text:
HMS Warrior (1860)

HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince (1861) were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.

She subsequently served as a storeship and depot ship, and in 1904 was assigned to the Royal Navy's torpedo training school. The ship was converted into an oil jetty in 1927 and remained in that role until 1979, at which point she was donated by the Navy to The Maritime Trust for restoration. The restoration process took eight years, during which many of her features and fittings were either restored or recreated. When this was finished she returned to Portsmouth as a museum ship. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Warrior has been based in Portsmouth since 1987.

Background
The launching of the steam-powered ship of the line Napoléon by France in 1850 began an arms race between France and Britain that lasted for a decade. The destruction of a wooden Ottoman fleet by a Russian fleet firing explosive shells in the Battle of Sinop, early in the Crimean War, followed by the destruction of Russian coastal fortifications during the Battle of Kinburn in the Crimean War by French armoured floating batteries, and tests against armour plates, showed the superiority of ironclads over unarmoured ships. France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled FRENCH IRONCLAD Gloire, upset the balance of power by neutralising the British investment in wooden ships of the line and started an invasion scare in Britain, as the Royal Navy lacked any ships that could counter Gloire and her two sisters. The situation was perceived to be so serious that Queen Victoria asked the Admiralty if the navy was adequate for the tasks that it would have to perform in wartime. Warrior and her sister were ordered in response.

The Admiralty initially specified that the ship should be capable of 15 kn, and have a full set of sails for worldwide cruising range. Iron construction was chosen as it gave the best trade-off between speed and protection; an iron hull was lighter than a wooden one of the same size and shape, giving more capacity for guns, armour and engines.

Overview
The Chief Constructor of the Navy Isaac Watts and the Chief Engineer Thomas Lloyd designed the ship. To minimise risk they copied the hull design of the large wooden frigate HMS Mersey (1858), modifying it for iron construction and to accommodate an armoured box, or citadel, amidships along the single gun deck, which protected most of the ship's guns. Ships with this configuration of guns and armour are classified as broadside ironclads.

The Warrior-class design used many well-proven technologies that had been used in ocean-going ships for years, including her iron hull, marine steam engine, and screw propeller; only her wrought-iron armour was a major technological advance. Naval architect and historian David K. Brown wrote, "What made [Warrior] truly novel was the way in which these individual aspects were blended together, making her the biggest and most powerful warship in the world." Faster, better armoured and harder to hit than her rivals, she was superior to any existing naval ship. The Admiralty stopped construction of all wooden ships of the line, and ordered another 11 ironclads over the next few years. Jacky Fisher, who was the ship's gunnery lieutenant in 1863–1864, later wrote that most people did not realise at the time what a significant change it would bring about: "It certainly was not appreciated that this, our first armourclad ship of war, would cause a fundamental change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years."

Although built in response to Gloire, the Warrior had a very different operational concept from the French ship, which was meant to replace wooden ships of the line. The Warriors were designed by Watts as 40-gun armoured frigates, not intended to stand in the line of battle, as the Admiralty was uncertain about their ability to withstand concentrated fire from wooden two- and three-deck ships of the line. Unlike Gloire, they were planned to be fast enough to force battle on a fleeing enemy and to control to their own advantage the range at which a battle was fought. In contrast to Gloire's square profile, Warrior has a clipper bow, but she is twice as long as a typical clipper ship.

HMS Warrior is 380 ft long between perpendiculars and 420 ft long overall. She has a beam of 58 ft and a draught of 26 ft. The ship displaces 9137 LT and has a tonnage of 6,109 tons burthen. The ship's length made her relatively unmanoeuvrable, making it harder for her to use her strengthened stem for ramming, an ancient tactic that was coming back into use at the time. The ends of the hull are subdivided by watertight transverse bulkheads and decks into 92 compartments, and the hull has a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms.

Armament
The armament of the Warrior-class ships was originally intended to be 40 smoothbore, muzzle-loading 68-pounder guns, 19 on each side on the main deck and one each fore and aft as chase guns on the upper deck. The 7.9 in 68-pounder had a range of 3200 yd with (solid) round shot. During construction the armament was changed to include 10 Armstrong 110-pounder guns, an early rifled breech loader (RBL) design, along with 26 68-pounders, and four RBL Armstrong 40-pounder guns with a calibre of 4.75 in and a maximum range of 3800 yd. It had been planned to replace all the 68-pounders with the innovative 110-pounder, whose 7 in shell could reach 4000 yd, but poor results in armour-penetration tests halted this. During the first use in action of a 110-pounder aboard HMS Euryalus in 1863, the gun was incorrectly loaded and the vent piece was blown out of the breech when fired. They were labour-intensive to load and fire, and were henceforth only used with a reduced propellant charge, which left them ineffective against ironclad ships.

All the guns could fire either solid shot or explosive shells. The 68-pounders could also fire molten iron shells, filled with iron melted in a furnace between the two forward boilers. The 40-pounder Armstrong guns were replaced with a better design of the same calibre in 1863. Warrior's original armament was replaced during her 1864–1867 refit with 24 7-inch and four 8 in rifled muzzle-loading (RML) guns. The ship also received four RBL Armstrong 20-pounders for use as saluting guns. The RML 8-inch gun could penetrate 9.6 in of wrought iron armour at the muzzle, and the RML 7-inch gun could pierce 7.7 in.

Armour
Warrior's armour consisted of 4.5 in of wrought iron backed by 18 in of teak. The iron armour was made up of 3 by plates that interlocked by the tongue and groove method. It was bolted through the teak to the iron hull. The teak consisted of two 9 in layers laid at right angles to each other; they strengthened the armour by damping the shock waves caused by the impact of shells that would otherwise break the bolts connecting the armour to the hull. Unlike most later ship armour, Warrior's armour was made by a process of hammering rather than rolling. Based on tests at Shoeburyness in October 1861 when the Warrior was launched, it "was practically invulnerable to the ordnance at the time in use".

The armour covered the middle 213 ft of the ship and extended 16 ft above the waterline and 6 ft below it. The guns on the main deck were protected from raking fire by 4.5-inch transverse bulkheads. The ends of the ship were unprotected, but were subdivided into watertight compartments to minimise flooding. The lack of armour at the stern rendered the steering gear and rudder vulnerable.

Crew
The ship's crew comprised 50 officers and 656 ratings in 1863. The majority of the crew had to do physically demanding tasks; one such duty was the raising of the heaviest manually hauled anchors in maritime history. The day-to-day life of her crew differed little from those on the navy's traditional wooden-hulled vessels.

The majority of the crew lived on the single gun deck of the Warrior; these crewmen slept in hammocks slung from the sides and deck beams, with up to 18 men between each pair of guns. The officers berthed in the rear of the ship in small individual cabins; the wardroom was also the officers' mess. The captain had two spacious, well-furnished cabins.

Of the ratings, 122 were Royal Marines. As an experiment during the ship's first commission, all of Warrior ' s marines were from Royal Marine Artillery; subsequently some marine infantrymen were assigned as was the usual naval practice. The marines manned the aft section of guns and slung their hammocks between the crew's accommodation and the officers' cabins.

Propulsion
Warrior had a two-cylinder trunk steam engine, made by John Penn and Sons, driving a single propeller using steam provided by 10 rectangular boilers. The engine produced a total of 5772 ihp during Warrior's sea trials on 1 April 1868 giving a speed of 14.08 kn under steam alone. The ship carried 853 LT of coal, enough to steam 2100 nmi at 11 kn.

The ironclad was ship rigged and had a sail area of 48400 sqft. Warrior reached 13 kn under sail alone, 2 kn faster than her sister ship HMS Black Prince (1861). She had the largest hoisting propeller ever made; it weighed 26 LT, and 600 men could raise it into the ship to reduce drag while under sail. To further reduce drag, both her funnels were telescopic and could be lowered. Under sail and steam together, the ship once reached 17.5 kn against the tide while running from Portsmouth to Plymouth.

Construction and service
Warrior was ordered on 11 May 1859 from Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in Blackwall, London. The ship was laid down some time after 6 June 1859 on the West Ham side of Bow Creek when the P&O ocean liner Seine was launched, and the slipway was reinforced to support Warrior's weight. Full-scale production of the ship's iron began in August, and the construction probably began in mid-August. Indecision by the Admiralty and frequent design changes caused many delays and nearly drove her builders bankrupt before a grant of £50,000 was awarded to keep them solvent. Her launching on 29 December 1860 was during the coldest winter for 50 years. She was frozen to her slipway and required the use of hydraulic rams, additional tugs, and dockworkers running from side to side on the upper deck to rock her free. Warrior was commissioned in August 1861 to conduct her sea trials; she was completed on 24 October for £377,292, almost twice the cost of a contemporary wooden ship of the line. Between March and June 1862, defects exposed during her trials were rectified, and damage repaired. Changes included the fitting of a lighter bowsprit and a shorter jib boom, along with the provision of extra heads amidships.

The ship was initially assigned to the Channel Squadron under the command of Captain Arthur Cochrane. In March 1863, Warrior escorted the royal yacht that brought Princess Alexandra of Denmark to Britain to marry the Prince of Wales. The princess appreciated the conduct of the ship's crew, and requested Admiral Sir Michael Seymour to convey to the ship that "she was much pleased". Cochrane had the message engraved on a brass plate and fitted to the ship's wheel. Her descendant, Princess Alexandra of Kent, is now patron of the HMS Warrior 1860 Trust.

In mid-1863 the Channel Fleet toured British ports for 12 weeks; the ship received 300,000 visitors, including as many as 13,000 a day in port. On 19 September, she rescued the survivors of the Mersey Flat Mary Agnes, which had sunk in a collision with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's ship SS Snaefell (1863) at Liverpool, Lancashire. Warrior began a refit in November 1864 during which the Armstrong guns, which had not proved successful in use, were removed and her armament was upgraded to the latest rifled muzzle-loading guns. She was recommissioned in 1867, under the command of Captain John Corbett, to relieve her sister as the guardship at Queenstown in Ireland, but instead both ships participated in the Fleet Review held on 17 July in honour of the visits made by the Khedive of Egypt and the Sultan of Turkey to Britain. After the review, the Admiralty paid off the ship on 24 July; the following day Warrior was recommissioned with Captain Henry Boys in command. After working up at Spithead, she sailed to join the Channel Squadron on 24 September. At the end of the year she was deployed to Osborne Bay to guard Queen Victoria at Osborne House. The Fenian Rising was under way, and there was intelligence suggesting that the Queen might be in danger from Irish nationalists. While Warrior was performing this duty, she received an informal visit from the Queen. The ship was part of a squadron that escorted the royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert to Dublin in April 1868 for an official visit by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. In August, while cruising to Scotland, Warrior collided with HMS Royal Oak (1862), losing her figurehead and jib boom and smashing Royal Oak's cutter. Captain Boys was court-martialled and acquitted over the incident.

From 4 to 28 July 1868, Warrior, with Black Prince and the wooden paddle frigate HMS Terrible (1845), towed a specially built floating drydock, large enough to accommodate ironclads, 2700 nmi across the Atlantic from Madeira to Bermuda. Upon her return to England in late August 1869, Boys was relieved by Captain Frederick Stirling. After a refit to clean her hull and replace the figurehead lost in the collision, Warrior rejoined the Channel Squadron. On 2 March 1870, Captain Henry Glyn assumed command of the ship. While returning from a joint cruise with the Mediterranean Fleet, the ship was present when HMS Captain (1869) was lost during a severe storm on 7 September. Further cruises followed, including trips to Madeira and Gibraltar. Warrior narrowly missed colliding with HMS Agincourt (1865) when she was following her out of Gibraltar and Agincourt grounded on Pearl Rock. The rapid evolution of warship design, for which Warrior was partly responsible, meant that she started to become obsolete only ten years after she had been launched. In 1871 the Royal Navy commissioned its first mastless capital ship, HMS Devastation (1871). In the absence of masts, the main armament could move from the broadside and traverse more freely from a higher position. In the same year, Warrior began a refit that lasted until 1875; it added a poop deck and steam capstan, a shorter bowsprit, and replacement boilers. In April 1875, the ship was recommissioned, and assigned to the First Reserve, where she served as a guardship at Portland. In this role, she went on annual summer cruises to various ports. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, she was mobilised due to concerns that the victorious Russians might be about to attack Constantinople, forcing Great Britain to intervene, but nothing transpired and Warrior cruised to Bantry Bay instead. In April 1881 she was transferred to the Clyde District, where she served as guardship until 31 May 1883. Two of her masts were discovered to be rotten that month and with no replacements available, the ship was decommissioned and the masts removed.

Warrior was reclassified as a "screw battle ship, third class, armoured" in 1887 and again in May 1892 as a first-class armoured cruiser, although no changes were made to her. She was considered for modernization as late as 1894, but this was rejected as uneconomical after at least one new boiler was installed. She was struck off the effective list at Portsmouth and classified as hulk in March 1900. The ship was used as a storage hulk from May 1901 to July 1902. In preparation for her service as a depot ship for a flotilla of destroyers, the ship had her engines and boilers removed and part of her upper deck roofed over. Warrior served in this role from July 1902, under the command of Captain John de Robeck. In March 1904, she was assigned to the Portsmouth-based HMS Vernon (shore establishment), the Royal Navy's torpedo-training school. Her name was changed to Vernon III that month in order to release her name for a new armoured cruiser HMS Warrior (1905), and six new Belleville boilers and four electric generators were installed so that she could supply steam and electricity to the neighbouring hulks that made up Vernon. Most of the upper deck was roofed over to form classrooms for radio training, and her fore and mizzen masts were reinstalled. In October 1923, the school was transferred to a newly built shore installation, rendering Warrior and her companion hulks redundant; Warrior resumed her name on 1 October and the Royal Navy declared her redundant six months later.

The mass scrapping of obsolete ships after World War I had caused a downturn in demand for scrap iron by the time the Navy decided to sell off Warrior on 2 April 1925. There was no commercial interest in scrapping the old ship, and she remained at Portsmouth for another four years. She was modified into a mooring jetty beginning on 22 October 1927. This entailed the removal of all of her equipment and masts other than her boilers and generators, and the installation of two diesel-driven emergency pumps. The space under the poop was converted into accommodation for a shipkeeper and his family. The hulk was towed to her new home, Pembroke Dock in Wales, on 13 March 1929 where she served as a floating oil jetty. For the next fifty years, the ship lay just offshore from an oil depot at Llanion Cove. The Navy covered the ship's upper deck with a thick layer of concrete during one of her maintenance dockings before World War II. In the war, she served as a base ship for coastal minesweepers and, on 27 August 1942, was once again renamed as Oil Fuel Hulk C77 to release her name for use by a light aircraft carrier, HMS Warrior (R31), then under construction. She refuelled 5,000 ships during her service at Llanion Cove.

Preservation
Restoring Warrior was discussed in the early 1960s, but did not develop into a serious project. In 1967, the Greater London Council proposed to restore the ship as an attraction in London, but Warrior was still required in Pembroke by the Royal Navy and the scheme went no further. In 1968 the Duke of Edinburgh chaired a meeting that discussed preserving and restoring Warrior and other historic vessels, and a year later The Maritime Trust was established to save the decrepit ironclad and other historic ships. The Maritime Trust and a major supporter, the Manifold Trust led by the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) John Smith, maintained an interest in Warrior. In 1976 the Royal Navy announced that the Llanion Oil Depot would close in 1978, and the Manifold Trust began to seek funds to restore her. With the promise of financial support for restoration, the Royal Navy donated the ship to the trust in 1979. The Ship's Preservation Trust acquired ownership of the ship in 1983; it became the Warrior Preservation Trust in 1985.

Restoration
In August 1979 Warrior began her 800 mi journey to her temporary home in the Coal Dock at Hartlepool for restoration as a museum ship. She arrived on 2 September 1979 and began the £9 million restoration project, largely funded by the Manifold Trust. The Maritime Trust decided to restore Warrior to her 1862 condition with the aim that no further major work would be necessary for the next 20 years. The first two years of the restoration were generally devoted to safely removing material added after her first commission, like the poop deck and the 200 LT of concrete decking. Intensive research was done to find detailed descriptions of the ship and her equipment as of 1862 to make the restoration as accurate as economically feasible. Sources included surviving official records, and the papers of those who had served on the ship during her active service. Bolt-holes and ridges in the paint gave clues to the location of some fittings and fixtures, and the sketch plans of Midshipman Henry Murray, found in Captain Cochrane's Letter Book, showed the locations of the armament, moveable fittings and stores.

Work on carving a replacement for Warrior's figurehead, which was destroyed in the 1960s, began in 1981 using photographs of the original as a guide. The 12 ft work-in-progress was displayed at the 1982 London International Boat Show with the carvers, Jack Whitehead and Norman Gaches from the Isle of Wight, still at work; it dominated coverage of the show. Before it was finished in mid-1983, the figurehead appeared on the BBC children's television programme Blue Peter. For much of 1984 it was displayed at the Main Gate of the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard. It was mounted on the ship on 6 February 1985.

Replacement of the ship's 86 ft, 42 in lower masts in wood was not feasible, so they were made of steel tube cut and welded to shape, with a ladder inside each mast to allow access to the platforms on the masts. The three masts and the bowsprit were stepped in place between September 1984 and February 1985. Warrior's engines, boilers and auxiliary machinery were considered too expensive to rebuild, so replicas were built from sheet steel with a few components made from cast iron to duplicate the look of the real equipment. The replica engines can rotate slowly, using electrical power, to allow visitors to imagine how they might have looked in operation.

The Woolwich Rotunda Artillery Museum and the States of Jersey lent examples of Warrior's original primary guns, the muzzle-loading 68-pounder and the breech-loading 110-pounder, which were used as moulds for fibreglass replicas. The Armstrong guns were built with working breeches; they, and the muzzles of all the guns, had to be sealed to prevent people leaving rubbish in them. Little information was available on the wooden gun carriages despite extensive research, and a prototype had to be developed and tested before they could be built.

Museum ship
In 1985 a new berth beside Portsmouth Harbour railway station was dredged, and a new jetty constructed in preparation for Warrior arrival in Portsmouth. The ship left Hartlepool on 12 June 1987 under the command of Captain Collin Allen and was towed 390 mi to the Solent in four days. When she entered Portsmouth Harbour she was welcomed by thousands of people lining the town walls and shore, and by over 90 boats and ships. She opened as a museum on 27 July. The restored ironclad was renamed HMS Warrior (1860) to avoid confusion with the Northwood Headquarters, commissioned as HMS Warrior in 1963, which was at the time the operational headquarters of the Royal Navy.

Warrior is part of the National Historic Fleet, and is berthed in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard complex, which is also the home of Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, the Tudor warship Mary Rose, and First World War-era monitor HMS M33. In 1995 she received over 280,000 visitors, and the whole dockyard receives between 400,000 and 500,000 visitors annually. Warrior continued to be managed by the Warrior Preservation Trust until 2017. In April of that year, the trust was taken over by the National Museum of the Royal Navy and Warrior became part of the museum's fleet. The ship continues to be used as a venue for weddings and functions to generate funds for her maintenance. The trust also maintained a collection of material related to the ship and an archive, although it is not yet open to the public.

title: HMS Warrior (1860)


text:
Zia-ul-Haq (disambiguation)

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1924–1988) was the sixth president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988.

Zia-ul-Haq may also refer to:
 * Zia-ul-Haq (Afghan cricketer) or Zia-ul-Haq Parwani, Afghan cricketer
 * Zia-ul-haq (Afghan cricketer, born 1999) or Zia-ul-Haq Esakhel (born 1999), Afghan cricketer
 * Zia-ul-Haq (Pakistani cricketer) (born 1994), Pakistani cricketer
 * Zia-ul-Haq, the fifth leader of ISIS – Khorasan Province
 * Zia-ul-Haque, Indian cricketer

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Zia-ul-Haq (disambiguation)


text:
Athabasca oil sands

The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventional oil in the world, making Canada a significant player in the global energy market.

As of 2023, Canada's oil sands industry, along with Western Canada and offshore petroleum facilities near Newfoundland and Labrador, continued to increase production and were projected to increase by an estimated 10% in 2024 representing a potential record high at the end of the year of approximately 5.3 million barrels per day (bpd). The surge in production is attributed mainly to growth in Alberta's oilsands. The expansion of the Trans Mountain pipelinethe only oil pipeline to the West Coastwill further facilitate this increase, with its capacity set to increase significantly, to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000 bpd currently. Despite this growth, there are warnings that it might be short-lived, with production potentially plateauing after 2024. Canada's anticipated increase in oil output exceeds that of other major producers like the United States, and the country is poised to become a significant driver of global crude oil production growth in 2024. The exploitation of these resources has stirred debates regarding economic development, energy security, and environmental impacts, particularly emissions from the oilsands, prompting discussions around emissions regulations for the oil and gas sector.

The Athabaska oil sands, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits oil sand deposits lie under 141000 km2 of boreal forest and muskeg (peat bogs) according to Government of Alberta's Ministry of Energy, Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

History
The Athabasca oil sands are named after the Athabasca River which cuts through the heart of the deposit, and traces of the heavy oil are readily observed on the river banks. Historically, the bitumen was used by the indigenous Cree and Dene Aboriginal peoples to waterproof their canoes. The oil deposits are located within the boundaries of Treaty 8, and several First Nations of the area are involved with the sands.

Early history

The Athabasca oil sands first came to the attention of European fur traders in 1719 when Wa-pa-su, a Cree trader, brought a sample of bituminous sands to the Hudson's Bay Company post at York Factory on Hudson Bay where Henry Kelsey was the manager. In 1778, Peter Pond, another fur trader and a founder of the rival North West Company, became the first European to see the Athabasca deposits after exploring the Methye Portage which allowed access to the rich fur resources of the Athabasca River system from the Hudson Bay watershed.

In 1788, fur trader Alexander Mackenzie, after whom the Mackenzie River was later named, traveled along routes to both the Arctic and Pacific Ocean wrote: "At about 24 mi from the fork (of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers) are some bituminous fountains into which a pole of 20 ft long may be inserted without the least resistance. The bitumen is in a fluid state and when mixed with gum, the resinous substance collected from the spruce fir, it serves to gum the Indians' canoes." He was followed in 1799 by mapmaker David Thompson and in 1819 by British Naval officer John Franklin.

John Richardson did the first serious scientific assessment of the oil sands in 1848 on his way north to search for Franklin's lost expedition. The first government-sponsored survey of the oil sands was initiated in 1875 by John Macoun, and in 1883, G. C. Hoffman of the Geological Survey of Canada tried separating the bitumen from oil sand with the use of water and reported that it separated readily. In 1888, Robert Bell, the director of the Geological Survey of Canada, reported to a Senate Committee that "The evidence ... points to the existence in the Athabasca and Mackenzie valleys of the most extensive petroleum field in America, if not the world."

Count Alfred von Hammerstein (1870–1941), who arrived in the region in 1897, promoted the Athabasca oil sands for over forty years, taking photos with descriptive titles such as "Tar Sands and Flowing Asphaltum in the Athabasca District," that are now in the National Library and National Archives Canada. Photos of the Athabasca oil sands were also featured in Canadian writer and adventurer, Agnes Deans Cameron's, best-selling book The New North which recounted her 10000 mi roundtrip to the Arctic Ocean. Her photographs were reproduced in 2011–2012 in an exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, and included photos of Count Alfred Von Hammerstein's oil drill works along the Athabasca River.

In 1926, Karl Clark of the University of Alberta received a patent for a hot water separation process which was the forerunner of today's thermal extraction processes. Several attempts to implement it had varying degrees of success.

Project Oilsand
Project Oilsand was a 1958 proposal to exploit the Athabasca oil sands using the underground detonation of nuclear explosives; hypothetically, the heat and pressure created by an underground detonation would boil the bitumen deposits, reducing their viscosity to the point that standard oilfield techniques could be used. The plan was discussed in the October 1976 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A patent was granted for the intended process in 1964. The nuclear heating option is considered a forerunner to some of the conventional heating methods used to extract tar sands oil.

In April 1959, the Federal Mines Department approved Project Oilsand. However, it was subsequently cancelled in 1962.

Great Canadian Oil Sands
The oil sands, which are typically 40 to 60 m thick and sit on top of relatively flat limestone, are relatively easy to access. They lie under 1 to 3 m of waterlogged muskeg, 0 to 75 m of clay and barren sand. As a result of the easy accessibility, the world's first oil-sands mine was in the Athabasca oil sands.

Commercial production of oil from the Athabasca oil sands began in 1967, with the opening of the Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS) plant in Fort McMurray. It was the first operational oil sands project in the world, owned and operated by the American parent company, Sun Oil Company. When the US$240 million plant officially opened with a capacity of 45,000 oilbbl/d, it marked the beginning of commercial development of the Athabasca oil sands. In 2013 McKenzie-Brown listed industrialist J. Howard Pew as one of the six visionaries who built the Athabasca oil sands. By the time of his death in 1971, the Pew family were ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the half-dozen wealthiest families in America. The Great Canadian Oil Sands Limited (then a subsidiary of Sun Oil Company but now incorporated into an independent company known as Suncor Energy Inc.) produced 30,000 oilbbl/d of synthetic crude oil.

Oil crisis
The true size of the Canadian oil sands deposits became known in the 1970s. The Syncrude mine is now the largest mine (by area) in the world, with mines potentially covering 140,000 km2. (Although there is oil underlying 142,200 km2, which may be disturbed by drilling and in situ extraction, only 4,800 km2 may potentially be surface mined, and 904 km2 has to date been mined.)

Development was inhibited by declining world oil prices, and the second mine, operated by the Syncrude consortium, did not begin operating until 1978, after the 1973 oil crisis sparked investor interest. However, the price of oil subsided afterwards and although the 1979 energy crisis caused oil prices to peak again, during the 1980s, oil prices declined to very low levels causing considerable retrenchment in the oil industry.

In 1979, Sun formed Suncor by merging its Canadian refining and retailing interests with Great Canadian Oil Sands and its conventional oil and gas interests. In 1981, the Government of Ontario purchased a 25% stake in the company but divested it in 1993. In 1995, Sun Oil also divested its interest in the company, although Suncor maintained the Sunoco retail brand in Canada. Suncor took advantage of these two divestitures to become an independent, widely held public company.

Suncor continued to grow and continued to produce more and more oil from its oil sands operations regardless of fluctuating market prices, and eventually became bigger than its former parent company. In 2009, Suncor acquired the formerly Canadian government owned oil company, Petro-Canada, which turned Suncor into the largest petroleum company in Canada and one of the biggest Canadian companies. Suncor Energy is now a Canadian company completely unaffiliated with its former American parent company. Sun Oil Company became known as Sunoco, but later left the oil production and refining business, and has since become a retail gasoline distributor owned by Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, Texas. In Canada, Suncor Energy converted all of its Sunoco stations (which were all in Ontario) to Petro-Canada sites in order to unify all of its downstream retail operations under the Petro-Canada banner and discontinue paying licensing fees for the Sunoco brand. Nationwide, Petro-Canada's upstream product supplier and parent company is Suncor Energy. Suncor Energy continues to operate just one Sunoco retail site in Ontario.

Oil sands production in the 21st century
At the turn of the 21st century, oil sands development in Canada started to take off, with an expansion at the Suncor mine, a new mine and expansion at Syncrude, and a new mine by Royal Dutch Shell associated with their new Scotford Upgrader near Edmonton. Three new large steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) projects were added – Foster Creek, Surmont, and MacKay River – by different companies, all of which have since been bought by larger companies.

Shell Canada's third mine began operating in 2003. However, as a result of oil price increases since 2003, the existing mines have been greatly expanded and new ones were built.

According to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, 2005 production of crude bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands was as follows:

 * {| class="wikitable"

!Mine !(m3/day) !Barrels per day !Suncor mine !Syncrude mine !Shell Canada mine !In situ projects !Total
 * +2005 production of crude bitumen
 * style="text-align:right"|31,000
 * style="text-align:right"|195,000
 * style="text-align:right"|41,700
 * style="text-align:right"|262,000
 * style="text-align:right"|26,800
 * style="text-align:right"|169,000
 * style="text-align:right"|21,300
 * style="text-align:right"|134,000
 * style="text-align:right"|120,800
 * style="text-align:right"|760,000
 * }

As of 2006, oil sands production had increased to 1126000 oilbbl/d. Oil sands were by then the source of 62% of Alberta's total oil production and 47% of all oil produced in Canada. As of 2010, oil sands production had increased to over 1.6 Moilbbl/d to exceed conventional oil production in Canada. 53% of this was produced by surface mining and 47% by in-situ techniques. In 2012, oil production from oil sands was 1.8 Moilbbl/d.

Shale oil boom
The massive development of tight oil extraction in the Bakken and Permian Basin in the United States transformed the oil industry rapidly, reducing importation of foreign oil dramatically. As with the oil sands, production costs of shale oil are higher than those of conventional oil. A combination of factors, among them oversupply and geopolitical rivalries, drove the price of oil down from more than 100 dollars a barrel in 2013 to less than 40 dollars three years later. Lingering low oil prices prompted companies to cancel new investments in the oil sands.

Fort McMurray wildfire
From May to July 2016, a wildfire spread from Fort McMurray across northern Alberta, burning approximately 590,000 ha of forested areas and destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings. 88,000 people were forced from their homes in what became the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta's history and the costliest disaster in Canadian history.

The wildfire halted oil sands production at facilities north of Fort McMurray. Shell Canada shut down output at its Albian Sands mining operation. Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada also scaled back operations and evacuated employees and their families. Approximately one million barrels of oil a day, equal to a quarter of Canada's oil production, was halted as a result of the fire in May. This continued into June at a rate of 700,000 barrels per day. The lost output was a contributing factor to rises in global oil prices. The scaled back operations, along with a refinery outage in Edmonton, caused many gas stations to run out of gas throughout Western Canada.
 * {| class="wikitable"

!Mine !(m3/day) !Barrels per day !Suncor mine !Syncrude mine !Shell Canada mines !Imperial Oil mine !CNRL mine !In situ projects !Total In 2018, oil sands production reached 3.1 Moilbbl/d.
 * +2015 production of crude bitumen
 * style="text-align:right" |80,000
 * style="text-align:right" |501,000
 * style="text-align:right" |65,000
 * style="text-align:right" |407,000
 * style="text-align:right" |40,000
 * style="text-align:right" |255,000
 * style="text-align:right" |35,000
 * style="text-align:right" |220,000
 * style="text-align:right" |24,000
 * style="text-align:right" |152,000
 * style="text-align:right" |138,000
 * style="text-align:right" |865,000
 * style="text-align:right" |382,000
 * style="text-align:right" |2,400,000
 * }

Until 2014, industry groups believed oil sands production levels could reach 5 Moilbbl/d by 2030. As of 2021, after a slowdown in investment, analyst are predicting it could reach 3.8 Moilbbl/d by that time.

Transportation
Canada is the largest source of oil imported by the United States, supplying 3 Moilbbl/d chiefly from oil sands sources as of 2019.

Industry observers went from believing there might be excess pipeline capacity to warning that it was insufficient to accommodate oil sands production growth, after several pipeline projects were abandoned or cancelled.

The North Gateway project to Kitimat, British Columbia, which would have been built by Enbridge, operator of the Enbridge Pipeline System which also serves the area, was cancelled in 2016. Similarly, after lengthy environmentalist and First Nation group opposition, Keystone XL, a pipeline project from Alberta to Gulf coast refineries, was cancelled in 2021. Other projects, using existing rights of way, are being built, like Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Expansion, nationalized in 2018, or Enbridge's Line 9, reversed to feed refineries in Quebec. Between January 2019 and December 2020, the Alberta government imposed a quota to adjust production to pipeline export capacity.

To compensate for pipeline capacity limitations, shipment of oil by rail increased from less than 50 thousand to 400 Mbbl/d between 2012 and 2020.

Future production
As of December 2008, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers revised its 2008–2020 crude oil forecasts to account for project cancellations and cutbacks as a result of the price declines in the second half of 2008. The revised forecast predicted that Canadian oil sands production would continue to grow, but at a slower rate than previously predicted. There would be minimal changes to 2008–2012 production, but by 2020 production could be 300000 oilbbl/d less than its prior predictions. This would mean that Canadian oil sands production would grow from 1.2 Moilbbl/d in 2008 to 3.3 Moilbbl/d in 2020, and that total Canadian oil production would grow from 2.7 to 4.1 Moilbbl/d in 2020. Even accounting for project cancellations, this would place Canada among the four or five largest oil-producing countries in the world by 2020.

In early December 2007, London-based BP and Calgary-based Husky Energy announced a 50–50 joint venture to produce and refine bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands. BP would contribute its Toledo, Ohio refinery to the joint venture, while Husky would contribute its Sunrise oil sands project. Sunrise was planned to start producing 60000 oilbbl/d of bitumen in 2012 and may reach 200000 oilbbl/d by 2015–2020. BP would modify its Toledo refinery to process 170000 oilbbl/d of bitumen directly to refined products. The joint venture would solve problems for both companies, since Husky was short of refining capacity, and BP had no presence in the oil sands. It was a change of strategy for BP, since the company historically has downplayed the importance of oil sands.

In mid December 2007, ConocoPhillips announced its intention to increase its oil sands production from 60000 oilbbl/d to 1 Moilbbl/d over the next 20 years, which would make it the largest private sector oil sands producer in the world. ConocoPhillips currently holds the largest position in the Canadian oil sands with over 1 e6acre under lease. Other major oil sands producers planning to increase their production include Royal Dutch Shell (to 770000 oilbbl/d); Syncrude Canada (to 550000 oilbbl/d); Suncor Energy (to 500000 oilbbl/d) and Canadian Natural Resources (to 500000 oilbbl/d). If all these plans come to fruition, these five companies will be producing over 3.3 Moilbbl/d of oil from oil sands by 2028.

Governance
The governance of the Alberta oil sands is focused on economic development, and has historically been dominated by the interests of two primary actors; government (federal and provincial) and industry. Canadian federalism forms the functions and roles of each level of government, in that constitutional power is split so that neither is superior to the other. The Constitution Act, 1867, Section 109 ensures the province full ownership of the lands and resources within its borders. The province acts as the landowner and the federal government oversees jurisdiction over trade, commerce and taxation. There is a clear overlap, as resource management influences trade, and trade management influences resources. As of the 1990s, both the federal and provincial government have been aligned, focusing on regulation, technology and the development of new export markets. The majority of "ground-level" governance is carried out by a number of provincial institutions.

Ottawa has avoided direct investment, preferring to improve the investment climate. A prime example of this occurred in 1994, when the federal government rolled out tax breaks allowing 100% of oil sands capital investments to be written off as accelerated capital cost allowances. The provincial government had a much more direct role in development; investing directly in numerous pilot projects, undertaking joint ventures with the industry and consistently making massive investments in research and development. Some people have claimed that Alberta features one of the lowest royalty rates in the world. Since Alberta, unlike US states, owns the vast majority of oil under its surface it can exercise more control over it, whereas US states are limited to severance taxes. This industry-centric royalty system has been criticised for "promoting a runaway pace of development".

Industry is the core force of oil sands development. The first major players, Suncor Energy and Syncrude, dominated the market until the 1990s. Currently there are 64 companies operating several hundred projects. The majority of production now comes from foreign-owned corporations, and the maintenance of a favourable climate for these corporations grants them strong influence; much stronger than that of non-productive stakeholders, such as citizens and environmental groups.

Governance (policy, administration, regulation) over the oil sands is held almost entirely by the Ministry of Energy (Alberta) and its various departments. Critics noted a clear and systemic lack of public involvement at all key stages of the governance process. In answer to this, the province initiated the Oil Sands Consultations Multistakeholder Committee (MSC) in 2006. The MSC represents four organisations: the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA), the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA), the Canadian Oil Sands Network for Research and Development (CONRAD) and the Athabasca Regional Issues Working Group (RIWG). The role of the MSC is to consult and make recommendations on management principles. The recommendations contained in the MSC's first 2007 Final Report were lauded by several ministers and government representatives, but none have yet been effectively passed into law.

On October 17, 2012, the Alberta government announced it would follow the recommendations of a working group to develop an agency that would monitor the environmental impact of the oil sands. "The new science-based agency will begin work in the oil sands region and will focus on what is monitored, how it's monitored and where it's monitored. This will include integrated and coordinated monitoring of land, air, water and biodiversity," said a press release from Diana McQueen's office, the Minister of Energy and Sustainable Development. The provincial government moved to develop the agency after widespread public criticism by environmentalists, aboriginal groups and scientists, who claimed the oil sands would have a devastating, long-term effect on the environment if left unchecked.

On 17 June 2013 the newly formed corporation, Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) was phased in with a mandate to regulate oil, gas and coal development in Alberta including the Athabasca oil sands. The AER brings together "the regulatory functions from the Energy Resources Conservation Board and the Alberta Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development into a one-stop shop" The Alberta Energy Regulator is now "responsible for all projects from application to reclamation." They will respond to project proponents, landowners and industry regarding energy regulations in Alberta. The Responsible Energy Development Act gave the Alberta Energy Regulator "the authority to administer the Public Lands Act, the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and the Water Act, with regards to energy development." The Alberta Energy Regulator will enforce environmental laws and issue environmental and water permits, responsibilities formerly the mandate of Alberta Environment.

Development
The key characteristic of the Athabasca deposit is that it is the only one shallow enough to be suitable for surface mining. About 10% of the Athabasca oil sands are covered by less than 75 m of overburden. Until 2009, the surface mineable area (SMA) was defined by the ERCB, an agency of the Alberta government, to cover 37 contiguous townships (about 3400 km2) north of Fort McMurray. In June 2009, the SMA was expanded to $51 1/2$ townships, or about 4700 km2. This expansion pushes the northern limit of the SMA to within 12 mi of Wood Buffalo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Albian Sands mine (operated by Shell Canada) opened in 2003. All three of these mines are associated with bitumen upgraders that convert the unusable bitumen into synthetic crude oil for shipment to refineries in Canada and the United States. For Albian, the upgrader is located at Scotford, 439 km south. The bitumen, diluted with a solvent, is transferred there in a 610 mm corridor pipeline.

The Energy Resource Conservation Board has approved over 100 mining and in-situ projects despite the negative environmental impacts. As of 2012, there were 9 active open mining projects, more than 50 approved in-situ projects as well as 190 primary recovery projects extracting bitumen that is free flowing. The ERCB has also approved 20 projects that are testing unproven technology as well as new versions of existing technologies.

Surface mining
Since Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) started operation of its mine in 1967, bitumen has been extracted on a commercial scale from the Athabasca Oil Sands by surface mining. In the Athabasca sands there are very large amounts of bitumen covered by little overburden, making surface mining the most efficient method of extracting it. The overburden consists of water-laden muskeg (peat bog) over top of clay and barren sand. The oil sands themselves are typically 40 to 60 m deep, sitting on top of flat limestone rock. Originally, the sands were mined with draglines and bucket-wheel excavators and moved to the processing plants by conveyor belts.

These early mines had a steep learning curve to deal with before their bitumen mining techniques became efficient. In the intervening years, more effective in-situ production techniques were developed, particularly steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). In-situ methods became increasingly important because only about 20% of the Athabasca oil sands were shallow enough to recover by surface mining, and the SAGD method in particular was very efficient at recovering large amounts of bitumen at a reasonable cost.

In recent years, companies such as Syncrude and Suncor have switched to much cheaper shovel-and-truck operations using the biggest power shovels (at least 100 ST) and dump trucks (400 ST) in the world. This has held production costs to around US$27 per barrel of synthetic crude oil despite rising energy and labour costs.

After excavation, hot water and caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) is added to the sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is agitated and the oil skimmed from the top. Provided that the water chemistry is appropriate to allow bitumen to separate from sand and clay, the combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from the oil sand, and allows small air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets. The bitumen froth floats to the top of separation vessels, and is further treated to remove residual water and fine solids.

About 2 ST of oil sands are required to produce one barrel (1/8 ST) of oil. Originally, roughly 75% of the bitumen was recovered from the sand. However, recent enhancements to this method include Tailings Oil Recovery (TOR) units which recover oil from the tailings, Diluent Recovery Units to recover naphtha from the froth, inclined plate settlers (IPS) and disc centrifuges. These allow the extraction plants to recover well over 90% of the bitumen in the sand. After oil extraction, the spent sand and other materials are then returned to the mine, which is eventually reclaimed.

Alberta Taciuk Process technology extracts bitumen from oil sands through a dry retorting. During this process, oil sand is moved through a rotating drum, cracking the bitumen with heat and producing lighter hydrocarbons. Although tested, this technology is not in commercial use yet.

The original process for extraction of bitumen from the sands was developed by Dr. Karl Clark, working with the Alberta Research Council in the 1920s. Today, all of the producers doing surface mining, such as Syncrude Canada, Suncor Energy and Albian Sands Energy etc., use a variation of the Clark Hot Water Extraction (CHWE) process. In this process, the ores are mined using open-pit mining technology. The mined ore is then crushed for size reduction. Hot water at 50 - 80 °C is added to the ore and the formed slurry is transported using hydrotransport line to a primary separation vessel (PSV) where bitumen is recovered by flotation as bitumen froth. The recovered bitumen froth consists of 60% bitumen, 30% water and 10% solids by weight.

The recovered bitumen froth needs to be cleaned to reject the contained solids and water to meet the requirement of downstream upgrading processes. Depending on the bitumen content in the ore, between 90 and 100% of the bitumen can be recovered using modern hot water extraction techniques. After oil extraction, the spent sand and other materials are then returned to the mine, which is eventually reclaimed.

Steam-assisted gravity drainage
Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells are drilled into the oil reservoir, one a few metres above the other. High pressure steam is continuously injected into the upper wellbore to heat the oil and reduce its viscosity, causing the heated oil to drain into the lower wellbore, where it is pumped out to a bitumen recovery facility. Dr. Roger Butler, engineer at Imperial Oil from 1955 to 1982, invented steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) in the 1970s. Butler "developed the concept of using horizontal pairs of wells and injected steam to develop certain deposits of bitumen considered too deep for mining."

More recently, in situ methods like steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) have been developed to extract bitumen from deep deposits by injecting steam to heat the sands and reduce the bitumen viscosity so that it can be pumped out like conventional crude oil.

The standard extraction process requires huge amounts of natural gas. As of 2007, the oil sands industry used about 4% of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin natural gas production. By 2015, this may increase two-and-a-half-fold.

According to the National Energy Board, it requires about 1200 cuft of natural gas to produce one barrel of bitumen from in situ projects and about 700 cuft for integrated projects. Since a barrel of oil equivalent is about 6000 cuft of gas, this represents a large gain in energy. That being the case, it is likely that Alberta regulators will reduce exports of natural gas to the United States in order to provide fuel to the oil sands plants. As gas reserves are exhausted, however, oil upgraders will probably turn to bitumen gasification to generate their own fuel. In much the same way as bitumen can be converted into synthetic crude oil, it can also be converted into synthetic natural gas.

Land
The oil sands have been described by first nations peoples, scientists, lawyers, journalists and environmental groups as ecocide. Approximately 20% of Alberta's oil sands are recoverable through open-pit mining, while 80% require in situ extraction technologies (largely because of their depth). Open pit mining destroys the boreal forest and muskeg, while in situ extraction technologies cause less significant damage. Approximately 0.19% of the Alberta boreal forest has been disturbed by open pit mining. The Alberta government requires companies to restore the land to "equivalent land capability". This means that the ability of the land to support various land uses after reclamation is similar to what existed, but that the individual land uses may not necessarily be identical.

In some particular circumstances the government considers agricultural land to be equivalent to forest land. Oil sands companies have reclaimed mined land to use as pasture for wood bison instead of restoring it to the original boreal forest and muskeg. Syncrude asserts they have reclaimed 22% of their disturbed land, a figure disputed by other sources, who assess Syncrude more accurately reclaimed only 0.2% of its disturbed land.

Water
A Pembina Institute report stated "To produce one cubic metre (m3) [1 m3] of synthetic crude oil (SCO) (upgraded bitumen) in a mining operation requires about 2 - 4.5 m3 of water (net figures). Approved oil sands mining operations are currently licensed to divert 359 million m3 from the Athabasca River, or more than twice the volume of water required to meet the annual municipal needs of the City of Calgary." It went on to say "...the net water requirement to produce a cubic metre of oil with in situ production may be as little as 0.2 m3, depending on how much is recycled".

The Athabasca River runs 1231 km from the Athabasca Glacier in west-central Alberta to Lake Athabasca in northeastern Alberta. The average annual flow just downstream of Fort McMurray is 633 m3/s with its highest daily average measuring 1,200 cubic metres per second.

Water licence allocations total about 1% of the Athabasca River average annual flow, though actual withdrawals for all uses, in 2006, amount to about 0.4%. In addition, the Alberta government sets strict limits on how much water oil sands companies can remove from the Athabasca River. According to the Water Management Framework for the Lower Athabasca River, during periods of low river flow water consumption from the Athabasca River is limited to 1.3% of annual average flow. The province of Alberta is also looking into cooperative withdrawal agreements between oil sands operators.

Since the beginning of the oil sands development, there have been several leaks into the Athabasca River polluting it with oil and tailing pond water. The close proximity of the tailing ponds to the river drastically increases the likelihood of contamination due to ground water leakages. In 1997, Suncor admitted that their tailing ponds had been leaking 1600 m3 of toxic water into the river a day. This water contains naphthenic acid, trace metals such as mercury and other pollutants. The Athabasca River is the largest freshwater delta in the world but with Suncor and Syncrude leaking tail ponds the amount of polluted water will exceed 1 billion cubic meters by 2020.

Natural toxicants derived from bitumen in Northern Alberta pose potential ecological and human health risks to people living in the area. Oil sands development contributes arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and other metal elements toxic at low concentrations to the tributaries and rivers of the Athabasca.

Emissions
As of 2024, oilsands account for 8% of the total of Canadian emissions. Emissions from the oilsands continue to increase, while most other sources are decreasing.

The processing of bitumen into synthetic crude requires energy generated by burning natural gas. In 2007, the oil sands used around 1 e9cuft of natural gas per day, around 40% of Alberta's total usage. Based on gas purchases, natural gas requirements are given by the Canadian Energy Resource Institute as 2.14 GJ (2.04 thousand cu ft) per barrel for cyclic steam stimulation projects, 1.08 GJ (1.03 thousand cu ft) per barrel for SAGD projects, 0.55 GJ (0.52 thousand cu ft) per barrel for bitumen extraction in mining operations not including upgrading or 1.54 GJ (1.47 thousand cu ft) per barrel for extraction and upgrading in mining operations.

A 2009 study by CERA estimated that production from Canada's oil sands emits "about 5 percent to 15 percent more carbon dioxide, over the "well-to-wheels" lifetime analysis of the fuel, than average crude oil." Author and investigative journalist David Strahan that same year stated that IEA figures show that carbon dioxide emissions from the oil sands are 20% higher than average emissions from oil, explaining the discrepancy as the difference between upstream emissions and life cycle emissions. He goes on to say that a US government report in 2005 suggested with current technology conventional oil releases 40 kg of carbon dioxide per barrel while non-conventional oil releases 80–115 kg of carbon dioxide. Alberta energy suggests lower releases of carbon with improving technology, giving a value of 39% drop in emissions per barrel between 1990 and 2008, however only a 29% reduction between 1990 and 2009.

The forecast growth in synthetic oil production in Alberta also threatens Canada's international commitments. In ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Canada agreed to reduce, by 2012, its greenhouse gas emissions by 6% with respect to 1990. In 2002, Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 24% since 1990.

Ranked as the world's eighth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Canada is a relatively large emitter given its population and is missing its Kyoto targets. A major Canadian initiative called the Integrated Network (ICO2N) promotes the development of large scale capture, transport and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a means of helping Canada to help meet climate change objectives while supporting economic growth. ICO2N members represent a group of industry participants, many oil sands producers, providing a framework for carbon capture and storage development in Canada.

Two separate fraud lawsuits were filed against "ExxonMobil involving Alberta's oilsands" in October. One was in New York and the second was filed in Massachusetts on October 24. The Massachusetts lawsuit says that ExxonMobil misled investors by "falsely" justifying to them "its riskiest long-term investments, including Canadian bitumen oilsands projects." The company did not warn investors "about what climate change measures could cost its operations — especially those in the oilsands."

In December 2022, the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of six companies Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, Suncor Energy and ConocoPhillips, which together are responsible for about 95% of Canada's oil sands production, announced that exploratory drilling would begin that winter to create underground reservoirs in northern Alberta, where carbon captured during the process of oil sands extraction would be stored. The proposal, which may take several years to gain regulatory approval, includes the construction of a pipeline to transport captured carbon from over twenty oil sands facilities to an underground storage facility near Cold Lake.

The same month, Athabasca Oil Corporation, Canada's 10th largest oil producer, announced that it would build a carbon capture and storage facility at its Leismer oil sands well site near Conklin, Alberta in partnership with Entropy Inc., which is funding the project. Athabasca Oil said that it aims for a 30% reduction in emissions from the extraction process by 2025.

Animals
In Northern Alberta, oil development activities bring an enormous number of people into a fragile ecosystem. Historically, population figures have been very low for this region. Water is easily polluted because the water table reaches the surface in most areas of muskeg. With the ever-increasing development and extraction of resources, wildlife are recipient to both direct and indirect effects of pollution. Woodland Caribou are particularly sensitive to human activities, and as such are pushed away from their preferred habitat during the time of year when their caloric needs are greatest and food is the most scarce. Humans' effect on the Caribou is compounded by road construction and habitat fragmentation that open the area up to deer and wolves.

Wildlife living near the Athabasca River have been greatly impacted due to pollutants entering the water system. An unknown number of birds die each year. Particularly visible and hard hit are migrating birds that stop to rest at tailing ponds. There have been numerous reports of large flocks of ducks landing in tailing ponds and perishing soon after. Data has been recorded since the 1970s on the number of birds found on tailing ponds.

There has also been a large impact on the fish that live and spawn in the area. As toxins accumulate in the river due to the oil sands, bizarre mutations, tumors, and deformed fish species have begun to appear. A study commissioned by the region's health authority found that several known toxins and carcinogens were elevated. Aboriginal communities that live around the river are becoming increasingly worried about how the animals they eat and their drinking water are being affected.

While there has been no link yet made between the oil sands and health issues, Matt Price of Environmental Defense says the connection makes common sense. Deformities in fish and high concentrations of toxic substances in animals have also been identified.

Tailings ponds
Large volumes of tailings are a byproduct of bitumen extraction from the oil sands and managing these tailings is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. Tailings ponds are engineered dam and dyke systems that contain solvents used in the separation process as well as residual bitumen, salts and soluble organic compounds, fine silts and water. The concentrations of chemicals may be harmful to fish and oil on the surface harmful to birds. These settling basins were meant to be temporary. A major hindrance to the monitoring of oil sands produced waters has been the lack of identification of individual compounds present. By better understanding the nature of the highly complex mixture of compounds, including naphthenic acids, it may be possible to monitor rivers for leachate and also to remove toxic components. Such identification of individual acids has for many years proved to be impossible but a breakthrough in 2011 in analysis began to reveal what is in the oil sands tailings ponds. Ninety percent of the tailings water can be reused for oil extraction. By 2009 as tailing ponds continued to proliferate and volumes of fluid tailings increased, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board issued Directive 074 to force oil companies to manage tailings based on new aggressive criteria. The Government of Alberta reported in 2013 that tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands covered an area of about 77 km2. The Tailings Management Framework for Mineable Oil Sands is part of Alberta's Progressive Reclamation Strategy for the oil sands to ensure that tailings are reclaimed as quickly as possible.

Suncor invested $1.2 billion in their Tailings Reduction Operations (TROTM) method that treats mature fine tails (MFT) from tailings ponds with chemical flocculant, an anionic Polyacrylamide, commonly used in water treatment plants to improve removal of total organic content (TOC), to speed their drying into more easily reclaimable matter. Mature tailings dredged from a pond bottom in suspension were mixed with a polymer flocculant and spread over a "beach" with a shallow grade where the tailings would dewater and dry under ambient conditions. The dried MFT can then be reclaimed in place or moved to another location for final reclamation. Suncor hoped this would reduce the time for water reclamation from tailings to weeks rather than years, with the recovered water being recycled into the oil sands plant. Suncor claimed the mature fines tailings process would reduce the number of tailing ponds and shorten the time to reclaim a tailing pond from 40 years at present to 7–10 years, with land rehabilitation continuously following 7 to 10 years behind the mining operations. For the reporting periods from 2010 to 2012, Suncor had a lower-than-expected fines capture performance from this technology. Syncrude used the older composite tailings (CT) technology to capture fines at its Mildred Lake project. Syncrude had a lower-than-expected fines capture performance in 2011–2012 but exceeded expectations in 2010–2011. Shell used atmospheric fines drying (AFD) technology combined "fluid tailings and flocculants and deposits the mixture in a sloped area to allow the water to drain and the deposit to dry" and had a lower-than-expected fines capture performance.

By 2010 Suncor had transformed their first tailings pond, Pond One, into Wapisiw Lookout, the first reclaimed settling basin in the oil sands. In 2007 the area was a 220-hectare pond of toxic effluent but several years later there was firm land planted with black spruce and trembling aspen. Wapisiw Lookout represents only one percent of tailings ponds in 2011 but Pond One was the first effluent pond in the oil sands industry in 1967 and was used until 1997. By 2011 only 65 square kilometres were cleaned up and about one square kilometre was certified by Alberta as a self-sustaining natural environment. Wapisiw Lookout has not yet been certified. Closure operations of Pond One began in 2007. The jello-like mature fine tails (MFT) were pumped and dredged out of the pond and relocated to another tailings pond for long-term storage and treatment. The MFT was then replaced with 30 million tonnes clean sand and then topsoil that had been removed from the site in the 1960s. The 1.2 e6m3 of topsoil over the surface, to a depth of 50 cm, was placed on top of the sand in the form of hummocks and swales. It was then planted with reclamation plants.

In March 2012 an alliance of oil companies called Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) was launched with a mandate to share research and technology to decrease the negative environmental impact of oil sands production focusing on tailings ponds, greenhouse gases, water and land. Almost all the water used to produce crude oil using steam methods of production ends up in tailings ponds. Recent enhancements to this method include Tailings Oil Recovery (TOR) units which recover oil from the tailings, Diluent Recovery Units to recover naphtha from the froth, Inclined Plate Settlers (IPS) and disc centrifuges. These allow the extraction plants to recover well over 90% of the bitumen in the sand.

In January 2013, scientists from Queen's University published a report analyzing lake sediments in the Athabasca region over the past fifty years. They found that levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) had increased as much as 23-fold since bitumen extraction began in the 1960s. Levels of carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic PAHs were substantially higher than guidelines for lake sedimentation set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in 1999. The team discovered that the contamination spread farther than previously thought.

The Pembina Institute suggested that the huge investments by many companies in Canadian oil sands leading to increased production results in excess bitumen with no place to store it. It added that by 2022 a month's output of waste-water could result in a 11 ft toxic reservoir the size of New York City's Central Park [840.01 acre].

The oil sands industry may build a series of up to thirty lakes by pumping water into old mine pits when they have finished excavation leaving toxic effluent at their bottoms and letting biological processes restore it to health. It is less expensive to fill abandoned open pit mines with water instead of dirt. In 2012 the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA) described End Pit Lakes (EPL) as

"An engineered water body, located below grade in an oil sands post-mining pit. It may contain oil sands by-product material and will receive surface and groundwater from surrounding reclaimed and undisturbed landscapes. EPLs will be permanent features in the final reclaimed landscape, discharging water to the downstream environment."

CEMA acknowledged that the "main concern is the potential for EPLs to develop a legacy of toxicity and thus reduce the land use value of the oil sands region in the future." Syncrude Canada was planning the first end pit lake in 2013 with the intention of "pumping fresh water over 40 vertical metres of mine effluent that it has deposited in what it calls 'base mine lake.'" David Schindler argued that no further end pit lakes should be approved until we "have some assurance that they will eventually support a healthy ecosystem." There is to date no "evidence to support their viability, or the 'modelled' results suggesting that outflow from the lakes will be non-toxic."

Pipeline-processing pollution
Oil sands and especially the related projects, like the construction of a new pipeline, also have a social impact. Most of all, the local population groups would suffer from the effects of a new oil pipeline. In addition to the risk of general oil spills, there is now also the danger of gathering food due to the pollution of the fields and waters. Despite the fact that most people in those areas are not well off, the money is still used to build new projects instead of spending it on improving the quality of life there. Furthermore, adding a new pipeline to the already existing oil pipelines would increase our dependence on fossil fuels.

In July 2015, one of the largest leaks in Canada's history spilled 5,000 cubic metres of emulsion — about 5 million litres of bitumen, sand and wastewater — from a Nexen Energy pipeline at a Long Lake oil sands facility, south of Fort McMurray. The subsidiary of China's CNOOC Ltd. automated safety systems had not detected the pipeline fault that caused the spill to cover an area of about 16,000 square metres prior to manual inspection. Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) revealed the number of pipeline "incidents" in Alberta increased 15% last year, despite the regulator's well-publicized efforts to reduce ruptures and spills.

Occupational health and safety
An explosion left one worker dead and another seriously injured at the Chinese-owned Nexen Energy facility in the Long Lake oil sands near Anzac, south of Fort McMurray The two maintenance workers involved were found near natural gas compression equipment used for a hydrocracker, which turns heavy oil into lighter crude, at the plant's main processing facility, known as an upgrader.

Population
The Athabasca oil sands are located in the northeastern portion of the Canadian province of Alberta, near the city of Fort McMurray. The area is only sparsely populated, and in the late 1950s, it was primarily a wilderness outpost of a few hundred people whose main economic activities included fur trapping and salt mining. From a population of 37,222 in 1996, the boomtown of Fort McMurray and the surrounding region (known as the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo) grew to 79,810 people as of 2006, including a "shadow population" of 10,442 living in work camps. The community struggled to provide services and housing for migrant workers, many of them from Eastern Canada, especially Newfoundland. Fort McMurray ceased to be an incorporated city in 1995 and is now an urban service area within Wood Buffalo.

Estimated oil reserves
By 2015, Venezuela accounted for 18%, Saudi Arabia for 16.1%, and Canada for 10.3% of the world's proven oil reserves, according to NRCAN.

The Alberta government's Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) estimated in 2007 that about 173 Goilbbl of crude bitumen were economically recoverable from the three Alberta oil sands areas based on then-current technology and price projections from the 2006 market prices of $62 per barrel for benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI), rising to a projected $69 per barrel. This was equivalent to about 10% of the estimated 1700 Goilbbl of bitumen-in-place. Alberta estimated that the Athabasca deposits alone contain 35 Goilbbl of surface mineable bitumen and 98 Goilbbl of bitumen recoverable by in-situ methods. These estimates of Canada's reserves were doubted when they were first published but are now largely accepted by the international oil industry. This volume placed Canadian proven reserves second in the world behind those of Saudi Arabia.

Only 3% of the initial established crude bitumen reserves have been produced since commercial production started in 1967. At rate of production projected for 2015, about 3 Moilbbl/d, the Athabasca oil sands reserves would last over 170 years. However those production levels require an influx of workers into an area that until recently was largely uninhabited. By 2007 this need in northern Alberta drove unemployment rates in Alberta and adjacent British Columbia to the lowest levels in history. As far away as the Atlantic Provinces, where workers were leaving to work in Alberta, unemployment rates fell to levels not seen for over one hundred years.

The Venezuelan Orinoco Oil Sands site may contain more oil sands than Athabasca. However, while the Orinoco deposits are less viscous and more easily produced using conventional techniques (the Venezuelan government prefers to call them "extra-heavy oil"), they are too deep to access by surface mining.

Economics
Despite the large reserves, the cost of extracting the oil from bituminous sands has historically made production of the oil sands unprofitable—the cost of selling the extracted crude would not cover the direct costs of recovery; labour to mine the sands and fuel to extract the crude.

In mid-2006, the National Energy Board of Canada estimated the operating cost of a new mining operation in the Athabasca oil sands to be CA$9 to CA$12 per barrel, while the cost of an in-situ SAGD operation (using dual horizontal wells) would be CA$10 to CA$14 per barrel. This compares to operating costs for conventional oil wells which can range from less than one dollar per barrel in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to over six in the United States and Canada's conventional oil reserves.

The capital cost of the equipment required to mine the sands and haul it to processing is a major consideration in starting production. The NEB estimates that capital costs raise the total cost of production to CA$18 to CA$20 per barrel for a new mining operation and CA$18 to CA$22 per barrel for a SAGD operation. This does not include the cost of upgrading the crude bitumen to synthetic crude oil, which makes the final costs CA$36 to CA$40 per barrel for a new mining operation.

Therefore, although high crude prices make the cost of production very attractive, sudden drops in price leaves producers unable to recover their capital costs—although the companies are well financed and can tolerate long periods of low prices since the capital has already been spent and they can typically cover incremental operating costs.

However, the development of commercial production is made easier by the fact that exploration costs are very low. Such costs are a major factor when assessing the economics of drilling in a traditional oil field. The location of the oil deposits in the oil sands are well known, and an estimate of recovery costs can usually be made easily. There is not another region in the world with energy deposits of comparable magnitude where it would be less likely that the installations would be confiscated by a hostile national government, or be endangered by a war or revolution.

As a result of the oil price increases since 2003, the economics of oil sands have improved dramatically. At a world price of US$50 per barrel, the NEB estimated an integrated mining operation would make a rate return of 16 to 23%, while a SAGD operation would return 16 to 27%. Prices since 2006 have risen, exceeding US$145 in mid-2008 but falling back to less than 40 US$ as a result of the worldwide financial crisis, the oil price recovered slowly and many of the planned projects (expected to exceed CA$100 billion between 2006 and 2015) were stopped or scheduled. In 2012 and 2013 the oil price was high again, but the US production is increasing due to new technologies, while the gasoline demand is falling, so there is an overproduction of oil. But recovering economy can change this in a few years.

At present the area around Fort McMurray has seen the most effect from the increased activity in the oil sands. Although jobs are plentiful, housing is in short supply and expensive. People seeking work often arrive in the area without arranging accommodation, driving up the price of temporary accommodation. The area is isolated, with only a two-lane road, Alberta Highway 63, connecting it to the rest of the province, and there is pressure on the government of Alberta to improve road links as well as hospitals and other infrastructure.

Despite the best efforts of companies to move as much of the construction work as possible out of the Fort McMurray area, and even out of Alberta, the shortage of skilled workers is spreading to the rest of the province. Even without the oil sands, the Alberta economy would be very strong, but development of the oil sands has resulted in the strongest period of economic growth ever recorded by a Canadian province.

Geopolitical importance
The Athabasca oil sands hold geopolitical significance.

An agreement has been signed between PetroChina and Enbridge to build a 400000 oilbbl/d pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta, to the west coast port of Kitimat, British Columbia. If it is built, the pipeline will help export synthetic crude oil from the oil sands to China and elsewhere in the Pacific. However, in 2011, First Nations and environmental groups protested the proposed pipeline, stating that its construction and operation would be destructive to the environment. First Nations groups also claim that the development of the proposed pipeline is in violation of commitments that the Government of Canada has made through various Treaties and the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A smaller pipeline will also be built alongside to import condensate to dilute the bitumen. Sinopec, the largest refining and chemical company in China, and China National Petroleum Corporation have bought or are planning to buy shares in major oil sands development.

On August 20, 2009, the U.S. State Department issued a presidential permit for an Alberta Clipper Pipeline that will run from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The pipeline will be capable of carrying up to 450000 oilbbl of crude oil a day to refineries in the U.S.

Indigenous peoples of the area
Indigenous peoples of the area include the Fort McKay First Nation. The oil sands themselves are located within the boundaries of Treaty 8, signed in 1899, which states:

"It does not appear likely that the conditions of the country on either side of the Athabasca and Slave Rivers or about Athabasca Lake will be so changed as to affect hunting or trapping, and it is safe to say that so long as the fur-bearing animals remain, the great bulk of the Indians will continue to hunt and to trap."

"We had to solemnly assure them that only such laws as to hunting and fishing as were in the interest of the Indians and were found necessary in order to protect the fish and fur-bearing animals would be made, and that they would be as free to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it. ... It does not appear likely that the conditions of the country on either side of the Athabasca and Slave Rivers or about Athabasca Lake will be so changed as to affect hunting or trapping, and it is safe to say that so long as the fur-bearing animals remain, the great bulk of the Indians will continue to hunt and to trap."

The Fort McKay First Nation has formed several companies to service the oil sands industry and will be developing a mine on their territory. Opposition remaining within the First Nation focuses on environmental stewardship, land rights, and health issues, like elevated cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan and deformed fish being found by commercial fishermen in Lake Athabasca.

The Alberta Cancer Board published research of the cancer rates of those living in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, in 2009. While many companies argue that there are not enough chemicals and toxic material in the water due to the development of the oil sands, this report indicates that there is coincidentally a significantly higher rate of cancer within this community. There have been many speculations as to why there is a higher rate of cancer in this community; some of those speculations are contamination with the river and the oil sands as well as uranium mining that is currently in progress. The world's largest production of uranium is produced in this area as well as along the Athabasca River, allowing for easy contamination of the river.

From 2010 to 2014, the Tar Sands Healing Walk, founded by Indigenous women, was held annually as a demonstration against oil extraction and the damage it caused to local communities and the environment.

Impact of oil sands and pipeline development on Indigenous groups
According to some environmental activists, pipeline development poses risks to the cultural, social, and economic way of life of Canada's Indigenous populations. Historically, some Indigenous groups have opposed pipeline development for two primary reasons: 1) the perception of inherent environmental risks associated with transporting harmful oil and gas products, and 2) failure by the federal government to properly consider and mitigate Indigenous groups' concerns regarding resource development on their lands. For instance, many Indigenous groups rely heavily on local wildlife and vegetation for their survival. Increased oil production in Canada requires greater oil transport through their traditional lands, which, to some, poses the perception of threats to the survival and traditional way of life of Indigenous groups, as well as the safety and preservation of the surrounding ecosystems. First Nations in Alberta have called particular attention to adverse health impacts related to oil sands emissions, asserting that the water quality testing for specific chemicals (heavy metals) has been insufficient.

Aside from environmental concerns, many Indigenous groups have pushed back against pipeline development due to inadequate consultation processes by the federal government. As per Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution Act Indigenous peoples in Canada are guaranteed the right to be meaningfully consulted with and accommodated when the Crown is contemplating resource development on their lands - see Duty to Consult. Through a series of Supreme Court of Canada rulings and political protests from Indigenous peoples (see Haida Nation v. British Columbia [Minister of Forests], Taku River Tlingit First Nation v British Columbia, and Tsilhqot'in Nation v British Columbia), among others, the courts have attempted to further define the Crown's consultation responsibilities and give legal recognition to Indigenous traditional territory and rights regarding resource development.

Contrarily, oil sands development also presents many positive impacts and opportunities for Indigenous groups, particularly in Western Canada. In fact, over the past two decades, First Nations participation in the energy sector has increased dramatically, from employment and business opportunities to project approval processes and environmental evaluation. Increased Indigenous participation has been encouraged by numerous collaboration agreements with industry, typically in the form of impact benefit agreements (IBAs), which provide not only employment and business ventures, but also job training and community benefits. Enhanced participation in the energy sector has empowered many Indigenous groups to push for wider involvement by negotiating ownership stakes in proposed pipelines and bitumen storage projects. Perhaps the best example of such partnering in Alberta is the agreement between Suncor and Fort McKay and Mikisew Cree First Nations. The two First Nations acquired a 49% ownership in Suncor's East Tank Farm Development with shares valued at about $500 million making it the largest business investment to date by a First Nation entity in Canada.

Support for resource development and desire for direct involvement is further illustrated by the First Nations' led $17-billion Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Ltd. pipeline and energy corridor between Alberta and the northern B.C. coast (with a back-up plan to site its terminal in Alaska to get around the tanker ban in B.C.). The project has secured support from 35 First Nations along the proposed route; the bands are entitled to at least 35% ownership in exchange for the land use.

Oil sand companies
There are currently three large oil sands mining operations in the area run by Syncrude Canada Limited, Suncor Energy and Albian Sands owned by Shell Canada, Chevron, and Marathon Oil Corp.

Major producing or planned developments in the Athabasca Oil Sands include the following projects:

 * Suncor Energy's Steepbank and Millennium mines currently produce 263000 oilbbl/d and its Firebag in-situ project produces 35000 oilbbl/d.
 * Syncrude's Mildred Lake and Aurora mines currently can produce 360000 oilbbl/d.
 * Shell Canada currently operates its Muskeg River Mine producing 155000 oilbbl/d and the Scotford Upgrader at Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.
 * Nexen's in-situ Long Lake SAGD project is now producing 70000 oilbbl/d.
 * Total S.A.'s subsidiary Deer Creek Energy was operating a SAGD project on its Joslyn lease, producing 10000 oilbbl/d. It intended on constructing its mine by 2010 to expand its production by 100000 oilbbl/d, however this had not occurred by May 2014 when the company shelved the project while it reviewed the economic viability of the project.

Court ordered sanctions
For improper diversion of water in 2008–2009, Statoil Canada Ltd. was ordered in 2012 to pay a fine of $5000 and to allocate $185,000 for a training project (The verdict was handed down by the Provincial Court of Alberta, Criminal Division).

Video material

 * Dirty Oil. Documentary by Leslie Iwerks, 2009
 * H2Oil. Documentary by Shannon Walsh, 2009
 * Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands. Documentary by Peter Mettler, 2009
 * Tar Sands – Canada for Sale Documentary by Tom Radford, 2008
 * People & Power – Alberta's Oil Sands. Al Jazeera English, 2008
 * Riz Khan – Canada's dirty oil. Al Jazeera English, 2009
 * 60 Minutes – The Alberta Oil Sands. CBS, 22. January 2006
 * To the Last Drop. Documentary by Tom Radford about the impact on local communities, broadcast on Al Jazeera English's program Witness, 2011
 * The Alberta Oil Sands. Govt. of Alberta Documentary Film, 2009

title: Athabasca oil sands


text:
Worshipful Company of Drapers

The Worshipful Company of Drapers is one of the 111 livery companies of the City of London. It has the formal name The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mystery of Drapers of the City of London. More usually known simply as the Drapers' Company, it is one of the historic Great Twelve Livery Companies and was founded during the Middle Ages.

History
An informal association of drapers had organized as early as 1180, and the first (Lord) Mayor of London in 1189, Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonestone, was believed to have been a Draper. The guild was formally founded in 1361; it received a Royal Charter three years later. It was incorporated as a company under a Royal Charter in 1438 and was the first corporate body to be granted a coat of arms. The charter gave the company perpetual succession and a common seal. Over the centuries the original privileges granted by Royal Charter have been confirmed and amended by successive monarchs. The acting charter of today is that granted by James I in 1607, amended by four supplemental charters, most recently in 2008.

The brotherhood of drapers, a religious fraternity attached to the Church of St Mary Bethlehem in Bishopsgate, was founded in honour of the Virgin Mary by "good people Drapers of Cornhill and other good men and women" for the amendment of their lives. The majority of drapers lived in and around Cornhill, Candlewick Street (now Cannon Street) and Chepe (Cheapside). Possibly it was for this reason that their allegiance was transferred to St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside and later to St Michael, Cornhill, where the company continues to worship today. Despite these changes, the drapers retain the Blessed Virgin Mary as their patron saint.

Originally, the organisation was a trade association of wool and cloth merchants. It has been one of the most powerful companies in London civic politics. Over one hundred Lord Mayors have been members of the company; the first, Henry Fitz-Ailwyn, progenitor of the Earls of Arundel, was a draper. During the Plantation of Ulster, the company held land around Moneymore and Draperstown in County Londonderry.

Amongst the royalty who have been members of the company, four had not been expected to become a monarch at the time of their birth but were later crowned: Other well-known members have included Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (aka The Grand Old Duke of York), Sir Francis Drake, Admiral the Viscount Nelson, The Marquess of Ripon and Grinling Gibbons.
 * Prince William of Orange, later King William (III & II) of England, Scotland, France and Ireland
 * Prince Carl of Denmark, later King Haakon VII of Norway
 * Prince Albert, Duke of York, later George VI, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India
 * Princess Elizabeth of York, later Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (who was elected to the Court of Assistants in 2017, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of her membership of the Company), King Harald V of Norway, King Charles III, The Duchess of Gloucester, Admiral the Lord Boyce, and Lady Victoria Leatham (elected as the first female Master of the Company in 2012) are among the many distinguished recent members of the company.

Thomas Harris serves as Master Draper for 2023–24.

Present
Today, the company operates as a charitable, ceremonial and educational institution. This has included providing the site and some of the buildings of Queen Mary University of London, the library at Bangor University, the Radcliffe Science Library and Townsend Building in Oxford, the Science Library at Cardiff University, and the site and the original nineteenth-century buildings of Bancroft's School. It also administers three almshouses: Queen Elizabeth College Greenwich, Edmanson's Close Tottenham and Walter's Close Southwark. It provides the chairman and four other governors of Bancroft's School, who display the Drapers' coat of arms and motto. It is the co-sponsor of Drapers' Academy in Harold Hill, which uses a similar logo.

It has maintained long-standing close ties with Kirkham Grammar School near Preston, Lancashire, founded in Tudor times.

The Company founded two girls' schools: in Llandaff and Denbigh, Wales, using the endowment of Welsh merchant Thomas Howell, who bequeathed a sum of money to the foundation. Both schools were independent and separate institutions but the Company still has a representative in the governing body of the former. The company also has close links with some eighteen other educational establishments, ranging from Oxbridge colleges to a primary school. It administers charitable trusts relating to relief of need, education and almshouses; it provides banqueting and catering services; and it fosters its heritage and traditions of good fellowship. The Court of Assistants is its governing body.

The Drapers' Company continues to play a role in the life of the City. Its liverymen carry out important functions in the elections of the governance of the City and its civic offices.

Livery hall
The Drapers' Company is based at Drapers' Hall located in Throgmorton Street, near London Wall. The company has owned the site since 1543, when it purchased the London mansion of Thomas Cromwell, of Austin Friars, from King Henry VIII. Cromwell had been attainted and executed in 1540.

The building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt to designs by Edward Jarman. After another fire in 1772, it was rebuilt again. This time the architect was John Gorham. Further extensive alterations were made in the 19th century. The Hall survived the Blitz during the Second World War.

The Hall includes four finely decorated main rooms used for the company's functions. The largest room is the Livery Hall, which can accommodate up to 276 guests for dinner. These rooms are also available for hire and have often been used for film locations, including for The King's Speech, GoldenEye, The Lost Prince and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London. Groups may book a guided tour of Drapers' Hall; a donation to the company's charitable work is requested.

Guild Church

 * St Michael's Cornhill

Collections
The company's archives, works of art, silver and artefacts are in the care of its archivist. The document collection has items dating to the 13th century, including charters and coats of arms, charity records and records of the company's landholdings, including the Londonderry estates. The silver collection includes an ancient Celtic decorative collar found on the Londonderry estate and pieces of the company's own silverware from the 16th century onwards. There is also a collection of paintings, mostly of former members. Researchers may view its collections by appointment.

title: Worshipful Company of Drapers


text:
Kaposi

Kaposi can refer to:

 * Moritz Kaposi, a Hungarian physician and dermatologist
 * Kaposi's sarcoma, a disease named for Kaposi

title: Kaposi


text:
Grass skiing

Grass skiing, skiing on grass, is a training method for alpine skiing and an established sport of its own. The skis used for grass skiing are short with rolling treads or wheels. These skis are attached to the skiers' boots. Depending on the skill of the grass skier, high speeds and jumps can be navigated.

Grass skiing was invented by Josef Kaiser in Germany in 1963. It was created initially as a training method for skiers before the winter season.

Originally, skis used in grass skiing were like rolling treads attached to the ski boots. Currently there are two types of skis used in grass skiing. These are the wheeled models and the tracked ones. The wheeled model can be used in various terrains and for freestyle skiing and off-piste skiing. The tracked model on the other hand is specifically designed to be used on grass slopes.

title: Grass skiing