About Us / Committees
Our hardworking committee members tackle many of the issues facing the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and are the backbone of The Oil Sands Developers Group. It is through their efforts that The Oil Developers Group committees are able to promptly deal with many local concerns. A sample of committee achievements include:

Transportation Committee

  • Held workshops for industry, service providers and government representatives to discuss growth issues and to develop a joint transportation infrastructure priority list.
  • Identified and carried out a project to permanently lift or bury utility lines, along the high load corridor from Edmonton to Fort McMurray which previously needed to be moved for each oversized load. With thousands of oversized truck loads moving to the oil sands projects each year this project has reduced the cost of moving loads and eliminated the inconvenience and time delays for projects, traffic and utility customers.
  • Contributed to the transportation portion of the 2005 Wood Buffalo Business Case.
  • Developed options for the East Side Road to access projects north and east of the Athabasca River. The current Canterra Road will be closed in 2008.
  • Participated in the industry review of the North East Alberta Transportation Corridor (NEATcor) proposal.
  • Lobbied the government to twin the highway between Fort McMurray and the plant sites north two years earlier than scheduled. This reduced travel times for workers from 1 1/2 hours to 20 minutes.

Communications Committee

  • Developed an up-to-date interactive recruitment and retention DVD on living and working in Fort McMurray for use by industry, non-profits, governments and other stakeholders.
  • Contributed to the oil sands portion of the Alberta display at the Smithsonian Institution.
  • Contributed to the production of oil sands information booklets.
  • Developed a tour protocol to handle the hundreds of requests received from around the world to tour oil sands projects.
  • Prepared responses on behalf of industry for government consultation processes.

Housing Committee

  • Provided annual forecasts on urban population and housing needs based on current industry plans.
  • Facilitated workshops on land release and housing needs with governments and stakeholders

Learn more about our committees: