Oil Sands or Tar Sands? June 10, 2013

Oil Sands vs Tar Sands?

 "Until the 1960s, everyone called them the tar sands. At that point, primarily as a way of communicating more clearly what product would eventually come out of the bitumen, the Alberta government started calling them the oil sands.”

    – Historian David Finch on the CAPP (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) website

I am glad that the Alberta government just wanted to “communicate more clearly.” Does the Alberta government think that Albertans/Canadians are stupid?  By that logic, we should change the name of cattle ranches to “steak ranches” because it is “clearer”. Bitumen is really more synonomous with “tar”. However, a 2009 McAllister Opinion Research poll of 1629 Canadians found that more Canadians (39%) were “very concerned” by “oil sands” than by “tar sands” (32%), probably because of the connections that we make with the term “oil” as in oil spill, oil tankers, oil cartels, oil lobby, and Big Oil. 

So, in honour of that extra 7% of Canadians who are very concerned by the term Oil Sands but not by Tar Sands, I will happily use the term “Oil Sands”.

Still it is worth noting is that in an Ipsos Reid poll conducted in September, 2010, on behalf of CBC, 1,008 Canadians were surveyed about the Oil Sands. 42% of us either had never heard of them (wonder where they spend their time?) or did not know enough to form an opinion.