Which Canadian oil-sands region is the largest known deposit of bitumen-bearing sands?

The Athabasca oil sands are the largest known deposit of bitumen-bearing sands.

They are located in northeastern Alberta, Canada, and form the largest of Alberta’s three major oil-sands areas. The deposit contains bitumen, a very thick form of petroleum that must be diluted, upgraded, or extracted using specialized methods before it can move through conventional pipelines and refineries.

Near the surface, operators can use open-pit mining, while deeper deposits are commonly developed with in-situ techniques such as steam-assisted gravity drainage. These methods heat the underground bitumen so it can flow toward production wells.

The Athabasca region is sometimes casually called an oil field, but oil sands differ from conventional reservoirs in both geology and extraction. Cold Lake and Peace River are also major Alberta oil-sands regions, while the Orinoco oil belt is a separate heavy-oil deposit in Venezuela.