat of Peak Oil and providing economic stability not just for Canada and the rest of North America, but for the world? And what if the environmental costs of the resource were both not nearly as dire as some would have you believe, but currently better than many other options with the industry already making huge advances in sustainability, energy use and water reclamation?

What started out as a resource no one thought very much of has become an economic powerhouse and an abundant source of easily accessible energy. From the pioneering days in the middle of the 20th century through the booms and technological breakthroughs of the 1990s and 2000s and the constant political wrangling along the way, the Alberta Oil Sands are showing their promise as the most abundant source of petroleum available to us now and into the next century.

While there have been environmental challenges, Black Bonanza breaks down the myths surrounding the development of the oil sands and the harvesting of this "dirty oil," and shows people the real state of affairs in Alberta, Canada. Panicked naysayers are insisting all activity be shut down immediately under the banner of environmentalism, but the truth of the matter is that not only is oil production from the Sands cleaner than other major energy options such as coal mining, its impact is relatively mild and geographically minor. The producers are continually improving sustainability, using fewer resources per barrel and governments are now requiring them to speed up the reclamation of old mining sites. Best of all, new technologies are increasingly moving extraction underground, where the environmental footprint is much smaller. This is opening up a brand new bonanza-the 90% of the Sands that can't be mined-amounting to a breathtaking trillion barrels of oil or more.

Despite gains made in solar, wind and tide energy generation, we still live in a petroleum economy, and the Athabasca Sands will allow the world enough time to make a smooth sea change to sustainable solutions while avoiding the risks of dealing with undemocratic and unstable petrostates.