Unconventional oil and gas: Resources and labour

Vast volumes of water and sand, and tonnes of ore

What this tab covers The natural resources (land, water, materials, fuel or feedstock) and the labour needed to capture this energy, per unit, with the reason each is needed.

The main demands are water and sand for fracturing, natural gas and water to make steam for bitumen, large land areas for oil sands mines and CO2 for enhanced recovery.

Natural resources

Resource	How much	Why it is needed
Water for fracturing	About 1.5 to 16 million US gallons per well; use per well rose up to 770% from 2011 to 2016¹⁶¹⁷	Water carries the sand and transmits pressure needed to crack the rock; longer laterals with more stages need more
Oil sands ore	About two tonnes of oil sands dug up and processed per barrel of oil¹⁴	Bitumen makes up only a small share of the ore by weight
Fresh water for in situ bitumen	About 0.5 barrel of fresh water per barrel of bitumen, down from 3.5; 80-95% of water recycled¹⁴¹³	Water is boiled to make the steam that heats and mobilises bitumen
Land	About 4,800 km2 surface-mineable, of which about 895 km2 had been disturbed by 2013; oil sands underlie 142,200 km2¹³	Mining removes forest, peat and overburden above the ore
CO2 for enhanced recovery	About 300-600 kg of CO2 injected per barrel of oil produced (US)²⁵	CO2 dissolves into oil, swelling it and reducing its viscosity so it flows to wells

Labour

Phase	How much	Skills	Why it is needed
Drilling and completion	Not quantified per unit output in our sources¹¹	Directional drillers, frac crews, pump operators, geologists	Shale requires continuous drilling of new wells to offset steep decline
Operation (oil sands and upstream)	About 138,000 people in Alberta's upstream energy sector (2022)¹³	Heavy-equipment operators, process operators, steam plant engineers	Mines and steam plants are large industrial sites run around the clock
Reclamation	Not quantified in our sources¹⁹	Reclamation ecologists, tailings engineers	Mines must treat tailings and restore land before closure

Sources

Dallas Fed Energy Survey, First Quarter 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 2025
Oil sands facts and statistics Government of Alberta, 2024
Extracting Oil Sands: In-Situ and Mining Methods fact sheet Oil Sands Developers Group, 2009
FAQ: How much water does the typical hydraulically fractured well require? US Geological Survey, 2024
The intensification of the water footprint of hydraulic fracturing (Kondash et al., Science Advances) RTI International, 2018
2024 State of Fluid Tailings Management for Mineable Oil Sands Alberta Energy Regulator, 2025
Can CO2-EOR really provide carbon-negative oil? International Energy Agency, 2019