Organisation Behavior

Ememerurai Nelly Efemena

7701027

Geol 2570

November 12, 2013

Assignment 4

1. List, in order of amount of in-place reserves, the four main tar sands deposits of western Canada and show, with a sketch map, the approximate location of each.

* Athabasca

* Peace River

* Wabasca

• Cold Lake

2. Summarize the geological history of the tar sands of western Canada.

The most prominent oil sands deposits in North America are Early Cretaceous in age, meaning that the sands which host the heavy oil were originally laid down during that geological period, about 120 to 110 million years ago. In the eastern part of northern Alberta, the basal Cretaceous rocks rest directly on Devonian limestones (360 m.y.a). Rocks of intervening age were probably laid down but were eroded away before the Lower Cretaceous sediments were finally deposited. Deposition of the initial Lower Mannville sands (the McMurray-Gething Formations) took place largely as a result of fluvial (river) deposition, localized principally in the depressions or troughs on the unconformity surface. Sand was supplied from source materials in the Precambrian Shield area to the northeast, and from the rising Cordillera in the west. Near the close of Lower Mannville deposition, the Boreal Ocean, transgressing the former land surface from the north, began to dominate sedimentation, and sands were deposited in deltaic and estuarine type environments.

3. List in order of increasing rank: brown coal, peat, anthracite, bituminous coal, semi-anthracite.

Peat lignite sub-bituminuous [high volatile bituminuous medium volatile bituminuous,--low volatile bituminous] semi-anthracite anthracite.

4. How is rank measured?

Coal rank implies the degree of coalification. It is a measure of the maturity of coal and is assessed in terms of moisture and carbon content, volatile matter and vitrinite reflectivity. While peat and lignite are essentially low rank coals, anthracite are in the last...