It has been reported that oil sand deposits in Alberta, Canada may total over 1.6 trillion barrels of bitumen, with potentially over 300 billion barrels of oil recoverable using existing technologies [1]. This makes the Canadian oil sands potentially the largest petroleum resource in the world, perhaps larger than Saudi Arabia. Announced investments to develop oil sands projects currently total over $80 billion. In the last several years, however, there have been significant cost and schedule overruns for major oil sands projects constructed in Alberta. In order to prevent future uncontrolled cost and schedule growth of projects located in this strategically important region of world energy supplies, it is imperative to understand the reasons for why this has occurred. If the owner companies cannot gain control of their runaway project costs, the huge capital inflows to the Alberta oil sands could be slowed. Domestic and international investors will evaluate and determine whether the risk is justified to continue this magnitude of capital investment to the region...
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