The Firebag River is a river in northern
Alberta
Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...
and
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
. It gets its name from the traditional bags Aboriginals once used to carry fire-starting flints.
Firebag River in western Canada
It originates in ''Firebag Lake'' in northwestern Saskatchewan, flows west into Alberta, and discharges in the
Athabasca River
The Athabasca River (French: ''Rivière Athabasca'') in Alberta, Canada, originates at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and flows more than before emptying into Lake Athabasca. Much of the land along its banks is protected in nationa ...
65 km north of
Fort McKay.
The length of the river is approximately 170 km, and the average discharge at the Athabasca River confluence is 20 m³/s.
The southern tract of ''Marguerite River Wildland'' protects part of the river valley, and a recreation park for Northeast Alberta Region located along the river has been proposed in 1980
Suncor
Suncor Energy Inc. () is a Canadian integrated energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. It specializes in production of synthetic crude from oil sands. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Suncor Energy was ranked as the 48th-largest public compan ...
has an
SAGD project in production (the ''Firebag in-situ operation''), extracting
bitumen
Bitumen ( , ) is an immensely viscosity, viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition, it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In American Engl ...
from the
oil sands
Oil sands are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. They are either loose sands, or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen (a dense and extremely viscous ...
of the
McMurray Formation
The McMurray Formation is a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous Geochronology, age (late Barremian to Aptian stage) of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta. It takes the ...
located in the river basin.
Suncor
- Firebag in-situ oil sands facility
Fort MacKay/Firebag Aerodrome is located away.
See also
* List of rivers of Alberta
Alberta's rivers flow towards three different bodies of water, the Arctic Ocean, the Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Alberta is located immediately east of the continental divide, so no rivers from Alberta reach the Pacific Ocean.
List of riv ...
* List of rivers of Saskatchewan
This is a list of rivers of Saskatchewan, a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada.
The largest and most notable rivers are listed at the start, followed by rivers listed by drainage basin and then alphabetically.
Principa ...
References
Rivers of Alberta
Rivers of Saskatchewan
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