Statistics on the Alberta Oil Sands
October 25, 2010 2:22 PM   Subscribe

So I'm looking for some hard data on the Alberta Oil Sands: Employment rate, type of employment, demographics, who owns what, etc. I'm finding plenty of opinion pieces, and plenty of environmental assessments, but not much hard data on the economics of it. Does anyone know where to look for this kind of information?
posted by Stagger Lee to Education (6 answers total)
 
Wood mackenzie has all the detail data. Its not free, but maybe they will share it with you if you are part of a not for profit or something.
posted by zia at 2:27 PM on October 25, 2010


Try scrounging around The Oil Drum -- there's a wide variety of balanced, accessible information about any energy-related issue you can think of, and even experts who are happy to answer questions.
posted by Corvid at 3:01 PM on October 25, 2010


Employment is a hard thing to draw a clean circle around. Fort McMurray, and the whole RM of Wood Buffalo is the employment centre for the oil sands. The community profile from the 2006 Census shows 10.6K workers in agriculture and resource industries; i.e. the oil patch. These are the guys (and it's 80% guys) who are actually digging stuff up and running processing plants. So those are included, for sure, for sure. But what about people who are building oilsand facilities? What about the shuttle bus company that drives the workers around? So there's also some people who aren't digging oil, but are contracting for oil companies.

But then, of course, there are the knock-on jobs; if there weren't over ten thousand oil workers, there wouldn't be so many people working for truck dealerships and strip clubs and Tim Horton's and schools and so on. None of these people get paid directly by Suncor or whoever, but they're selling their goods and services to oil workers (and to each other).

The same complications come into account looking at Calgary, where a lot of the white collar engineering and "business" work for the oilsands is done, except with the complication that Calgary has other sources of income beyond the oilsands.

One reason you haven't seen much may because it is very difficult to quantify exactly.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 3:38 PM on October 25, 2010


National Public Radio had a story or two about this within the last 2-3 months.
posted by neuron at 3:43 PM on October 25, 2010


Have you tried Andrew Nikiforuk's book?
posted by angiep at 4:05 PM on October 25, 2010


But then, of course, there are the knock-on jobs; if there weren't over ten thousand oil workers, there wouldn't be so many people working for truck dealerships and strip clubs and Tim Horton's and schools and so on. None of these people get paid directly by Suncor or whoever, but they're selling their goods and services to oil workers (and to each other).

Complicating this further, there are also illegal knock-on jobs/sources of income related to the oil sands that are not counted at all: the sex industry and the drug trade.
posted by Kurichina at 10:09 AM on October 26, 2010


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