The present study aims to investigate the impacts of oil sands development in Canada on the economy, society and the environment as the three pillars of sustainability. Factors such as aquatic ecosystems, land disturbance and reclamation, air quality, public health, safety, aboriginal and local communities, gross domestic product, employment rate and job creation, government revenues and demographic changes have been considered. Based on a review of the available literature, this study shows that the oil sands industry has so far fallen short in keeping a balance among the three pillars of sustainability, with the negative impacts on society (e.g. changing the lifestyle of Aboriginal people) and the environment (e.g. land disturbance) overweighing the relatively positive economic impacts. This, along with the current pace of remedies (e.g. land reclamation), makes it hard to conclude that the oil sands industry is sustainable.

Despite frequent occurrence of wildfires around the world, the role of wildfires has rarely been taken into account in risk assessment of process plants in wildlands, especially that large inventory of flammable petroleum products in contact with the heat of wildfire can lead to severe domino effects. We have developed a dynamic risk assessment framework by integrating available models of fire spread and domino effect analysis with online maps of wildfire characteristics such as ignition probability and heat intensity to investigate the impact of wildfires on oil facilities. The framework is modular, so one can readily enhance its accuracy by replacing the current techniques with more sophisticated ones. The application of the methodology is demonstrated on an oil terminal.