Talking Energy Talk
Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin
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The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is a massive wedge of rock underlying northeast British Columbia, the western Northwest Territories, most of Alberta, southern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba.
Created over hundreds of millions of years, the basin’s rock is about six kilometres thick along the western edge and thins gradually to the east. The basin is called “sedimentary” because it contains layers of rock — also called formations — that come from the breakdown of the earth’s surface rocks through interaction with surrounding water, air, organisms and plants. About 60 to 100 million years ago it was the sea bottom of a large interior seaway.
Over time, the layers of the WCSB gradually hardened with the pressure of overlying rock, trapping decayed organic materials like plants and plankton that eventually became fossil fuels: coal, oil, bitumen and gas.
Of all the jurisdictions that sit over the WCSB, Alberta is in a unique position as it presides over a majority of the basin’s oil, gas and coal reserves and almost all of its bitumen.
