Alberta’s blue-eyed sheikhs offered a plaintive prayer in the early 1990s as sliding oil prices plunged the energy-rich Canadian province into recession. “Dear God,” ran their plea, featured on a popular bumper sticker. “Let there be another oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time.”

Their wish has been granted in spades. Huge investment in bitumen-like oilsands in Alberta has unleashed one of north America’s most frenzied resource booms since the Klondike gold rush of 1897.