Canada Fort Chipewyan
71 images Created 25 Sep 2009
Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, northern Alberta, Canada.
Fort Chipewyan is one of the oldest European settlements in the province of Alberta, Canada. The settlement was established by the North West Company when it setup a trading post there in 1788. The Fort was named after the Chipewyan First Nation living in the area. The Fort is located on the western tip of Lake Athabasca, adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park, in the eastern extremity of northern Alberta...The tar sand deposits lie under 141,000 square kilometres of sparsely populated boreal forest and muskeg and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen in-place, comparable in magnitude to the world's total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. Current projections state that production will grow from 1.2 million barrels per day (190,000 m³/d) in 2008 to 3.3 million barrels per day (520,000 m³/d) in 2020 which would place Canada among the four or five largest oil-producing countries in the world...The industry has brought wealth and an economic boom to the region but also created an environmental disaster downstream from the Athabasca river, polluting the lakes where water and fish are contaminated. The native Indian tribes of the Mikisew, Cree, Dene and other smaller First Nations are seeing their natural habitat destroyed and are largely powerless to stop or slow down the rapid expansion of the oil sands development, Canada's number one economic driver.
Fort Chipewyan is one of the oldest European settlements in the province of Alberta, Canada. The settlement was established by the North West Company when it setup a trading post there in 1788. The Fort was named after the Chipewyan First Nation living in the area. The Fort is located on the western tip of Lake Athabasca, adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park, in the eastern extremity of northern Alberta...The tar sand deposits lie under 141,000 square kilometres of sparsely populated boreal forest and muskeg and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen in-place, comparable in magnitude to the world's total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. Current projections state that production will grow from 1.2 million barrels per day (190,000 m³/d) in 2008 to 3.3 million barrels per day (520,000 m³/d) in 2020 which would place Canada among the four or five largest oil-producing countries in the world...The industry has brought wealth and an economic boom to the region but also created an environmental disaster downstream from the Athabasca river, polluting the lakes where water and fish are contaminated. The native Indian tribes of the Mikisew, Cree, Dene and other smaller First Nations are seeing their natural habitat destroyed and are largely powerless to stop or slow down the rapid expansion of the oil sands development, Canada's number one economic driver.
