CDN NEWS | 
US NEWS 
By Terry Winnitoy
Just about everthing and everyone has a “best before date” and the energy industry is no exception. In fact, it’s one industry that is constantly re-inventing itself with new ideas and technology.
Sometimes an idea comes along that is so simple you wonder why someone didn’t think of it years ago. Has the oil sands reached its “best before date”. I’m not talking about the amount of oil in the ground but how the oil sands should be perceived and marketed today.
There has been a lot of debate over recent years over the words “energy transition” not being realistic given the daily consumption of oil continues to go up. Even though new forms of energy continue to develop, industry is much more comfortable with the words “energy diversification”. So, why not look at the words “oil sands”.
The idea was raised recently by Doomberg, the influential energy, markets and geopolitical analysis group, whose co-founder and head writer participated in the Canadian Energy Executive Association’s CEEA 75 Energy Business Forum at the Fairmont Banff Springs on August 20.
EnergyNow contributor Maureen McCall, who interviewed Doomberg as part of the Banff event, picked up on the branding issue in her EnergyNow article titled DOOMBERG PART TWO: Energy Predictions from the Castle in the Rockies.
In a section of that called “Oil Sands? Branding Gone Bad…” McCall noted Doomberg’s argument that calling Canada’s massive bitumen resource the oil sands is in itself poor branding and only marginally better than the term tar sands, which became the preferred description of groups determined to stop their development.
Doomberg’s alternative? Energy Sands!
We’ve Rebranded “Sands” Before
There is nothing sacred about the term oil sands. In fact, the resource has been called different things for more than a century.
Historically, the deposits were regularly called tar sands, asphalt sands and bituminous sands. Alberta’s own historical records note that early explorers used “tar sands” because the thick, black petroleum resembled tar. Technically, however, the description is wrong: tar is manufactured, while the bitumen contained in Alberta’s sands occurs naturally.
People were arguing over the branding almost 100 years ago.
As early as 1936, researchers were deliberately choosing the words “oil sands” because they believed they more accurately described the petroleum contained in the deposits. By 1951, the Research Council of Alberta was explicitly arguing that the terms tar sand and bituminous sand should be dropped because they gave the wrong impression of what the resource actually contained.
They understood something that remains true today: Names matter. And unfortunately for Alberta, the old name eventually became a powerful political weapon.
The “Tar Sands” Campaign Proved Branding Matters
Beginning in the 2000s, environmental organizations deliberately embraced the term tar sands as part of campaigns against Alberta’s energy industry.
By 2008, an organized North American Tar Sands Campaign brought together advocacy organizations in Canada, the United States and Europe with the stated objective of slowing expansion. Its strategy included opposing new pipelines and restricting the industry’s access to international markets. Campaign organizers themselves continue to describe the effort as the “Tar Sands Campaign.”
Whatever your opinion of those campaigns, there is a marketing lesson here that Alberta should never forget. They understood the power of words.
“Tar sands” sounded dirty before anyone explained what the resource was, how it was produced or what it contributed to Canada. And to back up the words, they found or in some cases altered pictures to make their point.
Eventually, governments, industry and most mainstream media adopted the technically more accurate term oil sands but many activists still use it. That was better.
But I increasingly believe it still isn’t good enough.
Most of the Resource Isn’t Even Mineable
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the oil sands is the idea that producing them necessarily means digging enormous open-pit mines.
The numbers tell a very different story.
Approximately 80% of the recoverable resource is too deep underground to be surface mined at all. It must instead be recovered using in-situ, meaning “in place”, drilling technologies. And in-situ production has already become the largest source of Alberta’s raw bitumen.
According to the Alberta Energy Regulator, in 2024, Alberta produced about 3.56 million barrels per day of raw bitumen. Of that, approximately 1.84 million barrels per day, or 52%, came from in-situ operations, compared with 48% from mining.
Within in-situ production, Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage — SAGD — accounted for 75%, producing about 1.37 million barrels per day in 2024.
SAGD does not involve digging the oil sands out of the ground.
Horizontal wells are drilled into the reservoir. Steam is injected through one well, heating the bitumen so it can flow into another well and be pumped to the surface.
That is still energy-intensive production and it has environmental impacts. But it is fundamentally different from the giant open-pit mining images that have defined the international perception of Alberta’s resource for decades.
And because 80% of the recoverable resource is too deep to mine, the future of development will increasingly be tied to these types of drilling and in-situ technologies.
“Energy sands” better reflects that reality.
Production Up. Emissions Per Barrel Down.
Changing the name should not mean pretending environmental challenges don’t exist.
Canada should do exactly the opposite: talk openly about them — and about the progress that has been made.
The federal government’s own 2025 Emissions Reduction Plan progress report says oil sands production increased approximately 800% between 1990 and 2023. Absolute emissions increased as production expanded, but emissions intensity per barrel declined by nearly 40%, falling from 126 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per barrel in 1990 to 76 kilograms in 2023.
That distinction is important. Production has grown enormously while the emissions required to produce each barrel have fallen substantially through better technology, operating efficiency, methane reductions and other innovations.
There is much more work to do, but that is hardly the picture of a technologically stagnant industry.
It is an industry continually trying to produce more energy with less environmental impact per barrel. That sounds a lot more like energy sands to me.
One of the World’s Great Strategic Energy Assets
Canada’s energy sands represent about 159 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, giving Canada the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserve. They account for approximately 98% of Canada’s proven oil reserves.
Think about the geopolitical importance of that.
This enormous resource sits inside a stable democracy with established environmental regulations, sophisticated engineering expertise, Indigenous participation, transparent regulators, private-sector investment and some of the world’s most advanced petroleum technology.
Unlike many conventional oilfields, these are also enormous, long-life deposits capable of supporting production for decades.
In a world increasingly concerned about energy security, supply-chain security and geopolitical reliability, those characteristics matter.
Maybe we should start branding the resource around what it provides rather than around the material that happens to surround it.
Energy Companies Have Already Figured This Out
There is plenty of precedent. Some of the world’s biggest energy companies have deliberately moved away from names that defined them strictly by oil.
Norway’s Statoil became Equinor in 2018 specifically because the company wanted a name reflecting its evolution into what it described as a broader energy company.
France’s Total became TotalEnergies in 2021 to communicate a broader energy ambition.
Denmark’s DONG Energy — originally Danish Oil and Natural Gas — became Ørsted after determining that its old name no longer properly represented the company.
Closer to home, names such as Suncor Energy and Cenovus Energy already describe companies as energy businesses rather than defining them solely by one commodity. That isn’t hiding what they produce.
It’s recognizing that their businesses are ultimately about something larger.
Energy. So why are we still branding one of Canada’s most valuable energy resources exclusively around the word oil?
Bring On the Energy Sands!
I am not suggesting legislation needs to be rewritten tomorrow or that geological and regulatory terminology should suddenly disappear.
Start with the public conversation.
Start saying Canadian Energy Sands or Alberta Energy Sands
Put it in presentations. Put it into marketing. Use it at conferences. Use it when talking to investors. Use it when explaining Canada’s contribution to global energy security.
Terms become accepted because people start using them.
We already moved from tar sands to oil sands because the old terminology was inaccurate and increasingly loaded.
Maybe it is time for the next evolution. Because what ultimately comes from those vast deposits beneath northern Alberta isn’t tar. And it isn’t simply oil.
It is gasoline. Diesel. Jet fuel. Petrochemical feedstocks. Industrial products. Export revenues. Jobs. Royalties. Economic activity. Energy security and ultimately the energy that keeps modern economies functioning.
Doomberg may have stumbled onto something much bigger than a clever turn of phrase in Banff.
Oil sands was better branding than tar sands. Energy sands is better branding than oil sands.
Canada possesses one of the greatest energy resources on Earth. Maybe it’s time we started calling it what it really is.
What sounds better for this organization? Oil Sands Alliance or Energy Sands Alliance? Bring on Energy Sands Alliance!
It’s going to start here. Articles originating from EnergyNow are going to use the words “energy sands”. Who’s with me?
Share This:
