Oil Sands

6 Pages 1520 Words

Oil is one of the most important resources consumed in modern day society. It provides not only raw materials for the making of plastics and other synthetics, but it also provides fuel for energy, industry, heating, and transportation. The fuels that are extracted from oil contribute to more than half of the world's total supply of energy. Oil provides fuel for automobiles, tractors, trucks, aircraft, and ships. Oil products are used to heat homes and commercial buildings, and it is also used to generate electricity. Oil products are the basic materials used for the manufacture of synthetic fibers for clothing, plastics, paints, fertilizers, insecticides, soaps, and synthetic rubber. The use of oil as a source of raw material in manufacturing is vital to the functioning of modern day industry. This critical analysis explores the history of oil, the oil sands process, and the economic impact of oil on the modern world.

The oil industry goes way back, this sector has been an influential force to society as early as 1880. Oil’s primary use in the 19th century was for candles, grease, and lamp fuel in Canada. It wasn’t until the First World War in which this sector started to boom. By the turn of the century, oil started to fuel cars, tractors, trucks, industrial equipment, and airplanes in Canada. This era was known as “the Great Oil Age”. Oil began to shape people’s lives, cities, and countries. At the turn of World War II a new discovery of oil had been accomplished in the fields of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Finding these gas fields impacted the Canadian economy with a mighty force. “By 1990 that industry produced 550 times as much oil as in 1930, 165 times as much natural gas. And Canada’s producing provinces, especially Alberta, soon found their economies driven by powerful petroleum engines.”(Reference #2)
The process involved in removing the oil sand from the mine and extrac...