Developing Alberta's Oil Sands from Karl Clark to Kyoto

Barb Bloemhof is an assistant professor in the Department of Sport
Management at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

This well-paced history of the Alberta oil sands details their
discovery, their development, the OPEC/NEP years, and their
environmental impact, but omits a few important aspects of the history
of energy (the National Oil Policy, 1960; the Gordon Commission on
Canada’s Economic Prospects, 1957; and Canada’s obligations to share
oil shortages pro rata under the International Energy Agency, which
predated the first Canada– U.S. Free Trade Agreement).

Analysis is strongest in the first five chapters. The later chapters,
which are less focused, emphasize federal–provincial political
sparring without much contribution to understanding the oil sands’
evolution. Chapter 6 includes a discussion of Canadian pricing and
supply of petroleum to Canadian regions that is either confusing or
wrong. Chapter 7’s important point that the industry no longer plays a
decisive role in determining the sands’ development could have been
made more clearly and succinctly. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 present points of
view without evaluating their merits or reporting their sources (e.g.,
it may be appropriate, economically and environmentally, to delay oil
sands development when world oil prices are falling). The polemical
reporting on Kyoto diminishes the contribution of this otherwise
accessible and jargon-free book.

Important technical errors are present. The author uses historical
price and cost data in nominal terms, rather than rebasing them into
real terms, thereby allowing changes in inflation to cloud the message
(a fact he eventually notes in his discussion of Table 7.1). Also
present are unattributed quotations, errors in attribution, missing
references in the bibliography, and several weakly supported statements.