Homo energeticus

technological rationality in the Alberta tar sands

Nathan Kowalsky

Randolph Haluza-DeLay

pp. 159-175

in: Helena Mateus Jerónimo, José L. García, Carl Mitcham (eds), Jacques Ellul and the technological society in the 21st century, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

The Prime Minister of Canada has described the development of Alberta's unconventional oil resources as "an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China's great wall, only bigger" (Financial Post 2006). Its proven oil reserves of 170 billion barrels are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but both Venezuela and Alberta consist mostly of the "unconventional oil" source known as oil sands or tar sands.